3 Months come and gone

On August 17th I underwent the RXY gastric bypass surgery. I am happy to say that, even with some small complications, I have been doing very well.

According to my scale I weight 321.8 lbs. Meaning that I have lost 80 lbs since August 3rd. I have not weighed this little since I was in high school, somewhere around my junior year. I have essentially undone an entire decade's worth of weight gain. I can also now use the Wii Fit (we have the Wii Fit Plus disc) and I love the accuracy and ability to track everything. I also use cardio trainer to post automatically to my facebook so that my friends and family can see how things are going.

I can also now run a mile in 12 minutes 16 seconds. Again, not a professional or even exceptional rate, but for a 321 lbs man - it is a pretty good feat. I can sprint at 9 mph and I can get a 5k run (3.2 miles) done in under an hour.

My strength training has not been as successful, I have only gone up about 5 lbs per machine, though some of them are becoming easier and I am considering taking them up another 5 lbs. Note - I do 15 reps on a machine that uses rubber bands. The trainer said that these machines would be more difficult than other machines and that if I was doing free weights or a typical machine I'd be able to do much more.

My INR (the level used to determine the level of blood thinning) is right where it should be and I go back in to try and get the filter out on December 3rd. Hopefully it goes better.

Jobs are even looking promising. I have had a second interview with the company that I interviewed with on my son's birthday. It was an assessment and I did "very well", which is even more impressive considering that I learned the programming language in two weeks (ActionScript 2.0). I have an interview with a different company tomorrow as well, and while it is not in programming, it should pay well (I had to give salary requirements with the cover letter).

I feel great, I'm looking better every day, my physical abilities are coming back and all things considered - I don't think I could imagine I would feel this way 3 months ago. I go to the gym daily (well, almost daily), something I never thought I'd really be up to doing, and even though my membership to the one place runs out the beginning of December my dedication to continuing to work out has me checking everywhere to find a good affordable deal so that I can continue to work out (we'd use the one that is in our apt complex or the one that we are members of because of our apt complex, but it doesn't have babysitting).

No matter the case, things are looking great. The doctor is pleased with my progress and again, other than the IVC filter complication and a few minor issues, this has been an immensely rewarding choice. Again, this wasn't "easy" - and I still have put in a LOT of hard work to get here, but it has made a lot of things easier to do - such as motivate myself and actually lose the weight, but the process as whole is not easy at all. The diets, the life style changes, the buying of new clothes - all of this, is not easy. The only thing "easy" is not overeating (biofeedback is a pain in the rear) and thus I am taking in fewer calories than I did before.

As always, any questions can be posted as comments (or asked directly if you know me) I'll be more than happy to answer them. I want people to know what it is like to go through this, both good and bad, as this is a life changing decision and one that should never be taken lightly.