Weigh Day and the Second Stall

It's Tuesday and I'm now five weeks out from my Dec. 27 gastric sleeve surgery. And that means it's Weigh Day. I'm still at 234, although this week I've been all over the place. On Jan. 25, I was at 234, then inexplicably on Jan. 27, I was at 236. And on Jan. 29, I hit 231. Then back up to 234. I'm shaking my head at the scale. Go figure. I'm still down 22 pounds since my surgery weight of 256, and 39 pounds since my all-time high of 273.

It's sort of anticlimatic because I hit another stall when I moved to Stage 3 foods at four weeks, which is most of the protein choices and most vegetables, except for artichokes, asparagus, celery and a few others.

I had decided not to weigh daily until I heard a story last week on NPR about a study that indicated it makes no difference if you weigh daily or weekly. When I was thin in my 20s and early 30s, I weighed daily and found it motivating. Back then, if I gained a pound or two, I'd be more careful until the scale slid back down.

I'm not sure when it changed, but it didn't change all at once. It's easy to gain weight when you do it eight or 10 pounds a year. Heck, you don't have to increase your calories by much daily to do that. I just didn't care as much about myself after my 1990 divorce, even though I dieted hard several times including a stint with the now-discredited fen-phen diet drugs that whipped about 50 pounds off. About the time I was having really good success with them, they went off the market because of heart valve problems and my weight came back on like iron filings to a magnet.

My physician Dr. Gregory Walton has me taking my blood pressure most days and logging it, and I'm hoping eventually I'll get off both of my BP meds (I'm off one.) My log also notes my weight that day, so that's how I know how much I weighed on certain days. (I'm not really a compulsive obsessive.)

I went ahead and measured today instead of tomorrow, Feb. 1, and I've lost a half-inch on my bust, an inch on my waist and an inch on my hips. All good news since I tend to pack it in below the waist. That was since Jan. 20, when I belatedly measured for the first time after surgery.

I'm sure now that I've written about it, the Second Stall will be over soon. I'm not worried. I'm keeping on doing what I've been doing and the scales will budge.

Onward,

Carol