Another Update...here we go again!

So I am beyond frustrated with Beverly Hills Physician right now. My case worker assured me that we would be able to get my surgery cleared before my insurance changed on October 1st....it didn't happen. Luckily I still have a PPO with my new insurance provider and we were able to resubmit everything immediately. Now we just have to play the waiting game....AGAIN. I got very sick of  waiting around for them and decided that I'm going to try to see what I can do on my own. I essentially want to RACE THE SURGERY!

Exercise Plan: I am committing myself to walking (eventually conditioning myself to run) Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.

Food Plan: I am going to be trying to minimize my carb portions and pre-planning my meals. This will help me portion control and hopefully help my hubby with his need to portion control too. Love you, babe!

*TRIUMPH*  I have officially gone down an entire pant size! YAY! I'm slowing getting there, but hopefully with this new plan I can get a lot more accomplished.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

   This past June Ryan and I took a trip to Chicago. As soon as we got back I uploaded our photos and quickly realized that there were MANY photos of food...and us eating food. One day I mentioned it to my mom and she told me, "Yeah. If you look at your facebook there are a ton of food pictures." So I went home and took a look: SHE WAS RIGHT! Then I proceeded to look through our scrapbooks and it was the same thing. To prove to you what I'm talking about I took pictures of our honeymoon scrapbook:

Night #1: Our suite cases still hadn't caught up with us from the airport, but nothing could get us down. We had been married for 24 hours  and were eating our first married meal together (didn't get to eat much at the wedding) at KOUZZINA, Iron Chef Cat Cora's restaurant at Disney world. There's a lamb shank, steak, 2 desserts of some sort and the hummus platter.

Night #2: Hawaii buffet/family style dinner at OHANA at the Polynesian. They had noodles, steamed veggies, pot stickers, wings, shrimp, pork, chicken and a dessert that rocked our world. Did I mention they also sat us right by the window so we had the PERFECT view of the firework show over Cinderella's Castle?!

   When we were on our honeymoon the EPCOT INTERNATIONAL FOOD AND WINE FESTIVAL was in full swing! Prepare yourself because the following pictures were only about 2/3 of the actual food we ate over the course of 2 days. I'm not even kidding!!! There were booths set up for over 30 countries and we had a pre-paid gift card that we received as a wedding gift. $200 worth of food & drink!

Cheese fondue with a mini baguette, shrimp on the barbie, & lamb

chicken gyro and fried Greek cheese (with pistachios and honey)

Shepard's pie, desserts samplers, jerked chicken and Korean BBQ short rib

escargot (one of my favorites), creme brulee & beef and mashed potatoes

baguettes and various french pastries...and my super cute hubby pretending to be French

sushi!!!

Moroccan yuminess!

Our last dinner on our honeymoon...Wolfgang Puck! Ryan got the bacon-wrapped meatloaf. I got the chicken and mashed potatoes. Dessert was creme brulee for both of us...then a ghiradeli's sundae later.

I think that I will be periodically posting some of these so everyone can see what a huge role food played in my life. Maybe it can help someone else out there stop planning their trips around food....kinda like I did!

Shopping for the "NEW ME"

   For the last couple of months my clothes have all started to feel much looser! In fact, ALL of my black work-pants are way too big for me. This made me realize that I needed to go through my closet to figure out what items are going to be easy for me to "shrink into"... something I've never had to deal with before. Never in my life have I ever GONE DOWN in sizes. So as I sifted through my closet I realized that there really isn't too much that will work for me... SHOPPING TRIP!!!

   As I roamed the aisles of Ross I realized that at some point after the surgery my mindset about shopping would change. My priority won't be "What will work with my body?" It will be "What do I like?" That made me wonder.... WHAT'S MY STYLE? I raided my favorite blog
http://disneybound.tumblr.com/ and found some fantastic ideas about what I'd like to wear post-surgery:

 

   I think that dresses are going to work for me really bell as I shrink. I figure I can always belt things as they get looser on me. All of these outfits outfits are right up my ally style-wize.

Once Upon a Time . . .

   Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved Disney princesses. She collected all of the Princess Barbies and always said "Someday I want to look like Snow White!" Unfortunately for that little girl she couldn't stay in her room and pretend to be a princess all day; she had to go deal with reality. The reality was that people around her were never happy and she couldn't control it...but she could control food. She could hide blocks of cheese under the couch for later. She could eat until SHE decided it was enough. She could have total control over food even if she couldn't control anyone around her. . . . THE END

   It took me about 10 years to realize that there was a problem. The relationship I had with food was unhealthy, but it still took me another 4 years to WANT to find the root of my problem. I know for a lot of people it may seem like a pretty simple thing to do: acknowledge you have a problem. But for the people actually living through it and experiencing it, you know it's not easy to look internally and point the finger at yourself. You can try all you want to blame someone else but at the end of the day you have to take ownership over the situation.

   My Grandma never recovered from her divorce from my Grandma...my mother was always hunting down my biological father to pay him child support.... my mom and Grandma just couldn't get along when they lived together... my mom was always stressed out trying to juggle a full time job, night school and raising a child. Life wasn't that peaceful for the people around me, but I couldn't do anything to make it better...I was just a kid. That's most likely when I began my unhealthy relationship with food. I would eat more when it was more apparent that I couldn't control things going on around me.

Disney Princesses don't eat their feelings...neither should I!

Success Story

   I believe that I've mentioned before that I am a gown stylist at a bridal shop...Camarillo Bridal. This week I had a very interesting encounter with a stunning woman. My manager was helping her find a gown for the Navy Ball and boy oh boy did they find the right gown. It was hugging her body in all the right places! I thought to myself, "Gosh I would love to be able to wear a dress like that after my surgey." Just as that thought ran through my head my manager said "She just lost a ton of weight too." When I asked her how she did it she told me she's had a weightloss surgery (gastric bypass).

   She was nice enough to show me the "before and after" pictures and it was jaw-dropping. She looked like a completely different person! The best part about meeting her was something she told me:

 "A lot of people say that surgery is THE EASY WAY to lose weight....it's really not." She made the point that you are essentially losing control of your own body and there are prices to pay for not listening to your body. That was something I'd never thought of before. I used to be one of those people who thought surgery was an easy way to lose the weight, but as I've worked with my nutritionist I've come to realize that you are forcing the portion control. You are shocking the heck out of your body and sort of giving up your control over what you put in it. For a lot of us who are overweight, we overeat because food is something we always have control over.... it's all about control!

Goal for the week... practicing SELFcontrol!

ONE MONTH TO GO

So here's the skinny ( or not so skinny in my case) about what's going on this next month:

* I just found out Saturday that my packet was barely submitted to insurance 3 weeks ago (4 weeks in 2 days), which puts us behind 2 weeks. This has been EXTREMELY irritating! I specifically asked to be notified the day it was submitted so that I could begin my 45 day count.I was NEVER notified and my consultant won't give me the date it was submitted.

Now remember... we are on a time crunch with this surgery because my insurance changes on October 1st...that means in 30 days! So if we don't get it approved ASAP this surgery might not happen!!!

I AM GETTING REALLY ANGRY AND I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO START OVER AGAIN.

Eggs 'N' Things

I have been trying to find ways to update this blog while I'm in INSURANCE LIMBO, so I thought that I could show you guys some of the transitional changes that I've made to my diet and share some recipes with you. For example, who doesn't love scrambled eggs? This is how I changed up your standard scrambled eggs to make them more filling and get a serving of veggies in. . .



Step 1: cut up 1 small onion (white or yellow) & 3 roma tomatos

Step 2: Saute the tomatos and onions in a tiny bit on olive oil and sea salt. Then add 4 large eggs.

In the end it was enough for both my husband and I. I usually will serve it with a slice of whole wheat toast and fruit or cottage cheese.

ENJOY!

CRAZY TOWN

The last 2-3 weeks have been insane!

1. We had a couple people leave work so I had to pick up extra hours.
2. I had a lot of gardening to catch up on.
3. I've been on the phone with insurance and my case working quite often.
4. We completely cleaned out the garage.
5. Our washing machine broke twice so we needed to get it fixed twice (which as you know  means you sit around the whole day waiting for the repair man to arrive)

6. Then I had to catch up with all the laundry that piled up while the washing machine was broken...including my grandma's dirty clothes.

7. I also had to begin the process of registering for classes. Fun stuff!
8. I also started my own scrapbooking store on ETSY.COM so I've been doing a lot of prep for that....

   With all of this going on I unfortunately haven't gone on any walks for about 2 weeks. However, within the next couple of days I'll be posting a new workout schedule since my hours at work have changed.

Stay tuned!

Status Update

So right now I am hanging in INSURANCE LIMBO...just waiting for insurance to pull through and approve my surgery. I am not gonna lie, this has been the most stressful 2 weeks of this whole process. Let's take a quick look at my timeline so that you can see my frustration:


May 7th- Meet my Doctor
May 11th- Blood Work
May 14th- Sleep Study & Psycological Evaluation
May 23rd- Nutrition Consult #1
May 25th- Upper GI
June 18th- Nutrition Consult #2
July 16th- Nutrition Consult #3 (the final one)

As you can see everything happened rather quickly with a lot of communication between myself and my case worker. Her name is Luli and she was fantastic at keeping me organized and scheduling everything. She even got insurance to cut me a break on what my financial responsibility is. It's usually $700, but I only had to pay $450.

However....

As soon as I completed my final nutrition consult, the communication abruptly ended. There was a whole week where I was trying to find out if my packet had been submitted to insurance and if there was anything else they needed on my end. I was extremely upset because I wanted everything to go smoothly and I wanted to get the surgery date before summer was over. That was extremely important to me because my mom would be available to help Ryan take care of me before the school year started. After a week I was able to finally speak to someone and found out that they had been waiting on one more report and that it could take up to 45 days for insurance to approve my surgery.

The 2 weeks after that has just been a waiting game and I've come to realize that the surgery probably will not happen until September. That's just something I'm going to have to accept. Luckily there has been much better communication and I'm glad I started being more proactive about getting status updates.

Physical Bucketlist

A couple weeks ago I was reading a Westways magazine and there was an article about all the bike trails available to SoCal residents and I found some great ones not too far from my town. So it got me thinking about all the things I haven't been able to do because I'm overweight and out of shape. There are simple things I used to take for granted, like riding a bike, playing basketball for hours, jogging, etc. I used to be very active and played basketball from 4th grade through high school...and being physical is something I'd like to get back to. I am walking weekly but I don't want to stop there. I got inspired to make a "PHYSICAL BUCKETLIST" if you will...a list of physical goals that I would like to acheive at some point in my life. So here is the start of it, as I'm sure I'll add to it:

PHYSICAL BUCKETLIST:

• Bike ride around Santorini. I would love to take a ride from Oia to Akrotiri and just enjoy the view.
• Walk up the Spanish Steps without needing to stop for a breathe.
• swim with dolphins
• zip line in Hawaii
• go kayaking around the Channel Islands and explore the aurrounding cave
• do a mud run
• participate in "BIKE THE BAY"
• ride a wave on a surfboard
• climb the pyramids at Chichen Itza
• learn how to skateboard
• ride the bike trail between Ventura and Ojai

and.... DISNEYLAND HALF MARATHON 2013!

Since I am a Disney fanatic I think it's only fitting that my first big physical goal be something Disney related. So as soon as this surgery is complete and I get to okay to start jogging, I'm going to start training for the half marathon. Hopefully I can get there in a year, but we'll just have to wait and see!



I'm BACK!!!

Sorry that it's been awhile since I've been on here...I've been getting the runaround from my case worker the last week and a half about my case being submitted to insurance. So as usually happens when insurance is involved I have constantly been playing phone tag between my surgical office and the insurance reps. GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! I guess this is a good cautionary tale for all you out there: STAY ON YOUR CHECKLIST. As you check off each preliminary procedure off your "to-do" list, communicate with your surgical office to make sure the reports are being written up immediately.

I made the mistake of assuming all these things would be no-brainers and that it was understood that they would need to be completed right away...NOT THE CASE! Here I am, the week before we were planning on having my surgery, and I'm waiting for insurance to approve the surgery. All because a report for a procedure, done in May, was not completed until mid-July.

Be aware. Be cautious. Be your own advocate!

This Week in Review

• Exercise: I did the hike that was just over 4 miles, which replaced 2 of my walks, but only did one other walk. So unfortunately I missed my goal by one day.
• NO fast food!
• NO bridal panic chocolate!
• I did have a shirley temple last saturday...sorry, my friends! Don't worry though because my tummy didn't agree with my choice and I paid for it later.
• I'm still in search of a protein drink/powder that I like. If anyone has any suggestions I would totally appreciate it.

Paradise Falls

As promised... I went on a hike with the hubby instead of 2 of my walks. Altogether we ended up walking about 4 miles, half of which was uphill. I swear I wanted to cry when we were about halfway up the the return trek. I really wanted to give up because I was using muscles I hadn't used in years. Instead, my amaze-balls husband kept talking to me and distracting me from the fact that my legs were about to give out. Thanks babe! Anyhoo... here are some pictures to chronicle our mini-adventure that was right in our backyard for years.

This is me toward the beginning of our hike...obviously(I'm still smiling)! We had already gone the first mile, but little did we know we were going to have to trek down the canyon to even get to the waterfall.

Those tiny little ants are actually people.

We got all the way to the bottom and had a nice picnic of Trader Joe's salads, water and a few slices of Manchengo cheese....

with a view like THIS! Meet PARADISE FALLS...which is a waterfall that never dries out in Thousand Oaks, CA. It was definitely worth the trek down the canyon.

I'd have to say that my biggest accomplishment was making the trek back up. It was pretty steep, the sun was hot as heck and I was incredibly tired already....but I made it!

Did I mention that it was our 4 YEAR ANNIVERSARY?! Yup! We spent our day hiking and sweating...so attractive! 4 years ago this day we realized we were meant to be more than just friends:

~ 6 1/2 years as friends...
~ 4 years as a couple...
~9 months into our HAPPILY EVER AFTER

Goals for Week #2

Exercise:

   This week I'm going to go ahead and switch up the exercise a bit. I'm going to skip the walk around the track on Wednesday & Friday...instead we're going to do a 4-mile hike to a waterfall that's just the next down over. I promise that tomorrow I will post pictures from our adventure!

Eating:

~ Continue drinking water as a snacking subsitute
~ No Bridal Panic Chocolate
~ Find a protein powder that I like and that meets the dietary requirements for post-op
   nutrition
~ No soda! I had half a can on the 4th of July and I want to go the entire week without a
   sip.

Week #1 Update

Exercise Goal:

   I'm proud to say that I completed my weekly exercise goal! Yay! I went on my walk 4 times this week and even went on one walk by myself. To me that was the toughest challenge. Usually Ryan is my walking buddy so I have someone to keep me accountable and I have a commitment to walk with him. However, when it's just me...well that's when I really have to push myself. I would have to say that was my biggest accomplishment this week....

                         PUSHING MYSELF TO EXCERISE!!!!!!!!

I will admit that it was pretty embarassing to go to the track and have 50 year olds running right past me. That was probably the low point of my exercise!


Our Commitments:

~ We only went out to eat once last week.
~ I drank at least 1.5 liters of water a day
~I have gone 19 days without BRIDAL PANIC CHOCOLATE
~No Coldstone or ice cream. We bought some sugar-free fudgesicle instead!
~No unhealthy snacking at work

But not everything went well this week...



So funny story... I was so busy running errands one day that Ryan brought back a Wendy's cheeseburger, without a side order or soda. I ate it and immediately felt sick to my stomach. I had been doing such a good job at filling up with healthy foods that my body rejected something so greasy right away. After I took some Pepto I learned my lesson and didn't even bother with anything else that wasn't in my fridge.

OUR Commitments

Ryan, my husband, has gotten pretty involved in my blog and is going to be such a huge part of my weight-loss journey. He's the one who is going to be with me every step of the way, so we sat down and talked about some of the changes we're going to have to make to our life. The first thing we talked about was exercise. I've been walking, by myself, 3 days a week around my neighborhood, but it's definitely time to start pushing myself. We have a track about a 2-minute drive away and it would be much easier to track the distance and my progress there. So this is what we came up with for our PRE-OP EXERCISE COMMITMENT:

         Days: SUNDAY, MONDAY, WEDNESDAY & FRIDAY!
         Distance: 1.5 miles (June 27th- July 11th)
                        2.0 miles (July 11th- surgery day)

After the surgery I'll ease back into my exercise routine EXACTLY how my doctor directs me. We'd both like to work our way up to running, so we'll definitely come up with a plan to get us there after the surgery.

We also came up with a list of other GOALS & COMMITMENTS:

• Drink water instead of snacking of unhealthy foods
• Marathon cooking on Sundays (that way there's no excuse to go to a drive-thru
•  cut out "seconds"- only serve ourselves the proper portion at the beginning meal and put the leftovers away before we get tempted to go back for more
• Good-bye COLD STONE! We love ice cream, but those are just empty calories, so we'll stick to fruit or sugar-free popsicle. I'm even trying out some new recipes for homemade popsicles that I could add my protein powder to.
• Don't eat out more than once a week.
• Portion Control
• sticking to our exercise commitment
• planning out our meals for 2 weeks at a time- this will keep us from being tempted to eat takeout or drive-thru

The Numbers

So although I don't have my surgery officially scheduled yet we are projecting that it will most likely be at the end of July. I have my last nutrition consult on July 9th and after that we'll have a better idea of when to schedule the main event.

To make this blog a good tool I realized that I need to post my "before" pictures and my beginning stats. This will be the easiest way to track my weight loss & be accountable to myself.

Pictures: taken by my husband RYAN
Measurements: taken by my lovely co-worker NICHOLE. Don't worry, we work in bridal so
                        we know how to measure properly!
Weight:taken by me in my bathroom by myself. I think that the morning before surgery I
            am going to do a video weigh in and continue to do video weigh ins once a month
            after the surgery.


MEASUREMENTS:

• Bust: 56
• Waist: 46.5
• Hips: 60

WEIGHT:   297lb. (My weight as of May 25th was 304lb. That was the day on my Upper GI.)

TRIUMPH!!!!

I just wanted to take a minute to share some small triumphs that I've had this week:

1. As of today it has been 9 entire days since I have had any bridal panic chocolate and I
    am averaging 2 bottles of water( just over one pint each) more than I used to. So by
    replacing an unhealthy habit with a healthy one I am drinking 1 liter more water than I
    used to in a day. So a goal I'm making for myself this weekis to make sure I'm meeting
    the suggested daily water intake for my gender and age group. I found a really great
    article about it on the livestrong website:
         http://www.livestrong.com/article/355482-usda-recommended-daily-water-intake/

2. My garden is growing! All those seedlings have sprouted faster than I had anticipated so I am very excited to show everyone that I don't have a black thumb afterall.

Now for something I haven't been successful with this week:

                                       WALKING!



I haven't gone on a single walk this week yet, but if I walk the next 3 days in a row I can still meet my goal. Wish me luck!  Maybe I just need to take my ipod and make a really awesome playlist?

My SPECIAL Plate

   I came to the realization a few days ago that I was developing a negative attitude toward portion control. At first I thought it was the smaller portions leaving me hungry, but I listened to my body and that clearly wasn't the problem. My body was feeling content with the smaller portions! Then I looked over at my husband's plate and realized something: my plate looked small and pathetic compared to his. I had all this empty space on my plate and my subconscious was starting to realize it too. So in an attempt to nip this in the bud I bought myself a "special plate" (that's literally what I call it at home).

To the left you see the plates that I used to eat on & on the right is my "special plate". Big difference, huh? I am also a firm believer that if the plate and food have a better presentation then the experience of eating the food will be enjoyable too, which came in handy as I was introducing more veggies into my daily diet.

To illustrate the difference, I took this morning's breakfast and showed you the before and after on both plates. So the picture above is what 2 hard-boiled eggs and a slice of wheat toast looks like on the plate I used to eat from. Pretty sad!

Okay... so here is what the same meal looks like on my "special plate". See how your brain can be more visually satisfied looking at this plate instead? Now, there's one more thing I want to address: What do you do when your smaller amount of bites are all gone, but your hand goes to grab for more? This kept happening to me and I kept wondering, "Is my hand grabbing for more because I'm hungry or because it's what it is trained to do?" Again I listened to my stomach and realized it wasn't because I was hungry. It literally had just become accustomed to always grabbing for more. So here is how I tackled this issue:

I cut or slice everything up before I sit down to eat it. The repetitive hand motion makes the eating process last longer than it probably would if everything weren't cut up. For example, with this morning's breakfast I sliced up my eggs in an egg slicer (which I use to cut up strawberries, pears,etc.) and turned 4 or 5 bites into 10 bites. I know it seems really silly but it truely is working for me, and I know if I have this concern other people will too. Another good point I want to mention is that this has also helped me prepare for post-surgery life as well. Everyone has told me that after I have the surgery I will HAVE TO CHEW CHEW CHEW! I am trying to start getting into the habit of chewing all of my food really well, so cutting things up has been a good visual reminder to practice my good chewing skills.

So here's my really full plate that made me perfectly content this morning.

HEALTHY EATING!

Beating Laziness

   If I lost a pound every time "not now" became "never" I wouldn't need to be having this surgery. Unfortunately I'm never going to lose weight being a couch potato, so here's the reality that I've had to come to terms with:

                                 I'm a pretty lazy person at home.

I always have a plan to get things done, but instead tell myself "I deserve a break" or "I work later today so I'm going to relax for a bit before I go in". I'm pretty sure this is part of the reason I have put on the weight. I would definitely say that I am in no way, shape or form an ACTIVE person, so I know that needs to change if I'm going to make this lifestyle change work. The key here is to stop putting things off...which means my committment to being active needs to start BEFORE SURGERY. I have started an exercise regimen of walking 3 days a week (minimum), but I'm going to save that for another blog entry. Today I want to focus on activity in general.

I think it's very important to remember that exercising 30 minutes a day doesn't necessarily mean you're an active person. I could easily go home after my walk, sit on the couch, and watch tv for hours but I'd be cheating myself out of my own time. I don't know about you guys, but I get pissed when other people waste my time, so WHY SHOULD I WASTE MY OWN TIME ? I think that you need to be mentally active and physically active throughout your day. One thing I've started doing is reading for pleasure & writing this blog. However, my favorite new activity is.... GARDENING!!!

I've started doing a lot more gardening and yard work because it has kept me off of the couch. When I'm gardeing I'm getting fresh air, relaxing, moving around, thinking, etc...I'm not staring at a tv trying to keep up with the Kardashians. I've gotten so into it that I not have to beginings to a beautiful herb and vegetable garden. Right now they are little pellets of seeds but they should be sprouting up any day now!

I have 2 planters of these on the deck now. So pretty!

So I guess what I'm trying to encourage everyone to do is to find some hobbies that get you outside or get you active, in addition to exercise. The more you do the more accomplished and productive you feel.

                     "An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body."
                                         ~General George S. Patton

Bridal Panic Chocolate!

Everyone has that hidden drawer at their desk or in the glove compartment of their cars. It's that special place that you leave those special treats for when you hit the 3 o'clock WALL! However, for me that hiden place isn't so hidden. In fact it is right in front of me for about 40% of my work day...sometimes even longer:

                                                 BRIDAL PANIC CHOCOLATE

This is the chocolate meant to ease a bride's wallet pain when she makes a payment, celebrates the fact she just said "yes to the dress", or congratulates herself for being able to squeeze into her dress after ordering a size too small.It's also where I go ease my boredom when a bride is running late, reward myself for selling a wedding gown and discuss with co-workers what we'd like to change about our bodies. My head tells me, "One isn't going to hurt", but before I know it I've eaten 2...3...4...10. Maybe not 10, but you get the idea. I eat more than I should be!

Today it occured to me that I need to have access to an alternative on hand. I thought about some different options(mints, pretzels, gum, nuts) but it occured to me that the BEST thing for me to have on hand is ...WATER! So today I tried my theory out and I drank some water every time I wanted to grab for a piece of chocolate. In the end I drank 2 whole bottles of water. That is 2 more bottles of water than I would have drank any other day!!!!!! Not only did I stay away from unnecessary/unwanted calories, but I gave my body something it needs on a daily basis. I MADE THE CHOICE TO BE HEALTHY. For someone like me that is a huge step.

TRIUMPH!

Where do you begin?

   I honestly didn't know where to start when I began thinking about weight-loss surgery, so I have put together 4 very important areas that are going to help you prepare for this life-changing decision and keep you emotionally invested:

• Pick your doctor carefully! I personally had consults with three doctors. They were all more than qualified, but I selected the doctor who really listened to my concerns and helped me make the best surgical decision based on those concerns. It is also important to feel comfortable asking questions of your doctor. If he or she makes you feel dumb or stupid for asking questions, that person does NOT need to be operating on you.
• Do your research! I know those packets of information your doctor handed you seem a little bit over the top but, trust me, they are going to be a very useful tool. Reading them will go into more detail about what to expect and raise some very valid questions to ask your doctor during your next visit. They'll also help you educate those around you who haven't heard of THE SLEEVE. That's one of the reasons I'm starting this blog. I haven't found any blogs about people chronicling their weight loss experience with the sleeve and I think it allows you to do your own research and see it from the perspective of someone experiencing it.
• Ask questions! No question is too stupid or dumb to be asked. It's just like they tell you in high school and college, "If you have a question, ASK IT! Chances are someone else has that same question." They just don't have the balls to ask it....so grow a pair and ask it yourself.
• Get a support system in place! Most of the doctors just told me "Make sure you have someone available to help you for a few days." To me that is very different than telling someone they need a support system. For me it was important to have a group of people to depend on for much longer than the post-op recovery process. I need people who are going to make sure I'm making healthy choices and who are going to join me on my journey to a healthier me.

                                         MEET MY SUPPORT SYSTEM

My mom and dad

My husband, Ryan

Journey to Weight Gain...in pictures

Baby Ashley at 1 year-old

Kindergarten...still haven't lost that baby fat

High School

Our Honeymoon



As you can see I've always been overweight and I thought that you all might enjoy seeing some pictures. For me blogs are always more fun to read with pictures to go along with them.

Every happy ending needs a beginning...

   As the title says "Every happy ending needs a beginning", and mine begins with a little girl who spent her life eating her feelings. I'd love to sit here and say that I just have issues with portion control but I would be lying to you. Ever since I was a toddler I have been an emotional eater. My Grandma and mom were always telling me stories about how I would hide entire blocks of cheese around the house and save them for later. Although they seem like funny stories from my childhood they are the root of my weight gain. I have NEVER experienced what it is like to be of an average weight and size. For as long as I can remember I've always been a chunky monkey, and recently I've come to realize that I cannot be so accepting of this.


   This past October I married an amazing man, my husband Ryan, who loves me just the way I am. As we began pondering the future we both realized that we need to get healthy, me especially because I'll be the one growing little humans inside me when we decide to start a family. I've tried several diets over the years, haven't had any success and did a lot of research about surgical options. In the end I have decided to go with the SLEEVE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl1w8bxItT0)and I wanted to do this blog for other people considering the surgery. I haven't been fortunate enough to find any yet, so I thought I'd be the first.

I'll cover preparing for the surgery, recovering, tracking my weight-loss journey, emotional developments, everyday life, recipes....everything good and bad on my way to being a healthier me.