Monday, Monday

Greetings! I have a job interview with another department this afternoon - keep your fingers crossed for me! It's a nice little promotion, and I'm actually quite qualified for the job, so I've got as good a shot as anyone. I am not ordinarily looking to change jobs, but this is a good opportunity that I couldn't resist. I'll report back.

Ooo, I'm only one pound off my driver's license weight! Wow!! Even when I *got* that weight listed on my license, I was a million miles away from it. I remember specifically changing it because I could not say I weighed "160 pounds" with a straight face, as was listed on my previous license. So it's been a lifetime since I was anywhere in the range I'm in now.

I am also going to TOUGH LOVE myself back into the weight loss game. I have been eating TERRIBLY this weekend. So many bread and pastry products - what the heck?? I screwed up last week and bought Wheat Thins from Costco, and then this weekend on my volunteer shift we stopped at a favorite bakery of mine and got little mini cheese croissants and a pastry. Plus a couple pieces of the samples they were giving away. :| Again, it's not so much the *quantity* of food I'm eating - I really just can't eat much, but it's the poor choices and the mindless eating. I have noticed, in general, I am letting myself make some pretty bad food choices lately.

Enough! Time to rein it back in. I am feeling FANTASTIC at this weight, but it's not where I want to stop, not by a long shot. I have just gotten a little too slack. So - today is 8/1, I have a couple goals in mind:

- By 8/11, 7 months post-op, get down to 180 pounds. That's five pounds for the month, a respectable goal. My surgeon said 5-15 pounds a month during the first year is the target.

- By 8/22, my next follow-up appointment with the surgeon, 175 pounds. That's just a nice number, and it is 71% of my excess weight lost. This is important because my surgeon estimates that you will lose 65-85% of your excess weight from the gastric sleeve. I, of course, want to do better than that. But isn't it interesting that right now I've lost 66% of my excess weight and my weight loss has slowed to a crawl?

I want to hit goal by my one-year anniversary on 1/11, so that's roughly 40 pounds in 5 months or 8 pounds per month. Seems reasonable, especially if I stop the carb binge! It's my weekend eating - it's killing me. I don't know if it stops the weight loss, or if that is coincidental (thank you, complete and utter refusal to track eating). I'm thinking it's not coincidental. :)

In other news:

- At work, they have a nurse come in once a month to check blood pressure for all interested parties. I got a super gold star blood pressure reading this month! 121/79. Yay me! I stopped taking my blood pressure meds within a month or so after surgery. It still trended a little high, but my doctor said it was okay. Now, I'm consistently getting good readings. Last month, it was 131/76. My mom and my little sis have both been on high blood pressure meds since their early 30s, even without obesity, so it runs in my family. My maternal grandma actually had a stroke in her early 30s. My doctor tells me not to get too attached to not taking the meds, haha. But pre-morbid obesity, my blood pressure always ran low, like my dad's. I am hoping this continues!