The First 20!

 I have officially lost the first 20 pounds post-surgery! I weighed in two days before surgery at 273.2 pounds (on 4/24/23). Today, I am at 252.3 pounds...twenty-one pounds gone in three weeks. Today also marks three weeks post-op and there have definitely been some ups and downs along the way. 

I found a bariatric surgery group on Facebook and even though I don't love Facebook, I have found scrolling through some of those posts to be helpful to me. I've developed this weird swallowing issue when I eat too big of a bite or eat too fast, and reading through some of those posts helped me not freak out too much that I'm going to die (big dramatizer here when it comes to those things!). 

So I've been able to try a couple of different things that settled well, but didn't go down easily for me. The key seems to really be in chewing your food a million times until it's basically mush. I know it won't be like this forever, but man, it's so different than how I used to eat because I was always in a hurry so I could feed a kid or clean up the dishes, or whatever. So teaching myself to slow down and chew, and also not to mix drinking any liquid with swallowing any solid food, has been a challenge. 

My digestive system is still a little bit of a teeter-totter, but I've been able to go to the gym (once - only lasted 10 minutes on the elliptical but it was something!), play baseball with my kids at the park, walk around the park a few times, and survived a Costco trip. I feel like progress is being made, even if it's not as quick as I'd like it to be. 

I'm struggling with not working right now. It's been a week since I've been officially unemployed, and although I'm looking forward to starting the credential program the first week of June, I'm also worried about how all of the pieces are going to fall into place financially. I'm trying to let it go and let God, but that's so hard! I am also still waiting for my final scores on the third subtest of the CSET, so hopefully that comes back positively and I'll at least have a little more of a solid plan in terms of where I'm headed. 

But for today, I'm going to celebrate the small victories, including my first 21 pounds lost since surgery three weeks ago. Here's to the next 110 pounds gone!