WHEE (Weight, Health, Eating and Exercise) is a community support diary for Kossacks who are currently or planning to start losing, gaining or maintaining their weight through diet and exercise or fitness. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are working on your weight or fitness, please -- join us! You can also click the WHEE tag to view all diary posts.
Turtles: follow me over the fold for a good-news after-report and some photos.
I started this diary at the beginning of a renewed, after long decades of suffering and indignity, to find an answer to my 34-year mystery of undernutrition and extreme overweight, in July of 2009. This time, I wanted to do it without resorting to an extreme starvation diet - because as we now know, most human beings cannot survive for any length of time on 800-900 calories a day, and that was how I lost the 78 pounds I seemed to need to lose back at the tender age of 25. at the age of 49 I am somewhat more determined and skeptical, and not as easily cowed, particularly since, despite profound wage discrimination and misogyny, I am still earning in the 99th percentile of all women professionals in America, and in the 95th percentile of all wage-earning families. And in America, unfortunately for most of us, money does talk. And if I don't like the answers I get from one health practitioner at one clinic in one specialty, I can walk down the street to another one and put money on the counter and demand better care.
And I am. My appointment with the Mayo Clinic is January 12. The bill for the September 17 initial blood draws, after insurance payments, is $81.89, as opposed to $191 that I had to pay last spring for the same basal metabolic and electrolyte panels. Amounts I can afford.
What I can't afford any longer, is to be told bullshit by incompetent professionals, and being told I need a gastric bypass operation for severe edema would be bullshit.
If they don't believe me, they can believe the photographic evidence, or the scale.
October 17 size 22 top, size 24 skirt
Nov 8 size 20 vest, size 22 pants
The scale reads 44 pounds lost.
But that is 5.3 gallons.
The measurements are more compelling still:
numbers: Aug 6:
Bust: 52
Waist: 49
Hips : 62
Upper arm: 15
Thigh: 36
Neck: 17 1/2
neck: 15.5 -2
chest: 44.5 -7.5
waist: 43.5 -5.5
hip: 53.5 -8.5
thigh: 33.5 -2.5
knee 17.5 -2.5
calf 17.5 -4.5
bicep 14.5 -.5
forearm 10.5 -1.5
wrist 6.5 -1.5
ring finger size 7.5 - from size 9, down 1 1/2 sizes
I did need surgery. I had to get my sodium cut down from 3,000 to < 800.
do you need SODIUM SURGERY? NA!
(It's a pun. get it? Sodium? Na? Natrium? yeah I didn't laugh either. Because it isn't funny. It's deathly, deathly serious.