I haven’t checked the final statements to be sure, but my gastric bypass surgery cost me roughly $3800. That figure doesn’t include the out-of-pocket expenses for the psych eval ($125), the exercise evaluation ($75), and the co-pays at my doctor’s office for a physical and blood work, and the co-pays at the nutritionist’s office for those visits.
But it was all so damn worth it. I’m nearly six months out from surgery, and I couldn’t be happier. Well okay, I take that back — I could be. That $3800 could have been handy for Dallas auto repair, or a new-to-us-but-used Chevrolet Silverado. Fortunately, both of our cars are in good working order and just had car inspections complete with brakes being replaced (you watch, now that I said that they’ll BOTH break down next week), so a brake job isn’t something we’ll need to worry about anytime soon!
So if you had $3800 to spare, what would you spend it on?
Yesterday I reached my lowest weight yet — 214.4. I don’t think I’ve been in the 215 pound range for at least twelve years, but now that I’ve been stuck at 215 for going on three weeks, the novelty and amazingness of it all is beginning to wear off. So hitting 214.4 was pretty damn cool. Of course, I didn’t expect it to last, so I wasn’t surprised when today’s weight-in determined that I was 215.2. Whatever. The fact is I got below my previous lowest weight of 214.8, which means that the scale will definitely continue to move in the right direction!
Right now I’m sitting at a Panera Bread, working from my laptop. PB doesn’t have a lot of choices that are compatible with my stomach or my nutritional requirements, but I make the best of it. I usually opt for the broccoli & cheddar soup, since it has cheese (high protein) and broccoli (veggies are always good). I’ll sometimes get a cheese pastry, simply because it’s so damn delicious. I picked out a bowl of black bean soup a few weeks ago, but it tasted like ass and had only 10g of protein in the whole damn cup. Pfft.
Anyway, that’s all that’s really going on right now… I won’t be doing any major weight celebration until I hit ONEderland!
As the subject states, Unjury is disgusting. It is the most vile tasting protein powder I have tried to date. And believe me, I have tried to mix up these powders in different foods and drinks in order to mask the taste, after-taste and texture, and I have tried different flavors. But I have never been able to successfully consume more than a few sips of liquid or bites of food that contained Unjury. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I think I’d rather lick baby shower tableware than attempt to consume another bowl of soup or cream of wheat with that crap mixed in it.
Now I can definitely appreciate Bariatric Eating and their Inspire protein powders. They’re more expensive, yes, but the increased amount of money is worth paying if the trade-off is being able to tolerate the stuff!
Now that it’s capri season (I could get down to 120 lbs. and I still don’t think I’d be into wearing shorts!) and I’m having to shave my legs every single day (yes, I am one of those lazy chicks that only does it once a week or so in the winter), the BIG thing I have noticed is that I can go all the way around my calf and cankle ankle in one go. Before I’d lather up my leg, and then lean to the right to do the front/right side of my calf, and then lean to the left to get to the other side. You know, because my leg was just THAT big around. Ugh. Now? I can do it all in one go, right or left!
Oh, and our bath towels wrap all the way around me with a bit of excess!!! BIG milestone right there, as before only the top two corners would come together above my chest.
I’m currently working on getting down 12 ounces worth of water mixed with three scoops of chocolate protein powder, which amounts to 60 grams of protein. Now, I’m not a big fan of chocolate drinks (which is probably why I don’t like any of the protein drinks I’ve tried, even though my mom is all, “Yummy, they taste just like chocolate milk!”), but mixing the protein powder with milk definitely made things more palatable. Not having milk (we ran out yesterday afternoon, and I was too lazy to pick some up last night haha) makes this sucky drink suck even more.
Oh well… here’s to good health! *gulp*
My one peeve post-op is the high cost of protein supplements. The manufacturers and companies that supply them argue that you’re not “spending”, you’re “investing”, and I can’t help but to feel that they take advantage of the simple fact that us post-ops can’t take in enough nutrition normally, can’t eat certain foods, etc. Take, for example, bariatriceating.com. A week’s supply (fourteen scoops, which will make two drinks per day) of flavored protein powder is over $20! Now, I know the stuff is of decent quality, but still… ergh. But then I think of how much money I am saving by not having to buy as much food as I did before, and I have to grudgingly concede that they’re right, and I’m not really being ripped off.
In any case, I try to make up for that high cost by doing what I can to save money in other ways. I never go shopping without coupons, for example. And if I’m going to be making a specialized online purchase, you better believe I look for coupons or discount codes to use first! savings.com is one of the sources I use for coupons, and they don’t disappoint. From a handy Orbitz promotion code that will be perfect for travel use, or the standard Sears coupons and Kohls coupons, I’ve got almost all of my online shopping covered!
What sites do you use for coupon codes? Do you know of any coupon codes that can specifically be used towards protein supplements and the like?
Since I work from home and I have a house full of interruptions, I usually head out to my local Panera Bread at least once a week for some interruption-free work time. I’ve been coming here for over a year now. Since I always come to the same Panera, around the same time each week, and I usually stay for the same amount of time, most of the employees recognize me. And I can tell that they can tell that I’ve lost weight. I haven’t had any questions come my way so far, but there have been a few looks. And the one guy who goes around clearing tables often takes my plate and takes notice of the fact that I routinely dissect my food and never finish more than maybe a third of it.
On a related note, here is a side by side comparison of me from this time last year, and me from yesterday!
