How much do I eat - 7 months after gastric sleeve surgery

A lot of my friends ask me about how much I can eat now that I have had the gastric sleeve surgery. Today marks 7 months since I had the surgery, and I can definitely eat a lot more than I could in first few months. That doesn't mean my stomach has stretched though. In the first 3-6 months, your stomach has a raw wound that needs to heal, which makes it quite difficult to each much food at all. Now that my stomach has healed, this will be more like what I can actually eat on a regular basis, and possibly a tiny bit more as I reach 12 months and beyond.

Before - my special treat of nachos!

After - Unfortunately my special treat didn't sit well with me so I didn't eat more than a couple of bites

Before - Baked potato with beans and salsa

After - I ate this over about 30 minutes and managed to eat just over half of the potato

Before - Small Lime Chicken Salad from Sumo Salad

After - I have picked out all of the chicken as well as some of the salad. I only had about 15 minutes otherwise I would have probably eaten a little more

Besides some very unglamorous food photos, I have stayed around the same weight this week, hovering at high 82, low 83 kilos. The weight continues to come off, but I am not as obsessive with weighing myself as I was at the beginning of this process. I am a data-oriented person so I love seeing the numbers and tracking my progress, but it's also kind of nice to just let it do it's thing now.

A not-so-weekly update

I'm continuing to lose weight, which shouldn't be a surprise to me, but I think somehow in my head I thought the weight loss would just stop once I hit my goal weight. My current weight is 82.6kg, and I am slowly heading towards being in the 70-79kg bracket. That brings my BMI down to 28.3 as well - getting so close to being in that normal range.

Now for some pretty graphs from my fitbit tracker (click on the image for a closer look).

Reaching my goals and beyond

 

What to do you do when you reach your milestone? Do you celebrate? Do you set a new goal? Is the journey over? This past week I reached a big milestone for me. I set myself a goal of reaching 85kg when I had my surgery, and I am so happy to have reached that goal.

Once of the things I did when I first decided to have the surgery, was to create a goal board - a board which would provide motivation, inspiration, and remind me why I am following this path. My goal board had pictures of clothes I wanted to wear, healthy good, exercise tips, fit healthy women, babies and pregnant women, and the number 85.

My goal board was originally in my bedroom during the early weeks. I needed constant reminding about why my body was hurting so badly. Then it moved into the spare room where I get dressed in the morning, next to my makeup stand. As I got ready each morning, it was almost an affirmation, a quick glance across to keep my mind in the game. As I've gotten closer to my goal, the goal board moved to the study. For a while other things piled up in front of it, and I didn't look at it a whole lot.

Today I pulled down all of the stuff that was hiding it, and had a good look at the things I had set out for myself.

I am so much fitter than I was before. I have been taken Daisy out at night for a run, jogging several km, followed up a gentle walk at the end. It's remarkably easy to jog at this weight. I'm doing weekly Personal Training sessions at my gym, and attending gym classes like Body Balance and CXWorx

The clothes. Oh how I love the clothes. I can walk into stores and try clothes on that I could only dream about before. Nicola Finetti dresses, Sportscraft pants, a crisp Ralph Lauren shirt. Even my feet have changed, going down half a size and fitting into normal sized boots instead of  paying $300 for a wide calf version.

My food choices are a lot better. I am not a fan of takeaway food - no Hungry Jacks or KFC which were a regular item in our dinner choices. I still eat the occasional 'bad' thing, but in small amounts, irregularly. Because I can only eat small amounts of food, I like to make sure that what I do eat is excellent quality.


So what now. Well I am only 6.5 months out of surgery, so I am still in my prime weight loss zone for another 5 months or so. I'm hoping that by continuing with what I have been doing do date, that I will be able to lose another 10kg by the end of the year, and get down to 75kg. To be honest though, it's not something that I am going to worry about right now.  I love my new body, my new lifestyle, and I want to enjoy the moment. I don't want to be constantly worried about not being thin enough or not losing enough weight. My Dr at my 6 month check up said that I do not need to lose any more weight for health reasons, anything from now is just a bonus, and that is exactly how I am treating it.

In saying that, I absolutely want to keep up my fitness, and hopefully do another triathlon near the end of the year, and possibly even a short 5k fun run! Who knows what's next?!