The Fun Stuff: Hair loss, crappy US food and subsequent stalls...

I have been MIA for a while because we have spent three fun filled weeks in the US.  Well, it wasn't as fun filled as we hoped.
 We got Sally, our precious, precocious, rambunctious beagle.  She is a joy, but a handful.  The plan going in was that my mom could puppysit whenever we wanted to do anything.  Then a long term prayer was answered.  She got a great job.  This meant she would be working from 9 to 6 every day.  Sally couldn't stay with my grandparents, because she's in that puppy chewy phase and my sweet grandmother has paper thin skin.  So, our days of shopping and visiting friends became days of walking Sally, cleaning up poop, trying to keep her entertained in our tiny studio apartment and trying to find dog friendly excursions.  All in all, it was a positive trip.  I got to see the really important people and they all commented on my weight loss, which felt great.

I have been so lucky when it comes to side effects from WLS.  I have had very few.  I bounced back very quickly.  I didn't have much pain.  I was only in the hospital one night, got no drains, no binder, slept on my side the second night and went back and forth up the stairs as needed.  I was walking almost a 1/2 mile day three, albeit slowly.   I have read about women in the US who stayed three days in the hospital and then couldn't even use the bathroom by themselves.  One woman posted from her phone that she was stuck in the floor because she slid off the chair while her friend was gone four days post-op.  Luckily, I cannot relate.  The doc started me on soft foods, immediately.  No post-op liquid stage.  I was SO ready for real solids.  I had an aversion to the damn seafood soup they gave me in the hospital, a scrambled egg (I haven't tried one since) and once when I was STARVING and ate two homemade cookies.  Nothing else.  I could gulp water right away.  I wondered for a while if the doctor even did anything to my guts at all.  

I have pulled off weight, but pretty much stalled the whole time I was in the US.  We didn't have a kitchen, so unless my grandmother cooked, we ate out.  Of course, having been gone from the US for over a year, I wanted to eat everywhere.  I made smart decisions for the most part.  I ate small amounts.  We shared plates.  I am just not used to all the fat, the genetically modified food or high fructose corn syrup.  It's so good to be home where the food is natural and it's easier to make healthy choices.  I have been craving salt and sugar SO much since getting back.   It's the same for my wife.  It's our annual US detox.  I don't know how you guys in the US do it.  You need to bitch more to get more healthy, natural, EASY and plentiful options!  Monsanto is the devil!  Look it up.

As I said above, I have been blessed to not have all those complications that so many other RNY patients seem to suffer from or perhaps my tolerance for annoying side effects is just higher.  The one thing I was hoping to avoid more than anything else was hair loss.  As a chubby gal, my hair was something I could always count on (as an adult, anyway.  I hadn't quite figured it out before then!)  I might have to shop at Lane Bryant and my feet might be WAY too big for the cute, trendy shoes, but my tresses could be hot.  I used to drive almost 2 hours to Greenwich, CT, to pay $140 to get a haircut.  My hair was my thing.  It has been blonde, brown and red.  It is currently (and probably permanently) dark brown and quite long.  It has always been thick.  I love to wear braids and ponytails and most of the time it gets thrown up in a messy bun, but when I take time with it, it can be pretty great.  It's natural for a human to lose around 100 hairs a day.  I think I am way beyond that.  I have tried to skip a few days between washing, but that only makes the amount I am losing more apparent.  I have tried Wen (the infomercial, no shampoo stuff) and I love it, but it suggests combing your hair while it's wet and that makes more come out.  I am using the Wen without the combing and just hoping for the best.  I am trying to get in a lot of protein.  We'll see how that goes.  I ain't skeered.  I will sho 'nuff cut my hair short and wear a lot of interesting scarves, if need be.  I am every woman!

This is what I am losing on average each shower.

My wife says it seems like more since it's so long and dark.  I don't know. I suppose time will tell.

Now the numbers:

Starting weight: 349
Before pre-op diet: 323.4
Day of surgery: 300
Current: 278