Another day, another dolla

Day 12 of the old purification!  I’ve taken it upon myself to annoy the shit out of my roommates by frequently dropping the term “purification” and reminding them of what day I’m on.  There is nothing anyone cares less about than what you’re eating, why you’re eating it, or what kind of absurd hippy-ass name you give that style of eating, especially when it’s largely unremarkable.  I’ve quasi-failed on a few things, like only getting 4 servings of fruits and veggies and 1 serving of dairy yesterday but I’m not a miracle worker.  My sister kept yelling at me to shove 2 clementines down my gullet to finish off the F&Vs but I was just too fruited out.  Otherwise I’ve been fairly respectable with this whole shebang.

Looking at some of the side-angle pics I have taken of myself has led me to believe I have scoliosis or some such.  I’m not even really sure what scoliosis looks like but I feel like my spine curves in a bunch, or maybe I just have really shitty posture.  I wonder if I can ask the surgeon to shave my spine down while he’s in there screwing with my stomach.  Oh it doesn’t work that way?  Whatever. 

I was recently thinking about my reasons for wanting surgery and how I’ve always been an inexplicably confident person for the most part and have never had any issues stripping my clothes off and being all “DAMN RIGHT YOU WANT THIS” when I’m naked.  Even at 300 pounds it was like, you know what you’re getting, enjoy the show.  But in the past year and a half, I started feeling somewhat more self-conscious of my body, particularly my stomach, when undressing.  Not in that weird way where people lose weight and feel like they still see a fat person.  I don’t have that issue, I’m all “get it gurl, looking good” and have a pretty accurate view of my body.  But I came to realize that my naked body didn’t really match the clothed version; I felt like it was a little more untaut than one might expect.  So, between that and the fiery anger I have at my arms when I’m doing kickboxing in a tank top, I decided surgery was the way to go. 

Ugh I always feel like I should add some pictures when I post, because who doesn't like pictures?  I love skipping over all of the words and just looking at pictures.  But I never really have anything relevant to include.  So here’s a random picture of the Doritos buffet my sister got me for Christmas.  Party size is the only way I roll.

 And finally, the only thing more obnoxious than saying “purification” is the day-by-day countdown I’m now doing til surgery.  FIFTY-SEVEN DAYS.  Thank god it’s not a leap year.

Updates, blah blah blah

I’m here!  Not even a week in between posts, someone give me a fuckin medal please!  More importantly, today is day 6 of **Allison’s 14-Day Purification in Which She Basically Just Follows WW without Cheating and Wants Recognition for It**.  Adding those asterisks before and after makes it a real copyrighted thing, didn’t you know?  To recap, I’ve tracked all my shit, been real stingy with my weekly points (just for 2 weeks, then I’ll go back to full throttle points consumption), not weighed myself, not boozed, and generally made good decisions.  Tomorrow will be my 4^th workout this week as pledged.  Some might say I’m a true American hero. 

It’s stricter than I’d normally advise being (at least for myself.. I can’t give up a lot of stuff all the time or I get sad) but it’s been a good change for a few days.  I’m eating all of my daily points, obviously, and eating tasty but healthy balanced meals (Turkey Chili Taco Soup, Mediterranean Quinoa Salad, Sweet Potato Breakfast Casserole, and Chicken Cacciatore) and just feel much better than I did a week ago.  Well I mean I felt really good when I was amped up on tons of champagne a week ago, not so good by Friday morning.  You know how it goes.  After that I’d like to still follow some of those principles but in a more moderate (lazy?) manner.

Surgery is officially moved up to March 11!  I thought about doing it even earlier but my skanky WW friend Kayla is coming to visit at the end of Feb so this way I can get the best of both worlds.  See, the WW message boards aren’t just good for recipes and weight loss tips, you also meet friends that you’re stuck with for life.  I would like to have this surgery tomorrow if that was an option so moving it up a few weeks is really exciting.  I’m getting blood work done on 1/27 and my pre-op appointment with the surgeon will be shortly after, so this thing is in motion now!  I can’t wait to watch 336 straight hours of Netflix during my recovery.

I took some slutty “before” pics in my underoos but will probably wait til after surgery or at least right before it to post them since I’d prefer to use them for comparison purposes.  So instead you can have my PG front and side pics looking awkwardly into the mirror.  You're welcome.

Not particularly helpful or glamorous but kind of shows the stomach and arms that I'm planning to have savagely severed from my body.  Hoping the next 9 weeks fly by!

New Year, New Me! Just kidding, I fucking hate that shit.

I’m not much of a New Year’s resolutions person.  It seems like the more build-up you give something you want to do or change, the more it becomes an event rather than something permanent.  I also find that people that get really into New Year’s resolutions are the type that I usually want to stab in the face.  All the same, January 2 happens to be the first day of normalcy after a month-plus of cookies and candy, peppermint everything, Christmas parties, New Year’s parties, etc. so I usually find myself trying to be a little more on my shit for a few weeks than I was in the weeks prior.

My roommate is doing a 3-day juice cleanse which I briefly considered joining her in, because every time I’m coming out of a vacation, holiday, or other occasion where I’ve been subsisting on Doritos and beer for 48+ hours I feel like I should jump to the other extreme and starve myself into submission.  But then I remember all of the other times I’ve done stupid crap like that in my life and how totally unhelpful it is, and how much I don’t want to drop a hundo to be a miserable bitch for a few days, and I’m like fine, I’ll do it the old fashioned way and just go back to my usual WW way of life.  I mean, it’s only been 2.5 days since I tracked and went to the gym, I think I can remember how that stuff works.

Anyway, in the spirit of still trying to make a more focused effort on eating healthily and tracking and all that good stuff, I decided to do a 14-day... we’ll call it a purification.  It doesn’t involve juice or shakes or undereating or overexercising or really anything else stupid, I just wanted to give it a fun name.  And it does involve massively decreasing my alcohol and junk food intake for 2 weeks so that ought to purify me at least somewhat.  Basically I just wrote down a few principles I’d like to focus on for the next 2 weeks.  They’re all things I should be doing anyway but a little stricter than I normally roll.  So, here goes, listed in the order of difficulty I perceive them being:

1. Track everything, every day- this one should be easy, I do this 90% of the time anyway but that means none of those lazyass days where I forget/skip.

2. Work out 4 times each week- again, this one should be easy since I go 3-4 times every week anyway, but for at least the 2 next weeks I’m making an effort to not skip that 4^th one because I want to go home and binge-watch Game of Thrones.  Even though I do want to do that.

3. No scale for 2 weeks- this one isn’t really that important but I figure if I’m making other positive changes it wouldn’t kill me to take a brief scale hiatus also.  And I know when I’m on more on my WW game, I’m tempted to check the scale more frequently.

4. At least 5 servings of fruits and veggies and 2 servings of dairy every day- this goes hand in hand with meal planning.  I’m a pretty good meal planner but I’m making a better effort to have several veggies with each meal and I want to get back to eating/drinking more dairy. 

5.  Very limited drinking- I’m not really quantifying this because number 6 kind of does that for me.  I could just say no alcohol but I don’t like total bans.  So, we’ll go with limited.

6.  And the hardest… do not use more than 28 weekly points per week, and no more than 8 in a given day.  This really isn’t that major and once upon a time when I was losing regularly I tried to always keep my WP usage around 25-35.  Now it’s like, whaaaat you want me to not eat every point I have and then dozens beyond that?  The fact of the matter is, this is something I am capable of doing and did for most of my weight loss.  Just because I haven’t been gaining weight (well this week might be a different story..) doesn’t mean I should continue going over my points every week forever.  And it’s only 2 weeks.  If I can’t have that level of discipline for 2 measly weeks, I’ve really spiraled in recent years, regardless of what the scale says.

So that’s that.  It's my brain's logical and healthy answer when my heart says “juice cleanse, bitch!”  I just want to try to recapture the mindset of the earlier years on WW when I still like cared and stuff.  And looking over this list, we’re not talking massive life overhauls, just tweaking a few areas in which I’ve strayed.  I’ll try to update in 2 weeks to see if I’ve even stuck with this at all or if I forgot/gave up the following day.

LASTLY.. surgery is still scheduled for April 1 and it’ll probably stay that way but there’s a possibility I’m going to move it up to early March.  I might have to cancel my trip to Phoenix at the end of the month and I had been trying to wait a little bit to chew up all of my PTO.  But if I save those 3 work days I kind of just want to do the damn thing already.  So, that’s TBD right now but will update soon-ish.

One Hundred and Five Days From Now....

I’ve been a little slow on the updates because that’s the only speed at which I roll, but I was finally motivated to come post because… I SCHEDULED MY MOFO SURGERY!  Basically I will only care enough to update this blog when I have some kind of surgery-related update or something else that is entirely superficial and me-centric.

To backtrack a little, I had a second consultation with a different surgeon about a month ago but I didn’t like him.  I wanted to, because his office is really close to my work and to my parents’ house where I’ll be vacationing for the week or so following surgery, and I’d heard good things about him, but I found him kind of stand-offish and he spent a lot less time with me during the appointment than the first doctor.  Then I got too lazy to do any more consultations and I had such a good experience with the first one that I was like boom, it’s happening.  Talked to my boss about it, ran the scheduling by my parents, paid the deposit, and it’s on the books.  April 1, 2015.  I got all of the pre-op paperwork today, most of which I don’t have to do anything with until about a month out, but it was SO DAMN EXCITING!

As I think I mentioned, I’m doing arms and stomach.  Those 2 procedures can be done together and they’re really the most I can get done and still afford to eat.  And you know this bitch likes to eat.  Every time I do kickboxing in a tank top I’m like, I’m SO over these arms.  I want new ones!  Or just surgically sliced up ones!  In theory if I can lose 5 pounds or so before the surgery that’d be cool but I don’t know that it will matter much either way.  That was one of the things that annoyed me with the second doctor- he said my arms are basically just muscle and skin so there’s no more weight to lose there but that my stomach still has some fat (which, duh, I’m certainly no waif) and that he recommended losing 5-6 pounds before the surgery.  I mean, OBVS I’m trying to do that anyway, but the first doctor said it really wouldn’t make any difference, especially at my height.  So really, I liked the first doctor because he said the stuff I wanted to hear.  Clearly that’s good medicine right there. 

ANYWAY, I’ll definitely be taking some before pictures between now and April of the stomach and arms but TBD when I actually post them.  I want some comparison pics first!  I will try to update with any random thoughts I have about the upcoming surgery but really if I post ever again it’ll probably be about much stupider stuff like what I’m having for lunch or why I still hate running.

BYE FOR NOW.

Surgery? Maybe

So even though this blog is kind of on the DL (out of laziness/apathy about sharing it, not because I care about privacy or who reads it), I’m going to post a few updates about my thrilling adventure into plastic surgery.  I found some blogs about tummy tucks and similar procedures that were really helpful so figured I’d blog about it so that if I end up doing it, it’ll exist somewhere on the internet for posterity.

I had a consultation this morning and it felt pretty awesome to get things moving.  My BFF is a doctor in Delaware so she gave me the name of a plastic surgeon in Wilmington and I figured I’d start with him.  I liked him a lot and felt good about the visit so I figure I may only do one more consultation before pulling the trigger on this bitch.  Here’s a brief tour through my mindset, what I was concerned about, not concerned about, and what I wanted to get out of the consult. 

I did a decent amount of research on both procedures and accepted the fact that I’d probably be taking 2 weeks off work.  Fine, whatever, I’ll cut my vacations down a bit for 2015.  Besides, if I’m going to throw a buncha cash-money at plastic surg it probably wouldn’t kill me to cut out a Vegas trip.  Also, I already talked to my parents who are the shit and who agreed to babysit me for the week or two following surgery.  Schedule-wise for both me and them, March/April/May is probably the best time they can be at my beckon call.  Plus they have a sweet comfy mega-sectional with recliners at their house so I can just stay there and lay around watching TV without moving at all for 39483 straight hours.  So, recovery is whatever.  I know the pain and discomfort will be shitty and I won’t really be able to appreciate the extent of it til it’s happening so it is what it is.  So, I really had very few questions about the logistics of it going in, just wanted to clarify things and most of all.. COST.  If it wasn’t going to be in the amount I mentally budgeted for this, might as well quit now.  I’m not tryna finance this thing, I got student loans to be paid and I don’t need another monthly expense.

Basically, the doctor talked to me for a bit while fully clothed (me, not him.. I mean he was too) and asked about my weight loss, assured me that it didn’t matter that I wanted to lose another 15 pounds, etc.  Then he had me get mostly naked (bra and thong stayed on) and he checked shit out, felt around on my stomach and arms, and then I got dressed again.  That part lasted seriously like a minute, super quick, not that I really cared either way.  He’ll see me way more naked during surgery.  Then I got dressed and we talked about logistics, cost, scheduling, recovery, other stuff, etc.  One thing that I really appreciated was that he didn’t try to talk me into getting other stuff.  I was fully expecting him to try to sell me on a boob job, thigh lift, or some other stuff, but from the outset when I said tummy tuck and arm lift he didn’t push it.  Everything else he told me was basically just confirming what I already knew about the procedures.  I asked him about scarring from the arm lift because I know that’s a concern and he said the scar is there, it goes to your elbow, it may never fade, etc.  Personally, a scar doesn’t bother me and I’d take that over the extra arm skin, though I did google some post-brachioplasty pics when I got back to work just to see more examples.  Finally, price.  In my head I figured it would be about/at least $12k based on some people I talked to and things I read.  I know it varies by location, doctor, individual, other stuff, but still wanted to go in with some idea.  He quoted me $11,950 for both procedures so I was very happy to hear that.  In a perfect world I was hoping it could magically be closer to $10k but was really just hoping it wouldn’t be higher, or substantially higher, than 12. 

So, once I got past that final hurdle of finding that the cost wasn’t going to be prohibitive, I felt like a million bucks (except that this will actually leave me much poorer and further from a million bucks).  All the same, I knew I wanted this, and still do, and now it can hopefully happen!  As long as I don’t go through any kind of massive problem or emergency or something that drains my funds in the next few months, I think I will definitely go ahead with it.  But, because it’s a ways out, it probably won’t feel so certain until it gets a bit closer.  I’m going to do another consultation with another doc in the Jerz and then figure out my gameplan.

Assuming I do this thing, I'll probably post before (like, post-weight loss, pre-surg) pics at some point but not until I see the after to make sure it looks more awesome.  Otherwise it's like, whomp whomp, this is what I currently look like and I want to pay money to get it changed.  So, hopefully updates to follow!

2 Posts Since 2012, SUCK IT

I initially resisted writing a follow-up post to last week's riveting return because I was thinking, "Allison, why don't you wait for something cool to happen to post about?"  But then I was like, THIS is why I go nearly 2 years without blogging.  Sometimes cool shit is hard to come by, and really, a lack of interesting or even marginally important thoughts has never stopped people from blogging in the past.  Trust me, I've seen them... there are entire blogs about Disney World.

Anyway, I don't even know who if anyone can see this blog since I'm pretty sure I don't have this link literally anywhere but I'll keep talking to an amorphous third party that may only be my future self looking back on this brilliance and wondering why I had so much time on my hands to talk about the trivial minutiae of my life.  On that note, here's a list of fascinating things that transpired in my life this week:

1. I did some more research about skin tightening surgery (i.e. reading random blogs from non-medical professionals and googling big words) and I'm leaning very strongly towards getting it done.  Without having actually scheduled a single consultation yet or really done anything to move things forward or find out costs, my current mental plan is to get abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) and brachioplasty (arm lift).  I wouldn't mind having my inner thighs machete'd off too but I'm not made of money, ya heard?

2. My roommates and I started a new puzzle.  It's a giant person-sized cat cradling a little girl and we ordered it semi-ironically but having that in our apartment will very literally prevent anyone from getting laid ever again.

3. I cooked some rather delicious grub including, but not limited to, Creamy Pasta with Sausage and Mustard Seeds, slow cooker pulled pork with Crispy Corn Fritters, Three Cheese Tortellini and Mushroom Soup and Kung Pao Chicken Zoodles.  Technically my sister made the Kung Pao Zoodles but whatever.

4. I continued my push-up challenge which entails doing a mere 8 (now 9) push-ups every day for the rest of my life.  I don't really know how long I'll actually do this for but it involves longevity so I'm going to keep going for the foreseeable future or until I forget.  18 days in the bag!  No knees!  Sometimes I even do multiple sets!  NOT-SO-HUMBLE-BRAG.

5. I decided not to wear a champagne dress to either of the 2 weddings I'm going to this weekend even though I was gearing up for a good old etiquette fight with someone's grandma.  I'm now more concerned with what kind of hors d'oeuvres I can shove in my mouth.

And there you have it!  A glimpse into the compelling mind of Yours Truly.  I don't know how I can go up from here, but hopefully I post again before 2015.  XOXOX.

Ahh yes, this blog still exists!

Wow, it has been almost 2 years since I've posted anything here.  I knew it had been a hot minute but damn, bitches.  It's strange to think about how many things happen in your life in 2 years (well, technically it's about 1 year 10 months but I'm a rounder).  Actually, that sounds really dramatic like I'm about to tell you I got married, converted to Scientology, had 14 kids and became a life coach.  From a weight loss perspective, the timing of my last post is interesting because it's basically when I started to (inadvertently) maintain my weight for the last 22 months.  Maybe I stopped posting because I ran out of fun weight loss updates and perpetual before/after pics?  That "plateau" - and I use that term loosely, because it hasn't been my body's refusal to take off more weight, but rather my own refusal to live a lifestyle that involves less beer and brunching - started off as a frustrating semi-failure but I've come to appreciate my ability to maintain my 115 lb weight loss for nearly 2 years, even if that wasn't the ultimate goal.

I'm still trying to lose another 15-20 which is sort of this amorphous range I use but I can't exactly visualize.  The number is flexible.  But I've gotten to a point where I like myself even more than my massive ego liked myself before and have realized that 15-20 more pounds on a 5'11.5 giant person like myself isn't going to drastically change things anyway.  So, if it happens it happens.  If I keep living life like a lush, so be it.  There is something to be said about being able to live an occasionally gluttonous life and maintain a certain weight.  It may not be my ideal weight, but perhaps my happy one?

ANYWAY.  I thought about this blog because I was slutting around the internet looking at weight loss blogs relating to skin tightening surgeries and it reminded me about how "Woahhh remember that time I did a blog?"  And wanted to see how this old bag of bones was doing.  Pretty neglected, as it turns out.  This is why I will never have kids.  But yes, figured a check-in was appropriate and also a perfect venue to spew about my recent epiphany that it's been 12ish years since my nose job and I'm hangry for some plastic surgery.  I really only came up with this moment of brilliance in the last week or so after occasionally tossing the idea around casually in those moments when I was lacking other absurdly frivolous things to dream about.  Then during kickboxing on Monday I was reminded that I hate wearing tanktops to kickboxing because my upper arm region is all doing its own thing during punches due to the loose skin/tissue/fat/stuff/whatever it is.  So yesterday I was like, I should totes dump a stupid amount of money into getting some kind of surgical procedure to make myself marginally hotter.

That's still at the tentative earliest stages and if I go that route it wouldn't be til April or May when I can throw a lot of vacation days at this science project.  I'll keep you updated.. j/k, I probably won't because I probably won't remember to post again for another 3938 years, but let's play pretend.  Other than that, mostly more of the same.  I started going to WW meetings again in May and have been really enjoying them though I'm not sure they've really impacted my weight loss that much.  Still tracking, still doing some combo of running, kickboxing, boot-camping, etc.  Started doing outdoor yoga a few days a week for my mental health.  I'm still inflexible as hell.  All is good.

I haven't posted progress/before-after-during-whatever pics in forever because I really haven't made any progress in the traditional sense of the word, or any sense of the word.  But whatever, I like pictures and I love myself so why not?  The right picture is a recent mirror selfie I have on my phone because my friend was like "OMG what are you wearing tonight, I don't know what to wear?!"  So I was like "I KNOW RIGHT?  Here's what I'm wearing."  I swear I ditched the cardi before I went out.  Maybe.  Anyway, I found a pic of me in the same dress shortly after I got it, about 60 pounds heavier so that makes for a fun comparison.  

And just for good measure, here's what I looked like 115 pounds heavier.

I know this slice of ass has a good time at any size, but all the same I look better with less meat on the old bones.  Looking at these pics and my arms and stomach size being what they were, it's probably not shocking that my skin is begging me for some plastic surg, so we'll see.

BYE FOR NOW!