Hello there. My name is Jenn (you may know me from my personal blog, 
I’m no longer plus size, but I still want to share the various resources I’ve found over the years, as I know how frustrating and upsetting it can be to not be able to find fashionable, high quality clothing that fits.
In no particular order, here are some stores I highly recommend for plus size clothing:
- Avenue (a nice mixture of trendy and business casual; sizes up to 32!)
- Fashion Bug (complaint: their shirts tend to be on the short side; their bras tend to be rather squarish with large, floppy straps)
- Lane Bryant (pricey; their clothing tends to be “older”, not something I’d recommend for teens and young women, unless you need business casual or dressy attire)
- Old Navy (their plus size clothes tend to run 1-1.5 sizes bigger than the norm)
- Target (take care with their junior plus sizes, as they tend to run 1-1.5 sizes smaller than the norm)
- Torrid (colorful, punky stuff)
- Walmart (their plus line is bland, but appropriate for work clothes or business casual stuff)
Now when it comes to lingerie and other intimate wear, my #1 recommendation is EdenFantasys. I have purchased several pieces of lingerie from them over the past 21 months, and during that time I’ve never run into an issue with how something fit. I attribute this to the fact that EdenFantasys provides detailed size charts for all of their lingerie and other intimate undergarments. Also, EdenFantasys carries apparel and lingerie from high quality manufacturers, including Coquette, Dreamgirl and Leg Avenue. In addition to lingerie, EdenFantasys also has a great selection of adult toys, so if you’re looking to spice things up with a little more than lingerie, be sure to check out all that they have to offer!
Portions, portions, portions. Growing up it was all about the food pyramid. Then it was about portion sizes – a piece of chicken should be no bigger than a deck of cards, 8 oz. of milk; for gastric bypass patients measure things out in 1/4 – 1 cups, etc. But as I’ve been discovering over the past year, and especially over the past few weeks as I’ve adjusted my calorie and fat gram intake to shake these last eleven pounds (800 calories/25 grams of fat per day is working out nicely). It’s working, by the way. I dipped into the 160s earlier this week when I hit 169.8, and now I’m hovering right at 170-171, and I know from past weight loss plateaus that I will drop into the 160s for good by the next week. 
Anyway, when it comes to losing weight or even maintaining weight, you need to watch more than portions. Here are a few prime examples:
Seasoned, roasted pecans. Sounds like a healthy snack, right? And a 1/4th cup serving sounds reasonable, especially since that serving only contains 200 calories. But, and this is a big but: that mere 1/4th cup serving of seasoned, roasted pecans also contains a sickening 21g of fat!
Peanut butter. Smooth, delicious, goes great on a sandwich, smeared on a cracker or on the end of a dipped piece of celery or carrot, right? Think again. 2 tbsp. of peanut butter packs 200 calories and 8g of fat.
Salad dressing. My preference is ranch or spicy ranch, which also seem to be the ones that pack the most amount of fat. Just one tablespoon of ranch dressing contains 16g of fat!
Moral of the story? Portion control is not the only piece in the weight loss game. You need to take into consideration calories and fat grams too!
In the craziness that is my everyday life, I forgot to blog yesterday (though I did tweet) about finally breaking out of the 170s and into the 160s. Granted, I was barely there, clinging to 169.8, but hey, that’s a 6 and not a 7 (once upon a time I would have cried for a weight that began with a 2 instead of a 3, and probably killed someone’s newborn for a weight that began with a 1 instead of a 3!), so IT FREAKING COUNTS.
Of course, I joked half-seriously that I’d probably be back in the 170s today, and I am, but I broke that 170 barrier and made it to 169.8, so I know I will again soon.
As of last Sunday I had approximately ten weeks to lose 12 lbs. You see, November 18th, 2011 will be my two year surgiversary (gastric bypass), and I am determined to reach my goal weight of 160 lbs by then. For the last week I’ve been bouncing between 170.4 and 172 lbs, so I know I can do it. I just need to stay on track. Wish me luck!
My gastro specialist prescribed me two medications, Prilosec and Levsin. The Levsin I get – it reduces stomach and intestine cramping, which could be possibly happening during my pain attacks. But Prilosec? It’s used for heartburn and reflux, which I’ve never had; and can help with stomach ulcers, which I’m 99% certain I don’t have. Here’s what ulcer symptoms are like:
The major symptom of an ulcer is a burning or gnawing feeling in the stomach area that lasts between 30 minutes and 3 hours. This pain is often interpreted as heartburn, indigestion or hunger. The pain usually occurs in the upper abdomen, but sometimes it may occur below the breastbone. In some individuals the pain occurs immediately after eating. In other individuals, the pain may not occur until hours after eating. The pain frequently awakens the person at night. Weeks of pain may be followed by weeks of not having pain. Pain can be relieved by drinking milk, eating, resting, or taking antacids.
The pain I have is sharp, intense and occasionally “hot” feeling, but it doesn’t burn nor does it gnaw. More importantly, it feels like MOTHER EFFING PAIN (not too unlike the pain I had when I still had my gallbladder), not pain that could be be mistaken for simple indigestion or hunger. The pain is intense and steady, it brings tears to my eyes, reduces me to scrunching up tightly to try and relieve some of the pain (oddly, compressing my abdomen sometimes makes it feel a little better), and never has woken me up at night — though I have woken up in the morning with it.
My money is still on some type of obstruction or entanglement, possibly associated with scar tissue or adhesions.
Hopefully we’ll find out one way or another next month, when I have my endoscopy and colonoscopy.
This morning I had my long-awaited, highly-anticipated appointment with a tummy specialist – a gastroenterologist. This was an appointment I should have pursued getting several months ago, except that last spring I got sucked into a lot of family drama, and regrettably put my own health issues on hold.
So anyway, I met with a gastro specialist this morning, or at least, I met with his assistant, Dr. Callendar. Dr. Callendar is a female, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, except that I’ve always had better luck and more compassion from male doctors. In any case, Dr. Callendar did notice that a particular area of my abdomen felt different than it should, in addition to me remarking that that particular area was sore and tender after my most recent bout of abdominal pain, which hit last night.
She doesn’t think it’s simply constipation, which is a relief after the doctor who performed my endoscopy last spring suggested that maybe I just need some stool softeners (dumb ass, I was taking those every single day!), but she is wondering if I perhaps have a stomach ulcer. Now, I’ve never had an ulcer to compare this pain to, but the pain I have is steady and just, well, PAINFUL. From everything I’ve heard and read, isn’t ulcer pain more of a burning, stabbing kind of pain? The type of pain I have feels like something is being squeezed too tight or forced to be too big or stretched or yanked on or knotted, if that makes any sense.
In any case, I have been given prescriptions for Prilosec (in case it is an ulcer) to take daily, and an anti-spasm medication to take the next time an attack occurs. And on October 27th (my daughter’s seventh birthday!) I have an appointment for both an endoscopy and a colonoscopy – lucky me, I get to be reamed from both ends on the same day! Fortunately I’ll be knocked out with the same good stuff that killed off poor Michael Jackson, so I won’t be awake for the indignity of having a complete stranger shove a tube up my ass.
Know thy evil: fat grams. When people asked how I was able to lose the required amount of weight (and then some – I was supposed to lose about 17 lbs and lost nearly 50 instead!) prior to having gastric bypass surgery, I told them that I followed, to the letter, the requirements given to me by my dietitian, which were as follows:
- 2000 calories per day
- 60 grams of fat per day
- no more than 3g of fat per 100 calories
Too many people think it’s all about calories. Count calories and you’ll lose weight. But while calories are important, fat grams are more important – for me and in my experience, anyway. I was horrified once I began studying nutrition labels and checking not only the calories, but the fat grams. I cannot tell you how many times the calories would be reasonable or even “wow, that’s low!” in relation to the type of food, but the fat grams were just INSANE. Nine times out of ten I reached my fat gram limit long before my calorie limit.
Here is a prime example of the evilness that is fat grams:
For comparison, so you’ll fully understand how aghast I am, my current fat gram limit per day is 24. 24, people. One tablespoon of peanut butter, which is a nice protein boost since it packs a nice 8g worth of protein, cuts out a third of my daily fat gram allotment. A smear of mayonnaise on my breadless sandwich “wrap” (fat-free beef bologna or low-fat chicken breast rolled up in a slice of American cheese), and there goes about a fourth of my daily fat gram allotment. A small drizzle of salad dressing on my leafy lettuce salad with fat-free shredded cheese? That easily cuts out another third. A few bites of beef and maybe a small slice of cake and BAM, I’m at my fat gram limit for the day, even though I may have only taken in half of the protein I need.
Fat grams suck, but I’m forcing myself to carefully study EVERY DAMN LABEL or Google the things I don’t have labels for, so I know exactly how many grams of fat I’m consuming along with those calories and protein.
And for the record? Fat-free mayonnaise and salad dressing taste fine to me. I’ll let you know how it goes with a low-fat, or better yet fat-free, peanut butter.
Comments: 0