The Saggy Bridesmaid

I went with the other two bridesmaids to have our dresses altered last Thursday night, hoping we would have enough time to get them fixed before we all this leave for Byron Bay this weekend. Turns out the alterations were going to be slightly more complicated for me than I had hoped. A reminder that this is how the dress currently looks...

You can see that it is way too big at the top, but it is also about an inch too big around my middle as well. This is what happens when you order your dress from China and you have a strange body shape. The other bridesmaids dresses fit them perfectly (they just wanted to get them taken up a little). We had great difficulty taking my measurements to send to the China manufacturer and so the dress came out a little wonky on me.

My first problem was that when we were taking the measurements we couldn't find my waist. It is supposed to be the smallest part of your torso, but I have absolutely no waist and we couldn't find a place where my body curved in at all. So we then had to google different ways to find the placement of the waist and settled on something about a certain number of inches above the belly button and below breasts or something confusing like that.

Next problem... breasts. We all took our breast measurements (isn't girl time fun...) and then compared the numbers to make sure they all seemed correct. My fellow bridesmaids are a rather chesty bunch and they all screwed their faces up and said 'wha..?' how come your chest measurements are the biggest, when you have the smallest boobs out of all of us? So then I had the pleasure of explaining what back and side fat is to them... More joy.

So, despite my best efforts to send accurate measurements, my dress still needs some major revision. I spoke with the tailor on Thursday night and she kept screwing up her face and couldn't work out what was wrong with it. She said take it in she would have to re-make the entire dress and it would be too costly. Sigh. She put some pins in and said she would do the best she could, but that it would still be too big.

Next the other girls tried their dresses on and it was like the tailor had a light bulb flash up on her face. She asked me to put my dress back on and showed me the problem... Basically the people making the dress had used the same pattern to make all the dresses, but had not made amendments to my dress even though "it is twice as big as the other dresses". So they have essentially made the dress in a size 10 and then added some inches of fabric to the sides and that is why it sits so strangely.

Once again, there is not much she can do about it, but she did take pity on me and added some more pins and promised she would do her best to make it look like the other dresses. So unfortunately my dress is going to look like a bit of a sack on me. I think it would improve if I had a cute little belt to bring me in and give the appearance of a waist (like the pictures below), but the other bridesmaids were not feeling this idea.

The good news is that I now feel absolutely no need to diet because the dress is going to be too big for me anyway... hello carbs, oh how I missed you! Work is a much nicer place with some sugar in the afternoons.

The Band and Anxiety

I have had a terrible time getting food through my band since Christmas when my anxiety levels seemed to increase. I have had bad days where a sip of water takes a couple of minutes to go down and the occasional good day where I will be able to eat my dinner in a reasonable time (1 hour). It has been a bit of a nightmare and left me feeling very hungry and frustrated a lot so I admitted defeat and went to see my doctor for an un-fill last Tuesday afternoon.

Given how tight I was I really wanted 0.4 - 0.5mls out, but my doctor was reluctant to give me too much out so I settled on 0.3mls, which now gives me 5.6mls in a 10ml band. So far it seems to be helping and I have been able to get more food down, it is still a bit of a struggle, but hopefully it will settle down soon. I know all of this fill level stuff isn't very interesting, but I mostly blog it so I have a record because otherwise I will forget.

Mt doctor is a bit 'wham, bam, thank you mam' and normally shuffles me out the door pretty quickly, but I made a point to ask him if he had any suggestions on how I could try and get to the 'green zone' where I would be satisfied by small meals, not getting stuck on food and losing weight (wouldn't that be nice!). I told him that I had been banded for almost 3 years and have never felt like I was in the green zone and it was a constant struggle. I was wondering if I was doing something wrong or if I was just confused about what being full felt like anymore.

Unfortunately he didn't really have any answers, he just said that the band works for some people and not for others. He did mention that he thought my ongoing anxiety problems could be causing the band to tighten a lot throughout the day and could be why I have trouble getting food down, but not feeling full. I do have quite bad anxiety issues and the smallest things can set me off into such a spin that I know to not even try and eat for a few hours. I guess these issues may have been affecting my band even more than I realised. There really isn't too much I can do about it, but maybe I can try and stop beating myself up so much for not being able to get my band to a level that helps with my over-eating.

I am trying to address my anxiety problems, but it hasn't been an easy road. My doctor tried me on 3 different types of anti-anxiety medication last year over a 6 month period and I had SEVERE side effects on all of them. The only other thing they could suggest was to set me up with a psychiatrist who could try a cocktail of medications that might work for me, but by this point I was so sick from the side effects that I had nothing left in me to try anything else. I am still picking up the pieces, so I am not sure I'll ever try medication again... maybe when I am feeling stronger-- of course this is not to say that my views or experiences should influence anyone else!

Does anyone feel like their anxiety/depression messes with their band???

February Weigh In

Better late than never!

I did manage to remember to weigh myself on the first morning of the month. I rarely weigh myself these days because I feel like that is one small thing I can do to work on my disordered eating problems. Not to mention that the scale doesn't seem to bring a lot of good news lately!

Highest Weight: 129.7 kilos (285 lbs)
Last Month Weight: 82.5 kilos (181.5 lbs)
Current Weight: 81 kilos (178 lbs)
Loss:  1.5 kilos (3.5 lbs)

I can't say that my eating had the balance I was looking for this month. Life stresses have caused my band to shut up shop and not let me eat anything more than ice cream and chips. I somehow recorded a loss of 1.5 kilos this month, which was pleasing, but I think that is mostly because my January 1st weigh in was crazy high from Christmas bingeing, and not because I ate particularly well this month.

Not being able to eat this month has just been so frustrating. I am not zen about my band being tight, I fight it every step of the way with grim determination. My band tells me it can't eat the pizza, so we have a stand-off where I spend the next 5 hours picking away until I finally get some of it down. Then I eat a block of chocolate because I feel so unsatisfied by my dinner. People like me should not have lap bands!

So I have finally booked in with my lap band doctor for an unfill on Tuesday night. It seems lifes little stresses are not getting any easier and it is best if I admit defeat and get a lot of fluid out. I just hope that I don't go crazy with the emotional eating when I can get food down again. Maybe tightness was better for me...

I am already expecting to gain a bit of weight this month because I'll be on holidays for 2 weeks for my brother's wedding in Byron Bay and I am not one to cut corners on holiday eating and drinking! I would really like to work on getting my weight back down to below 80 kilos and staying there. I would be thrilled if I could hold a steady 75 kilos (165 lbs) by the middle of the year and then take a break from this weight loss and weight gain roller coaster for a while!