Probably since they have existed I have publicly shared my hatred for the Beats By Dre headphones.  They are so big and bulky and look ridiculous.  Lately I've seen people wear them in the gym and it drives me insane.  You look stupid. So stupid.  Why would you wear those to the gym?  I've clowned on my trainer for wearing them, I've made fun of people on Facebook and Instagram for wearing them, I'm a total jerk about these headphones.  These headphones rank up almost as high, if not equal to Crocs.

About three weeks ago I went into Best Buy with my husband and while he was off doing who knows what I saw the headphones. Deciding to prove they were as stupid as I thought, I slipped them on.  It sounded so good.  I was immediately annoyed. They weren't allowed to sound good.  I threw them back where they came from and left. 

I continued to make fun of every single person who wore those stupid bulky ridiculous headphones.

Then today while waiting for Apple to put a new battery in my iPhone I saw a pair of Beats in Teal.  I mused that they were cute, if you liked that stupid, bulky, show offy type of look.  Then I moseyed down to the area you could test the headphones.  I slipped them on and was shocked to find one of my favorite bands, "The Wild Feathers" on the stores iPod.  I turned it up and my god it was like angels started singing in my ears.  It was the clearest most beautiful goddamn sound I had ever heard.  In fact it sounded so good I forgot to hate them and turned up the music louder and leaned over the table and just rocked out.  After a few moments I took them off to put my hair in a pony tail and see how they would fit if my hair was up like at the gym.  The second I removed them noise was everywhere.  People chattering, and music, and phones beeping, just NOISE.  I was shocked.  The headphones did such a good job of cancelling out noise that I actually forgot where I was.  For about a minute and a half I was alone with my song and not even aware of my surroundings. 

I slipped them back on and the blissful joy returned to my ears.  This shit is incredible. These headphones are amazing.  AMAZING.  I cannot even believe it.  They are the greatest thing to ever happen to my ears.  For someone who can hear every single little noise, someone who gets frustrated at the gym when I'm on the treadmill and I can hear the person next to me running through my headphones, or when I'm working out and the person next to me drops their weights. I hate it. I don't want to hear your feet slapping on the treadmill, I don't want to hear your conversation about work, or your date or whatever you are talking to the person next to you about, I don't want to hear grunts and groans and I do not want to hear weights clanging around. I just want silence.

I took a picture of the beautiful teal colored Solo Beats By Dre and I left the store.  I want them.  I want them so bad I am willing to publicly admit I was an asshole who was so wrong in my wrongness.  I don't care if I look totally lame (I do) wearing them at the gym, and I don't even care if I look like all of the people I have talked shit about the last year the magical angels singing into my ears make it sooooo worth admitting I was a jerk of living in bratty wrongville.

I'm going to save up my money for them.  Once you hear how good music can sound you cannot go back.  I'm going to be cranky and annoyed at the gym every single day until I save up for these stupid headphones.  I need these headphones.  I MUST HAVE THEM. 

I'm sorry world.  I was wrong.  You still look ridiculous in your headphones, and when I get mine you can tell me how stupid I look in mine, but that's okay because I won't be able to hear you with my magic fairy kiss headphones on.

When I woke up the morning after surgery and saw that I was seven pounds heavier I almost fell apart.  I actually started crying.  You see, the day before surgery I weighed 164 pounds.  My current goal is 160 pounds.  I'm taking it in five pound goals lately.  The day I checked into the hospital I weighed 162 but that was because I had to fast and drink a gallon of laxative before the surgery.  The following morning after spending just about five hours in the hospital I woke up weighing 169.  The logical part of me should have only considered this a five pound gain since rationally I had only weighed 162 from the fasting and the laxative but the irrational part of me considered this a seven pound gain. I had been stuck in the 170's for months.  Close to three months.  It was bad.  It wasn't that I hit a plateau, because I was still losing body fat and inches, it was just that the muscle and the fat were counter balancing each other.  Getting out of the 170's had been my goal for three months.  THREE.  All I wanted was to step on the scale and see a ONE and a SIX as the first numbers for once.  When I finally hit 169 I was so thrilled.  It was like the kick start I needed and before I knew it I was 164. I worked hard for that.  Six day a week trips to the gym, meal tracking, saying no to sweets.  It took a lot. 

I went to the store at 168 and saw they had the Cadbury mini eggs for sale.  If you've read this blog for any amount of time you would know that I love those eggs.  Those eggs are my kryptonite.  Those eggs are probably the best food ever created ever in the whole world.  The mini bags were on sale buy two get one free.  I bought twelve.  On every other diet I've always just said fuck it and eaten the eggs.  This time I brought them home and put them in the freezer.  I went round and round with goals.  Should I eat them if I get to 165?  No.  I decided if I got myself to 160 I would be allowed to have one mini bag of eggs.  I trudged on from 168 to 167 and then 165 and finally 164.  I was so close I could taste it.  Then the surgery happened and I woke up feeling so lost. 

The doctor couldn't exactly explain were the seven pounds came from and I didn't like that.  Combined with the fact that I can't go to the gym for a while i was feeling really sorry for myself.  I'll be honest there has been a lot of tears in my house since the surgery.  I am swollen, so swollen and my weight was so close to having a ONE SEVEN in front of it that I panicked.  I immediately went back to protein shakes and watching my calories.  But by day two I wanted some pizza.  I'll admit it, I needed some pizza.  So I ate two slices of pizza.  Then I woke up and I had only lost one pound.  I panicked again. I struggled with being very strict on my calories, or doing what my trainer said and eating a lot of calories to help my body recover.  In the end I followed his advice and I just ate normally.  I had some pizza, I had some fat free pudding, I had one cookie.  This morning I woke up and I weighed 165.  I am relieved.  I also realized this morning that aiming to weigh 162 again isn't a good plan since I only got there with a gallon of laxative.  Tomorrow I go back to work and I'm going to go back to my scheduled eating and meal planning.  I'm still very swollen which is irritating but at least the weight didn't stay on. 

I cannot wait to get back to the gym. I never thought I would miss it, but I miss the gym so bad it's not even funny. I'm dying to do some calf raises, and biceps, and God I would kill to do the stairmaster.  My trainer is riding my ass about taking my time and I'm trying to.  I am hoping that as long as I keep my weight in check I will not have a full melt down about missing so much gym time. 

This has all been very hard for me.  Learning a new way of life, a healthy way of life and making it a habit was hard enough.  Having surgery in the middle of that and having to stray from this new way of life was even harder.  I'm hoping that I seamlessly fall back into my schedule of eating and my six day a week work outs and that eventually it will be like nothing ever happened and I'm back to normal. 

Wish me luck!

Thursday afternoon after fasting for over 24 hours and being a starving deranged mess I finally went in for surgery to look at my insides. I awoke to pictures of my guts that made no sense to me.  Here is what I learned:

After my hysterectomy my insides were possibly not put back exactly right, which means my colon was put away near my cervix.  Scar tissue grew from my cervix to my colon and then attached those to my remaining ovary.  All of that attached to something else (I don't know what) and the result was a crushed colon and ovary and a relocated cervix.  They also found that my colon had attached itself to something that pulled it into my appendix and smooshed my appendix up against the wall of my insides.  Thus my appendix was "very irritated and angry."

I was not crazy.

They removed a ton of scar tissue from my colon and surrounding areas.  My ovary was able to be saved (yay!), my colon was able to be put back where it belonged, uncrushed and with room to function, my cervix was detached from other body parts and was put back where it belonged, my appendix was removed, and I should be good as new. The doctor described it as a "necessary tune up."

That clear part is more recent scar tissue.  The white part on the right side is old scar tissue that was holding my colon up against something that it didn't belong against. My doctor said the way my colon was smashed was causing me to not be able to digest food, causing it to sit inside of me for days and thus causing the swelling and bloating.  He also said had he not gone in when he did my appendix would have ruptured from the pressure of my colon being pressed against it.

I awoke to find three incisions instead of two.  One of them is right in the center of my tattoo.  My doctor did not do that one, the other doctor did. My doctor has always cut around my tattoos.  I am pretty sad, I hope it heels okay.

My biggest frustration is that I woke up the morning of the surgery weight 162. I was so close to my second goal weight of 160 pounds.  I was in the hospital for maybe a total of six hours and I left there weighing 169 pounds.

WHAT THE FUCK!

So much what the fuck.

I went into the hospital with my stomach looking flat, the shelf above my C-section scar was starting to smooth out and flatten, I was starting to get kind of skinny. I was beginning to like myself. Look at it, my stomach was flattening out.

Now I look like this

Lets close up on those bruises

I need to mention here that my surgery was on my front.  It was below my belly button.  It had nothing to do with my side.  Yet somehow my side is bruised. Badly.  It hurts.  My ribs hurt.  My front hurts from the inside like I had surgery.  My side however hurts like I got punched.  I'm super annoyed. I hadn't seen this yet when the doctor called so I couldn't ask him what in the fuck happened to my side, but something happened. 

The worst pain of all so far has come from the CO2 that they blew inside of my body.  At random times the air will move up to my shoulder tip and try to escape.  This is the most excruciatingly painful thing ever.  I hate this part of the heeling because it just comes on out of nowhere, with zero warning and stays for about four minutes.  I hate it.

Lets look at my front now. 

I am horrified.  I'm swollen, and bruised, and so fat.  So so fat.  I feel like I took about thirty five steps backward from where I was when I left the gym on Wednesday.  I've never come out of a laparoscopy (this is my 4th) with this kind of bruising.  My doctor did ask me if I felt beat up when we talked, and when I said yes the only thing he would say is, "I'm sorry that was the other doctor not me."  Again since I didn't know how bad the bruising was at that point I didn't ask more. Now though I want to know why my whole body is so bruised and fucked up.

Rationally I understand I just had surgery and I'm going to swell and maybe gain a little weight.  Irrationally I can't help but think all of my hard work has been undone.  I have to relose those seven pounds I struggled so hard to lose this month.  I have to work so so hard to flatten my stomach out again.  I can't even work out for 14 days.  Fourteen days.  I'm going to get so much fatter in fourteen days and lose my cute little arm muscles, and my legs are going to get fat again. 

I've spent my recovery trying to do the right things. Drink my protein shake in the morning. Eat reasonable portioned lunches and dinners.  I've only had ice cream one time and that was the day I came home after I had vomited up my entire stomach contents.

I am excited to see if I suddenly have a normal functioning body that digests its food the way it should.  I'm counting down the days until I can get back into the gym.  I'm ready to recover and get on with the show.

In the mean time my husband has been the bestest care taker ever.  He's brought me food, and let me lay in the center of our bed with the sheets folded around me just perfectly, and all six pillows behind my head.  He's let me text him pictures of bells when I needed him to bring me a pain pill or some gum. He's gone out to get me special lunch and basically been wonderful.

I've been staring at my awful pedicure for the last three days and I'm wondering if it would be pushing my luck to ask my husband to remove my toenail polish and give me a shiny new pedicure.  Hmmmmm.  He's at the grocery store now perhaps I will ask him when he returns.

 

If you've been to a doctor ever in your life you will understand what I'm about to say.  Have ever noticed that when you wake up in the morning and weigh yourself and then go to the doctor you suddenly gain AT LEAST ten pounds?

I hate that shit. I hate it a lot.  Especially because I'm dealing with genetically high cholesterol, and back issues and my doctors just keep saying I need to exercise and lose weight.  Then I go to the doctor talking about how I'm exercising and losing weight and their lying ass sadistic scale ALWAYS says I've gained weight. They doctor always shakes her head at me and talks about my weight, and how I really should start exercising more…blah blah blah she starts to sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown.  I patiently explain that dammit I'm working out 3-4 times a week and my scale at home said something different.  They always shake their head at me and write some secret shit in their file that I'll never get to see.

Today though. Hooooo boy you guys. Today I made that doctors scale my bitch.  I weighed in at home it was 166.  I drove to the doctor and got on the scale and started tinkering with it.  The nurse came over and said, "oh you got it just right" (No shit lady I do these fancy doctors scales often at the gym now).  Then, THEN she said you weigh 166. 

I stepped off the scale and casually put my shoes on and asked if she could tell me what I weighed at my last visit in October.  The nurse looked down and said, "oh 180 pounds."

THAT'S RIGHT MOTHER FUCKERS.  THAT SCALE COULD SUCK MY DICK!

I beat the scale.  Not only that but I had a noticeable change.  14 pounds is a good change.  In the world of doctors scales fourteen pounds is the holy grail of weight loss.

I felt like breaking out into a chorus of We are the champions and playing the Rocky theme song as I walked out.

Small victories people. Small victories.  I finally had concrete doctors evidence and to top it off my blood work came back to show that I'm working out at the level of body builders.  I wear some pretty cute shirts to the gym like these:

But I feel like I'm missing a shirt with a giant middle finger that says "SUCK IT" for the next time I go to that doctors office and she tells me I'm not working out hard enough.  Tell that to the scale sucker!

Sometimes…you need to totally humiliate yourself and look at the photos of yourself when you started working out, versus a photo of yourself today in order to process the fact that you have indeed made some kind of progress with this gym thing.

With that being said, here you go.

This was six months ago and then this week. 

 

If you focus on the tattoo you can see the most difference.

This photo doesn’t make my progress near as obvious.  Sorry about the ass shot I suppose I coulda cropped them.  But hey, my boobs are bigger then my stomach now which is progress.  I’m going to the gym six nights a week now instead of three.  Let’s hope I can double this progress very very soon.

Okay. Let’s all pretend I didn’t post this and move along now.

Update this is the scale I use

There has been one really big upside to weight loss.  The shopping.  A new kind of shopping.  I have two new favorite forms of shopping.  One of them is for workout gear.  I recently found the Fabletics website and omg I bought so many new things.  I cannot wait for them to get here. 

My most favorite kind of shopping though?

Victorias Secret.

Y'all, I fucking love that place.  I have a friend who works for the Pink side of the store.  She was always telling me to come shop with her discount but I didn't think I would fit in their clothes.  One day I gave in and went up there to shop.  Panties are 5 pairs for $26.00.  I bought five pairs in different styles and went home to try them on in secret.  They all fit.  I almost passed out from excitement.  I was now small enough to fit into their clothes.  So I did the most logical thing and drove up there the next day to buy five more pairs.  Plus some boyfriend sweats.  Then I let her fit me for new bras.  You guys, these bras are epic, and soft, and honestly I get a little distracted by my own cleavage now.

The bra was so soft I commented on wishing I had jammies that soft and GUESS WHAT!!!! They had the pajamas to match my bra.  My husband, yeah he likes to rub my body all night in bed because my pajamas are that soft.

Then she introduced me to their new VSX sports bra and y'all, seriously, it's the most incredible fucking thing I've ever fucking worn in my life.  My boobs are all pushed up and sexy, but they are strapped in so tight and secure that no amount of running or burpees could ever make them move.  I get to look totally sexy while working out and it's pretty fucking fantastic.

Last week they had the Semi Annual sale.  I had a huge gift card so I went up there after the gym and that place was like a steel cage death match.  I have a paper cut from someone grabbing a bra out of my hand when I was reading the size on the tag. I ended up getting a second pair of boyfriend sweats because my first ones are too big, ten more pairs of panties, and two more of the incredible sports bras.

I think I'm somewhere around 30 new pairs of panties and it's a blast.  I really love knowing I'm walking around in cute lacy panties, or that I'm sleeping in the most perfectly cut boy shorts ever.  This is new and fun for me.  Undies have never been cute, or looked right. I don't know if it's just because I moved up from Target underwear to Victorias Secret underwear but suddenly all of them look cute, and all of them fit just right and HERE TAKE ALL OF MY MONEY NOW.

I haven't really purchased a lot of clothing.  I did buy one super cute dress and some heels but that is about it.  I have a pair of jeans that fit, and a couple pair of pants that fit.  I'm kind of hoping I won't have to buy more jeans because hopefully the next size down will be the size of the skinny jeans I currently own.  I hope my new gym gear fits well. I can't wait for it to arrive.  Four more days.

 

I've been working on myself lately. I've talked about it here some, on Facebook some, and probably on Instagram too.  It's no secret I've been going to the gym, lately I've been going six times a week.

Here is where I get conflicted.  Every time I see someone that I haven't seen in at least a month they compliment me on how I look.  I don't know if it's because I just have super low self esteem and I'm really bad at taking a compliment but….whenever they say these things I immediately think, "they are only saying this because they know I'm working out and they feel obligated to comment on my body."

I don't know if that is true or not but it makes accepting a compliment very difficult.  I do think that when people know you are working out that they automatically assume they must make a comment on your appearance.  Normally when someone comments I feel the need to respond that no, my weight hasn't changed much, and my last measurements weren't huge changes, and that I don't see the changes.  I kind of brush off the compliments because I cannot decipher what is sincere and what is just an obligation.

In fact there has only been one compliment I was able to take well and it was the most backhanded compliment I've ever received.  Someone I hadn't seen in a year came by and as soon as I opened the door they said, "wow, you look amazing, you are so skinny now, I mean wow just look at you."  This person has no idea I go to the gym, they have no idea I've been eating right, they just saw me and made an observation. I was pleased.  I thanked them and I felt a little bit taller for a moment.  Until they said, "you just look so good, I mean…you were really fat last time I saw you, like really really fat."

Ouch

That stung.  It hurt to hear that but at the same time I think it made the compliment more valuable because I knew he was making the observation with no expectation of how I would look when he came in the door.  He hadn't read about my training and my diet, so he didn't have to prepare a comment about my new figure, he just spoke honestly.

I am really struggling with compliments though.  Strangely, my self esteem is at an all time low. I've lost weight.  My body is changing and yet, I still only see the bad.  I keep thinking, "sure they think I look good in my clothes, but if they saw me in a bathing suit they would retract their compliment."  I am struggling to eat because I'm obsessing over calories, and burn, and exercise.   If I miss a day at the gym I spend the entire day panicking that tomorrow I will wake up 20 pounds heavier again.

I am sure this is normal. I'm sure it's a transition, but I really don't like it.  I want to learn to say thank you and believe the compliments.  I want to look in the mirror and not grab the fat above my C-section scar.  I never realized losing weight and being healthy would be such a huge mind fuck.t