Category Archives: Health Stuff

Random Updates

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Diet Update: I still haven’t cheated, while Dave is being much more lax about the whole no-sugar, no-white-flour thing. Which is fine for him – he’s a guy, he can probably drop ten pounds just by thinking about cutting sugar out of his diet. Grrr. (Ok, full disclosure: I did have one roll of Smarties, but I was getting the low blood sugar shakes, so I panicked and went for the candy.) Anyway, I’m starting to feel better, which I guess means my body is almost finished with this whole sugar detox process. And I’m coming up with some interesting dinner recipes, which has been challenging (no mashed potatoes or pasta on the side? what are we supposed to eat?!?!), but we’ve found some things that we really like, so that’s good.

Sippy Cup Update: I think I won this particular battle in the Toddler War. Yesterday and today, every time Catie was thirsty and asked for a drink, she took the sippy cup from me and drank it on her own with no objection at all. Awesome. Mommy FTW!

Weather Update: We’ve had this crazy wind/rain storm off and on all day today, and it knocked out our power for about two hours. I was bitching and moaning about it until I heard about the flooding out in Seattle, looked up road closures for King County, and found out that sure enough, if we were still in our old house, we’d be flooded in and not able to go anywhere. So now I’m shutting up because I am just ever so thankful that we don’t live there anymore.

Employment Update: I had a job interview today, which was for a job that I’d feel totally indifferent about (it’s fine, I wouldn’t hate it, but it isn’t my passion, so… meh?), but the salary is really impressive, so I’m sort of confused and trying to wrap my head around it. If I get the offer, I’m sure I’ll end up taking it, just because it would be a really good opportunity. But it’s kind of a moot point for now, because all I’ve had at this point is a preliminary interview with an HR person. If they decide they like me, I’ll still have two or three more rounds of interviews to get through, before I maybe, possibly, get an offer. So absolutely nothing is decided at this point. I’m trying not to worry about it, and just know that whatever is supposed to happen, will happen. You know, que sera sera or something like that.

The Sippy Cup Wars

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So far on this diet, I’m doing… ok. I’m managing. I mean, I haven’t cheated at all, but I feel like crap on a stick. I’m basically trying to re-train my brain to break some of the bad habits that I’ve gotten myself into. And it’s hard, because my brain is still trying to tell me, “no no, after breakfast, you need that oatmeal cookie.” And of course I don’t need it, so I don’t eat one. But that leaves me with the craving, which sucks. So until my brain gets out of these bad habits, I’m just feeling sort of scattered and very, very crabby. And a little weepy. Is this what it’s like when people quit smoking? Because it sort of feels like I’m trying to fix an addiction here. And I don’t even have Dr. Drew to pat me on the shoulder and tell me I’m doing a good job. (Hmmm, Dr. Drew and an oatmeal cookie, now that is something I could really go for right now… But I digress.)

Since I’m already grouchy and miserable, I decided to go ahead and take on another challenge that’s been annoying me for a while. Catie is off the bottle completely, and has been since she was about 15 months old. She is an all-sippy-cup, all-the-time kind of girl, and that’s honestly fine with me. Yes, I realize that she will soon be two years old, and I should be teaching her how to drink from a regular cup, but I’m procrastinating about that because I know it’s going to involve a lot of clean-up. And I’m lazy. She can drink from a cup with a straw, but she prefers the sippy.

The problem? She expects me to hold the sippy cup for her. She absolutely knows how to do it herself, she does it all the time when I’m not around, or say, when she’s in her car seat and I’m driving. I think she wants me to hold it because it’s her way of making sure she has my undivided attention. And you know, she already has my attention pretty much every waking minute of the day. As it stands now, every time the kiddo is thirsty, she expects me to stop what I’m doing and hold her sippy cup for her. I don’t mind doing it when she first wakes up, or before bedtime, because that’s our quiet snuggle time. But for every beverage requirement (approximately once an hour) all day long? No. Enough is enough.

So since yesterday, when she asks for her juice, I’ve been handing her the cup instead of holding it for her. She screams and throws the cup at me, and I ignore her and go about my business while she throws herself on the floor howling about what a horrible mommy I am. After a few minutes, she relents, picks up the cup and takes a drink all by herself. At which point I applaud, tell her what a big girl she is, give her a hug and a kiss on the head, and basically praise her like crazy for doing something she’s been able to do for the past year. Eh, whatever works, right?

After this, I might start working on teaching her how to drink from a regular cup. But I’m not looking forward to that at all. Can’t she learn how to do that in preschool or something?

Diet Time

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Announcement: Dave and I are starting a new diet. Well, technically Dave’s already been on one for a while – he lost 30 pounds before the holidays. He’s been doing great, I’m really proud of him. But he got off track during the holidays, and now that he’s trying to start back on his diet, I’ve decided to join him. It’s always easier to tackle a challenge with a partner, right?

And this doesn’t count as a New Year’s resolution, because I don’t believe in them. Besides, I’m starting this on January 3rd, so it has nothing to do with New Year’s, and everything to do with not liking the way my clothes feel on me. Yes, my size 12 jeans still fit, and I only weigh maybe five pounds more than I did when I got married, but I’m feeling decidedly flabbier. I figure it’s better to tackle these things when I have a small, manageable goal in front of me, rather than waiting until my size 12 jeans don’t fit me anymore, or waiting until I hit 200 pounds or something. So, I would like to try to lose ten pounds. Maybe 15, but that would put me at the peak of my weight loss after my gastric bypass, and I think I only stayed at that weight for a few months, so I’m not terribly optimistic that I can maintain that again.

It’s awkward for me to write about this because I don’t like talking about my body image issues. I feel like I’m probably going to get one of two reactions: (a) people who don’t have a problem with their weight can’t believe that I’m happy being a size 12, and they wonder how I can stand to look at my fat ass in the mirror every day; or (b) people with real weight problems can’t believe that I’m whining about wanting to lose a measly ten or fifteen pounds. What do I have to complain about? The latter reaction is probably how I would’ve felt myself before my gastric bypass, so maybe I’m projecting a little bit of my past there.

The thing is, I have accepted that I will never, ever be super-skinny. Even after surgery, a size 6 is just not in my future. It’s not in my genetic make-up. And that’s fine, I’m totally at ease with being the size of the average American woman. I don’t have to be perfect. I can walk into pretty much any clothing store and find something that’ll fit me, and that alone is more than I ever dared to hope for, before my surgery. So I’m really not complaining, I’m just scared to death of regaining the weight that I worked so hard to lose (seriously, if you think surgery is the easy way out? You are dead wrong), so I’m trying to be proactive about nipping this flabby feeling in its proverbial bud before it becomes an issue.

I think part of the problem is that having a two year-old in the house makes it impossible for me to eat healthy all the time, so I’ve just given up on even trying. If I make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for Catie, and she only eats a quarter of it, I figure that heck, I went to the trouble to make the sandwich, and I don’t want to just throw it out, right? It seems so wasteful. So I eat it. Or when she gets a free cookie at the grocery store and decides that she doesn’t want the last two bites of it, she hands it to me, and what am I supposed to do with a piece of a cookie while I’m trying to push a grocery cart? I wolf it down and move on. And what I should do is find a trash can and toss it.

I hesitated to even mention anything about this diet on the blog, because like I said, I’m not really comfortable talking about my weight issues. But I was worried that some of my posts over the next few weeks might have sort of a cranky, “grrr I will kill the first person who crosses my path in exchange for a cookie” vibe, and I thought that might warrant some explanation. So that’s what’s going on. I don’t suddenly need Prozac, I’m just suffering from junk food deprivation. Poor widdle ol’ me.