On November 3rd it was officially the three-month mark of my bariatric surgery. I – as a person who likes to follow up on certain things with a close-to-scientific approach – have been tracking my progress and recording it to be aware of the speed at which my process has been moving along, so when the time came to go to the follow up appointments with my nutrition expert and my bariatric doctor, I already knew my numbers were quite acceptable, but they offered a lot more information, and information always makes me happy and puts my mind at ease.
So, on November 3rd my weight was 85.4 kilograms. That means I had lost 15.2 kilograms since my surgery on August 3rd. Three months after the surgery, having lost 30% of the extra weight of the patient would be considered a success, and since I lost 33.3%, I was right in that area. The doctor even told me my weight loss expectancies could be adapted… if before he had wanted me to get to the 70-kilogram mark in August 2023, now he wants me to hit the 66.4-kilogram mark in the same period, so that sounds pretty good if you ask me.
My cardiovascular risk index was lowered from .88 to .78 – not low enough yet, but hey! I’m on my way!
My waist circumference went from 114 cm to 92 cm, and that also brought me pretty close to the 90 cm mark that many of us know is another one of those magical numbers in terms of healthcare, because having a waist smaller than 90 cm means lower risks of diabetes, among other things, due to the direct correlation existing between visceral fat and several diseases.
Out of the 15 kilos I had lost by then, 13 kilograms were pure fat – I have been able to keep my muscle mass and I haven’t even experienced any hair loss either, which is also a common problem in people who have undergone bariatric surgery.
10 days after that appointment, I find myself at 83.8 kilograms – I hadn’t been this thin… or perhaps more appropriately, this ‘not so fat’ in over 15 years! This means I have lost 17 kilograms since the surgery, and if you add the 8 kilograms I had lost in April, this year alone I have lost 25 kilograms. 25! 5 more kilograms and I could say I lost the equivalent of what my daughter weighs. That’s a huge accomplishment and I am proud of every single gram.
I was wearing size 20 pants last February, and these past few mornings I have been convincing myself the size 14 pants I have in my closet are already feeling a bit baggy and the time for me to go purchase my first pair of size 12 jeans has arrived. So far, I have been wearing the collection of pants I had purchased over the last three years, when I was losing weight and then when I started gaining it back due to the high cortisol problem. It’s been quite the rollercoaster. My closet still looks like a Ralph Lauren rack at the curvy section of a store – you can see light blue jeans, dark blue jeans and black jeans, along with a couple of formal pants ranging from the size 14 all the way to the size 20. Why Ralph Lauren, might you ask… well, I had this conversation a few years back with one of my cousins, when I saw she was also wearing a pair of jeans of the same brand and I remember telling her we had the same taste in clothes, and she said something like “well, either that or we cannot fit in the pants of any other brand.” And partly she’s right. I love Ralph Lauren because their curvy line is truly respectful of female forms and no matter how big I was I could always find something to make me feel cute and well dressed, unlike other brands that seem to think heavier women do not deserve to have pretty clothes, or that we should accept anything they give us, simply because we are fat and pretty clothes are not for fat people, and that always makes me feel shitty. Ralph Lauren never made me feel like that, and now that I am able to fit in large, and not extra-large clothes, I tend to gravitate to Ralph Lauren’s clothes anyway, simply because I feel happy and beautiful in their line. It’s a happy association, for sure. I hope to be able to get rid of my 13 or so pairs of extra-large jeans pretty soon and replace them with smaller sizes of the same brand, why not. I haven’t experienced that need when it comes to their tops yet, but the same logic applies, if I’m honest.
The doctor requested some lab work to make sure everything is going fine, and apparently it is, and now I feel like a real girl once again, since I can practically eat a little bit of everything – literally A LITTLE BIT – but hey, that’s the whole point of discarding 66% of your stomach. I’m happy to see the information I had previously acquired in terms of nutrition is being super handy at this point. I can make more informed and intelligent decisions and know that even if I could eat a piece of cake, for example, it would not be the wisest choice given the size of my stomach and my capacity to process my nutritional input, but also to know if I want to take a bite out of a piece of bread perhaps I could do it and it would not have a disastrous effect in the overall result, and that could help me lower my anxiety levels and not take me to derail the whole process… being able to take one single bite and stop is real power, if you ask me. Being able to decide when not to take that single bite is also power. Acknowledging this is quite frankly one of the most important years of my life in terms of the consequences my every day actions will have down the road is quite humbling and exciting.
One of my dearest friends, the very talented and beautiful Dr. Marisol Iñiguez asked me a couple of days ago if the whole process has been painful. I mean, the first couple of days it was painful and scary for me, first of all because during the surgery process I developed a high blood pressure condition and my doctor was closely controlling me and constantly medicating me because I was about to have a hypertensive crisis right after the surgery, then because I had to spend about 36 hours without having anything to eat or drink, and I mean NOTHING. About 12 hours after my surgery they allowed me to chew on a few chips of ice… perhaps the equivalent of eating a couple of tiny ice cubes, and there’s when I starting feeling for the first time the confusion of being full and hungry at the same time. For the first 24 hours after the surgery, I was super scared and avoided throwing up at all costs, although the doctor told me it was relatively normal to do it, but I was afraid the effort of throwing up could cause any of the staples holding my new stomach together to pop and kill me. You know, things one fears after spending hours online researching on how terrible things could be when you get surgery. Please, don’t do that to yourselves if you have enough will power. Just, don’t.
Afterwards, since I followed every single direction provided by both my doctor and my nutritionist, I had no problem or pain whatsoever. They provided painkillers and clear instructions not to eat or drink anything that could make my stomach work unnecessarily, and thanks to that I managed to heal quite quickly. The new sensations, the new feeling of underlying hunger at all times, they quickly went away. I am now better at telling when I feel full and at stopping because I know if I keep eating I will feel uncomfortable. I am better at pacing myself and at chewing more carefully. I am way better at choosing what and when to eat and how to choose which food options are wiser for my body, more nutritionally efficient and even more pleasant for me.
Seriously, I feel happy and still super excited about this surgery and about the expectancy of what the changes will continue to be during the next 9 months. If you ever consider undergoing a similar surgery and you need some encouraging words, please, get in touch with me and I’ll tell you more about my personal experience – I hope to be able to give you a full report in a few months, of course, and then to start describing the next stage of my process when I go and visit the plastic surgeon for my skin removal procedures.
Not curvy section of the Ralph Lauren store, here I am come!
