Quickie update!

[thistlechaser]

First off, I love the sound of this. Supposedly all those drummers are famous, and one person got them all together:

In other news, the MMO I play (FFXIV) had a fanfest this weekend, and kindly they had a livestream of most of the weekend. Talk about nonstop exciting! I'm kind of sorry I wasn't there in person, but there are a whole lot of benefits to attending from home, and it was just not practical for me to travel this year. (Plus tickets were nearly impossible to get, sold out in a couple minutes.)

In other other news, I hit the 12 day point of losing no weight. I eat about 600 calories a day (I used to eat more than that in a meal!), so not losing any weight for nearly two weeks was boggling. Was it a plateau? Maybe? So I googled how to break one. Unsurprisingly, the advice was all over the place: Eat more calories! Eat fewer! Exercise more! Exercise less! Eat only protein for 48 hours! Go back to a liquid diet for a week! I decided to try the easiest one, eating only protein for 48 hours. Just the way things worked, that also reduced my calorie intake to about 400/day. (Sometimes I feel like I have an eating disorder, eating like this...) I lost two pounds over the weekend, so maybe, if it was a plateau, I did break it. (Or maybe I'll gain the pounds back tomorrow, who knows.)

Between pre- and post-surgery, I've lost about 50 pounds now. (20 pre-surgery, 32 post.)

Things they don't tell you about this process (or maybe it's unique to me) : Your skin goes to hell. I slather myself with the strongest lotion I can find, twice a day, and I'm still nonstop flaking all over. I finally started putting olive oil on my skin instead, and that seems to be helping. Too bad I can't put it on my scalp, because that is flaking as badly as the rest of me. :/

But hey, at least I have two more months before I'll start losing my hair! :P (At the three month point you lose some to all of your hair. I really, really, really hope I'm on the low end of that hair loss scale.)

Comments

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

Um. Why do you lose your hair..?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Major stress to the body from the surgery as well as the stress of suddenly having so many fewer calories (my body basically thinks I'm starving to death). Hair is very low on the list of things to maintain during risk of starvation. :/

Either surgery or "starvation" would be enough alone to make your hair fall out, but both together = doom for your hair.

[postingwhore.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know why you are going to be losing your hair, too! Is it because you aren't getting enough nutrients, or?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

That's part of it, yep. Major stress to the body from the surgery as well as the stress of suddenly having so many fewer calories (my body basically thinks I'm starving to death). Hair is very low on the list of things to maintain during risk of starvation.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

Aw damn, youtube blocks the vid in Germany due to copyright issues. And I love percussion. *sad-face*

I'm also wondering why you'll be losing hair, and hope it won't be too much!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Arg, that's such a pain!

The short answer on the hair is "stress". Major stress to the body from the surgery as well as the stress of suddenly having so many fewer calories (my body basically thinks I'm starving to death). Hair is very low on the list of things to maintain during risk of starvation. I can't disagree with that logic (I'd rather keep my lungs working than my hair!), but I still worry about going bald.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

Gah, that's awful! :(

How long do you have to restrict yourself to so few calories? What happens when you've lost all the weight you can possibly lose? Sorry for the dumb questions, but I'm totally clueless about the surgical procedure you had.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Not dumb questions at all!

How long do you have to restrict yourself to so few calories?

About a year at around 600/day, slowly going up from there in the next year. It's possible to stay at ~600 forever, or to go up to 1,200 or a little more, it totally depends on your body. If you start eating 800 calories a day and gain weight, you're going to have to stick with 600 or so. (Don't ask me how you can gain weight eating so little, bodies are strange. I wouldn't have thought I could go 12 days with no weight loss when eating under 600 a day...)

What happens when you've lost all the weight you can possibly lose?

Then you have to find the number of calories it takes to maintain your weight and stick to that. It will likely be in the 1,200-1,400 range, unless you do a ton of exercise.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining. Yes, I guess your metabolism slows down more, the less you eat for an extended time. I wouldn't have thought, either, that it'd maintain bodyweight at just 600 calories, though!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's an annoying cycle. Eat less so your metabolism slows so it will burn less, so you have to eat even less... That's one reason why exercise is so important, it forces your metabolism to keep going.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

That's probably hard too. I can imagine at so few calories, your energy must be extremely low. :(

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep exactly. Sometimes it's hard to get up the willpower to just walk to another room, let alone actually exercise.

If someone can lose weight any other way, I wouldn't recommend doing this at all. But when everything else fails, this is the last thing to do.

[kelen.livejournal.com]

Your skin and hair are having trouble because you aren't eating enough. o.o

Thistle.. you are so desperate to lose weight that you are hurting yourself. You need to back off some and start eating more (At least stuff with better nutrients) before permanent damage is done. :( Calling fast food 'real food' makes me gag here as well. That stuff was hurting you in other ways. Don't go back to eating it!

Please start taking care of yourself! :(

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I'm following the plan. We're supposed to get about 600 calories a day. (Crazy huh?) We're supposed to live like that for a year or so before it increases slowly.

Your skin and hair are having trouble because you aren't eating enough. o.o

Yes for the hair, and my guess for the skin is yes as well. The hair is from the shock of major stress (major surgery plus my body thinking it's going to starve to death = hair very low on list of things to maintain). The hair is normal for all people who had this surgery, but I don't know if the skin is or not.

I've only had fast food once! Most of my meals are some chicken breast, some cheese, or rarely peanut butter on apple slices.

Sorry to worry you! My posts are probably giving the wrong impression about what I'm eating.

[kelen.livejournal.com]

That almost scares me more. :( That this is the plan. Please take care of yourself! I want you to stick around a while! <3

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Agreed that this is scary. It's a very serious surgery, and they repeatedly told us that it would result in lifelong changes to the way we live.

I can't say it's fun or I'm enjoying it, but it's a last ditch effort.

Please take care of yourself! I want you to stick around a while!

Thanks! <3 That's the goal of this, so I'll stick around longer.

[kelen.livejournal.com]

Makes me wish I lived closer. (Never mind we'd still talk through LJ all the time) Could help with cooking and go on walks. I don't have anyone to exercise with, and so I totally slack off. Being alone in this royally sucks! And I can't imagine how much worse it'd be after surgery, eating that kind of diet.

Please know I'm thinking about you and cheering you on. :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Thank you! ♥♥ It'd be great if we were closer and could walk together.

Since I don't take lunch at work anymore (eat at my desk instead), I walk at noon. It's somewhat easier to do then, since I have no better options for my time. (Work or exercise? It's almost a toss-up! Exercise or do fun things at home? Sorry, exercise, the computer calls...)

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

Skin flakiness...while obviously one answer is 'eat more', particularly 'eat more oily fish [salmon, sardines, etc]', which I don't think you can do...would it be possible to add Vitamin E or Fish Oil to your vitamin regimen? These generally help with dry skin - my wife uses them in winter when she starts drying out. Also, our dog gets them to keep her coat shiny and her skin, normally dry and flaky, less dry and itchy.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I used to take fish oil, but the pills are too big now. Usually that would mean opening them and mixing it with pudding, but... I think I'd rather have horribly flaky skin than fish-flavored pudding. (I don't like fish in general, let alone in pudding.)

Applying olive oil to my skin seems to be helping, thankfully.

[mayanas.livejournal.com]

You can put some olive oil on your skalp for a while and then rinse it out (Maybe rinse with some baking soda as that will help disolve the remaining oil. I often wash my hair with only baking soda). Hot oil works too, and is an excellent treatment for hair too (though not boiling hot obviously. It's oil! Just the heat opens the pores in the hair and allows the oil to penetrate it). This whole paragraph almost became a tangent.

How much do you drink? It does sound as if your body is lacking some liquids/oils.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Huh! I hadn't thought of that. Maybe on a Saturday I'll do it, so hopefully the grease will be gone by Monday morning. Hot oil actually sounds quite nice.

I never drink enough. It's really hard, since I can only slowly sip, never do more than sip every few minutes. Who has time for that? :/

[mayanas.livejournal.com]

I love hot oil treatments. It makes my hair so soft! My skalp being rather oily all on its own though means I have to be a bit sparing with them.

Apple cider vinegar is good too for dandruff and skalp itchiness though as we don't know the reason for the flakiness I'm a bit hesitant to recommend that. It's diluded (with water) vinegar. A mild vinegar but still vinegar. I use vinegar every one or two weeks. I love it! (The vinegar smell disappears when the hair dries - thankfully!)

(My skalp objects to something or other chemical in shampoos so I have been trying alternatives. Also the hair itself seems to like when I stick to the simpler stuff although I'm not always good at sticking to it. It's easy enough using baking soda instead of shampoo but the shampoo is always right there in the shower so sometimes that's just more convenient.)

[tersa.livejournal.com]

And, see, my reaction was that given what a major, doctor-supervised process you're going through, you shouldn't be trying to self-diagnose and treat yourself for perceived "plateaus" when your nutritionist JUST TOLD YOU not to weigh yourself that often.

You might also want to follow-up and ask them about the skin issues. I seem to recall going through something similar after coming out of my allergic reactions earlier this year, it could be something similar. But ASK first, because as other people say, it could also be related to what you're eating.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

My first reaction to that was "Yeah, but... but... but...". :P I did wait a week before weighing myself again! It's surprisingly hard to not think about something... (Which leads to worry and wanting to do something about it.)

[tersa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're obsessing about it, which isn't healthy, either. :)

But my biggest advice: don't try to game the system. You're already doing stuff that is unnatural for a human body, trying to do stuff that would be 'normal' in dietng might cause harm you can't forsee. And I'd hate to see that. :(

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

Put that scale away! Hide it in the closet or something. You should be looking at the overall picture, not getting frustrated every day. *hugs*

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'm resisting looking every day (though that's so hard!) and checking once a week now. I've put so much time and effort into getting to this point, I feel like I should be seeing a payoff every day. :/ Blah!

*hugs* Thanks! ♥

[spike7451.livejournal.com]

50 pounds is awesome.

I didn't realise you would lose your hair. Why is that?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Shock from the surgery (major surgery can make anyone lose their hair), plus the shock of so many fewer calories. My poor hair is doomed. :/

It's not forever though, so it should be worth it in the end.

Thanks!

[spike7451.livejournal.com]

so it should be worth it in the end.

... most definitely.

[adam-0oo.livejournal.com]

Watching that video stresses me out with all the time it must have taken to set up and take down and sound check all those drums.

And you can put olive oil on your scalp!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. There must have been some major setup time and effort involved!

Luckily my scalp and skin seem to have settled down, but I'm ready to put olive oil on my scalp if the issue returns.