Minus 5 days till Fill Day!

Oh how I need that fill. Eating is terrible! Can't wait till normal foods on Wednesday too. I'm hanging out for a ham & salad sandwich! We've been pretty average with food choices this past week. But have had the most glorious weekend.

Friday night went out with a bunch of our mates to the Kardinya Tavern for some karaoke. Great fun. I was skipper so no alcohol for me - stuck to water. Ordered a bowl of wedges (poop!) to share. Then for mains I ordered the grilled snapper (forgot to ask for sauce onside) and GB ordered the tandoori chicken. The chicken was dry so GB only ate a bite. The snapper was 2 pieces, which I managed to eat one and about 3 chips. I can't believe I managed to leave chips on the plate! A minor miracle indeed! Was feeling VERY full though which is good. Sang a few tunes... good times.

Saturday we went for a BIKE RIDE! Bit of background to this - I bought GB a bike for his birthday last year and he used to ride to work quite a bit. So I thought I'd get a bike and do the same. So I bought one and rode to work one day, having not ridden a bike for about 15 years. Let me tell you - it's not just like riding a bike! I was like a total spazz! And as it turns out, there are quite a few hills between our place and work! So the bike was left in the garage for the past 4 months or so. But I decided to give it another go on Saturday. So we put the bikes on the car and drove down to the river (which is mostly flat). It's a 7km trip around and off we tottled. My butt was sore after about 2 and a half minutes. And yes I have a gel seat. The part I struggled with was the hill up to the Graham Farmer Fwy bridge. Had to hop off the bike about a quarter of the way up! Then it was fairly smooth sailing (well with a lovely grimace on my face) for the next few kms. Got towards Trinity College and started to feel a bit nauseas (think it was a mistake to have a juice box before the ride) so had to have a few minutes rest. Then got back on and made it up the hill to the Causeway bridge (very proud of myself!). My butt was pretty numb by then! The last kilometre just about killed. It was flat but my legs just didn't want to turn anymore. But I did it and didn't die so thats good. We're going to do it every saturday so I know I'll get better at it!

Went out for tapas on Saturday night in Northbridge. Shared 4 dishes. They're very small - smaller than entree size - so that's good for us. Managed to leave before we over did it. We had olives and fetta, grilled sausage and fetta, lamb kebabs and salt & pepper squid. A bit more "pub-style" tapas than the fancier ones we've been to lately. They loved their fetta!!! Still it tasted lovely and the chef even happily removed the tenticle parts from the squid dish for me. Shared a bottle of wine too (yum!). Had a lovely evening.

Sunday we went back to the river, this time with Westie in tow and walked the 7kms. Last Sunday we did it in 1hr 20mins; this week did it in 1hr 15mins which is great. Unfortunately it was pretty warm and the poor pooch was BUGGERED! She pretty much slept the whole rest of the day! Then GB and I went and played a couple of games of 10 pin bowling. I suck. GB had his best game ever on the 2nd game with 149 including 5 strikes and a spare - very impressive! After that we caught up with a friend at the pub. Glass of wine for me and a few kilkenny's for the boys. Then we just veged out for the remainder of the night.

So - very scared to weigh in on Wednesday. Even though we have exercised every day except for Friday since last weekend, our eating has been deplorable (although still better than pre-band!). GB has been walking the dog for 30mins in the morning, then going to the gym for 30-45mins after work doing cardio and weights, then doing about 20-30mins in the pool each day. I've been going to the gym after work and doing 30-45 mins on the treadmill and bike. Going to start adding a weights circuit this week to take the exercise up to 60mins. We also walk Westie again after the gym, but with no great pace.

Anyway, hope everyone is well!

Em :)

Calorie King

Am I the last person in the world to know about Calorie King? It's free to join and you can track everything you're eating (food diary) and it calculates the calories and how much protein, carbs, fats etc you're eating. It will even develop a daily menu for you. It has nutritional information for just about every food you can imagine too!

I think it's going to be a very useful tool.

Week 4

Oh dear, weighed myself for the first time since starting to eat food (and not good food either)... Have put on 1.5kgs in a week! POOP! On the plus side (haha geddit.. PLUS side!), have exercised each day since Sunday, and once we're off soft foods and I can eat more healthily I'm sure the weight will drop off again. We've been having pasta just about every day in the past week for either lunch or dinner and that is just too much carbs clearly! Going to start having fish for dinner.. went to buy some the other day - GEEZ! How expeno is Fish! Like $50kg for snapper!!! Holy moly! We bought some salmon portions instead :). Looking forward to the first fill on Friday 18th April, as I'm really struggling with hunger.

Offtopic - If you haven't already, do yourself a favour and go to You Tube and search for "I'm F*cking Matt Damon" (you don't have to censor it though!). To give you the background story, in the US there is a late night talk show (like Letterman or Jay Leno) hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. About a year ago he ran out of time to interview Matt Damon and at the end of the show signed off "My apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time". This became a running joke and how he ended every show. Then a few months back he actually had Matt Damon on and in a skit he went on this abusive and expletive ridden tirade at Jimmy Kimmel - funny stuff. Well now JK's girlfriend, comedienne Sarah Silverman has put together this music video announcing that she is f*cking matt damon. It's freaking hysterical and I defy anyone not to have the song in their head afterwards! After you watch that one you should be able to see a link for "I'm f*cking Ben Affleck" which is Jimmy Kimmel's retaliation music video and contains about 20 celebs! Good fun!!!

Day 19 - Naughty Weekend!

So I can eat... just about everything. As has been evidenced by this weekend. It started on Friday when GB said he really wanted to take me out to celebrate the surgery and buying the house. So he surprised me with a trip to the "The Pony Club" which is a Tapas restaurant. We thought tapas would be good because it's basically small serves of everything. We tried to be sensible, ordering light seafood dishes. We shared about 4 tapas plates. I felt like I could probably eat something else so we ordered the fish as a main to share and then a side of "greens" and "potata grandes" The fish was lovely, the greens turned out to be brocolinis. The potatos were this BIG bowl of small halved baked potatoes with rosemary maybe and a yummy aoli. It was so big though - it could have been shared with 4 people. Anyway, GB took a bite of the brocollini and proceeded to get terrible pain. It took him 3 trips to the bathroom to PB it back up, the poor thing was not well. I hit the wall too but without the pain - just feeling like a massive whale and kind of like an elephant was sitting on my chest. Really uncomfortable.

On Saturday we had a few friends around to watch the derby (go the dockers!). So we had to pick up some nibblies. Potato chips (which I managed to stay away from) and party pies & sausage rolls... which I didn't manage to stay away from :(

Sunday my sister had a skincare product party where I spent WAY too much money and helped myself to chocolate and cheese and dip! AARRGGHH I deliberately didn't eat any lunch knowing that I would still indulge. The afternoon continued to our friends house that night for some games where we continued to chomp down on dip and cheese! arrggh.

Hopefully all that indulgence was offset by the fact that on sunday morning we did the 7km walk along the river in 1hr 20mins. Kept a pretty good pace so was happy with that. Also, going to start going to the gym after work again.

I had a weetbix with skim milk this morning for breakfast and I'm STARVING! Usually I bring my berocca with me and have a glass mid morning which staves off the hunger but I forgot this morning dammit. Plus I have a headache and it's overcast and horrible and I'd rather be watching movies in bed! Oh well, back to the water!

Thanks for all the comments guys, I really love to read them!

Em :)

Day 16

Where is everyone? Don't you people realise that fat folk need constant reinforcement of how wonderful we are? Post some comments! I kid.. I kid.. But seriously, I like to hear what people are thinking, how they're going, if they have any questions... so bring them on!

I'm feeling splendiferous. Pain is a zero. I'm eating food (soft food, but food none the less). And it's Friday!

Insert amusing anecdote here:

I cooked pototo bake last night. Cut up the potatoes really small, used low fat cream and put it in the oven. I usually let it cook for about an hour. GB and I decide to take Westie for a walk while that's cooking. When we go for a walk, and because we use the door to the garage more than our front door we normally just take the garage remote with us. So off we trot. Walk around the big block and play in the park with Westie for a bit (silly dog - she will only retrieve balls in one particular park - nowhere else!). We head back home and as we approach our place, GB says do I have the remote? No I don't have the remote, I never have the remote. He says, "well I don't have it". For a few minutes we both thing the other is taking shit out of the other. But no, neither of us have it. I say, "did you drop it". GB: "I don't remember ever having it". So I say that in that case the garage door must still be open. We look down the driveway and nope, garage door is closed. The buttmonkey must have opened the garage door, and then closed it and put the remote back on the wall and ducked out as the door was closing! So we were locked out, with no spare keys anyway outside out house. In a cruel twist, we had even locked the back sliding doors which we sometimes leave open if we're just walking the dog. So it got darker, and colder and I was getting bitten by midgies! Luckily GB deals with locksmiths at his work and we had at least brought his phone with us so he called him to come out. Poor guy had just cracked a red wine for the night! So half an hour later he comes, and starts trying to unlock the front door.  After a few minutes, GB pipes up with "Is it going to be a problem if the key is in the lock on the otherside?" Seriously. So we go around the back and attempt the sliding doors. He finally manages to unlock the laundry one and we're in! By now the potatoes had been cooking for about an hour and 40mins!!! The top was nice and crispy! Still tasted awesome though and it was nice and soft underneath!!

It's very hard to keep this from our friends. We're a really social bunch, but basically this surgery has meant we haven't been able to go out to eat with them at all for a month! We have told them we're on strict meal replacement diet till mid April and they're being supportive which is good but it's still hard! I feel like we're fobbing them off at every turn. But it will all be worth it and who knows, maybe in a year we'll come clean.

Both our weight loss has stagnated as expected now that we're eating more. Have to be careful, because sometimes I feel like I could just keep eating. Not feeling full at all. I have to get my brain to remember: Eat until you're not hungry, Not until you feel full. There is a big difference.

That'll do for nowsies,

Have a great weekend!

Em :)

Week 3: MUSHIES!

Oh yes, bye bye soups!!! Last night we got a head start on the mushie stage because we were both in dire need for some proper food. I decided to make canneloni and while technically probably not a traditional "mushie" food, it is pretty soft. And it was AWESOME. Ate about half what I normally would and was totally full. This morning I was awoken with scrambled eggs in bed. Too good. Could only eat about half so Westie got a nice breakfast too!

 Of course now that we are starting to eat food again I fully expect to put on a couple of kilos. We're going to try and increase our exercise to compensate for the extra calories though so hopefully it won't be too bad. I've still got a bit of port pain when I twist but I really want to get back on the exercise horse so to speak. I'm going to try to do 5-10mins on the cross trainer each night to begin with and build up from there. We're also going to increase our nightly walk and build up some speed.

I've never noticed so many food adverts on TV as I have in the past week and a half off work. Seriously. Even stuff I would never normally eat (Hot chicken roll from Chicken Treat), I've seen advertised and thought - mmm that would go down well! I'm sure these thoughts will diminish now I'm off the liquid stage and actually able to eat some food!

Em :)