I'm late, but finally getting caught up. Another couple of rl things kept me on the low end of my exercise target (at just below 4 days/week). I was out of town over the Labor Day holiday, and so am going to have another low end of range month in Sept. I'm thinking that maybe instead of a 4-6 days/week range, I should go with the more common 3-5 days/week range, and save myself some angst. Here's my update for last month (fitness and health status, August, 2013), along with a segment on bariatric gastric surgery, and it's lap-band sister-procedure.
Fitness Update for August, 2013
Exercise days: 17 days out of 31 (an average of 3.84 days/week)
Lap Swimming: 9 days (10 laps/50 minutes = 1000 meters/50 minutes, pace = 5.00)
Land based/Bike: 8 days (8 miles/46-48 minutes - closing in on a 45 min. pace or 10 miles/hour)
Water/Land ratio: 0.53/0.47 (~50/50)
August Weight Loss: 3 lbs.
Total Weight Loss: 11 lbs.
Avg. Blood Pressure: 115/75 (very good!)
Resting Pulse-Rate: ~70 (which is very good for me)
Still holding steady at 3 lbs. weight loss per month on average. It's slow progress, at about 0.75 lbs. per week, but it's going in the right direction. I wish it would move up to 1.0-1.5 lbs/week, but I can live with it. After many years of gaining weight, dieting, losing weight, gaining weight, I firmly believe that the slow and steady progress is the one that may break the weight loss/weight gain cycle. My personality favors the journey over the destination, so as much as I'd love to reach my end-goal faster, I think I'll just try to enjoy the smaller milestones along the way. If it stays at this pace, it will take me over 3 years to meet my goal, but I guess that means it's a lifestyle change, and not just a short-term program.
Health Update for August, 2013
I've had a few more aches and pains than normal this month, along with one bruise/bump that has been there longer than it probably should, so I've made an appt. with my Oncologist for Sept. 18 to go over a few things. I know that after several rounds of chemo, most people's muscles, bones, etc. get more sensitive, and I do bruise more easily now. I had one on my forearm from where a swimmer caught me with their heel when straying out of their lane, and it lasted for 2 months! I think it actually was hard enough to bruise the bone.
I've also had some respiratory issues recently, so that's always a reason to get checked out. The humidity's been high, though, and that is always a prime cause for that - your lungs have to work much harder when the air is heavy with water, and it's a lot easier to get pneumonia. My lung power is definitely improving from the exercise, but the humidity has interjected a counter-balancing influence in the last couple of weeks. The center where I swim was closed this last week for the yearly maintenance, and tomorrow I'll swim for the first time in over a week - we'll see how my lung power and pace hold up after that break.
Bariatric Surgery Trivia
Did you know that only 1-2% of people succeed in keeping their weight off using traditional diets? Bariatric and lap-band surgery, however, have a 70% or greater success rate. That is a dramatic difference, and that's why I'm including a segment on it in my entry today.
Bariatric surgery is a procedure where the stomach is separated (into a small pouch), sometimes with additional reconfiguring of the upper intestine. It's pretty extreme surgery, and has extreme results, both good and bad. On the good side you can lose weight very fast (maybe 80-100 pounds in six months), but on the bad side your ability to process nutritional elements can be negatively affected. This surgery is only considered if you have 100 or more pounds to lose.
There is a less extreme procedure called lap-banding, which is fairly new, but now becoming far more common. Instead of surgically separating your stomach, and possibly intestines, a synthetic band is slipped around the upper end of the stomach, creating a small pouch. There's a line attached to the band which ends in a small port, which is attached just beneath your skin. Like a porta-cath for delivery of chemo, this port can easily be accessed by a needle through the skin. A water (saline?) solution can be injected or removed from the line, thus tightening or loosening the band. This would allow more or less food in, as required for nutritional and weight loss purposes. The band is implanted via laproscopic incisions, which means it's generally considered a far more safe form of surgery.
Both of these procedures cause your brain to sense that your stomach is full far earlier than when your whole stomach was being used. This means it won't send hunger signals to you as often or dramatically as happens in a regular diet, and that means there's a decent chance that you can a) lose all your weight, and b) keep it off.
Here's the difference between these two procedures in terms of weight loss: With Bariatric surgery you could lose 50% or more of your target weight loss goal in 6-12 months, with the remaining weight loss (for a total of 75% or better) within 3 years. Lap-band surgery is slower in the first year, but still can hit your 75% or better goal within 3 years. If you have 120 pounds to lose, you'll probably lose 40/40/40 pounds a year for 3 years via the lap-band procedure, whereas it might be 80/20/20 for full bariatric surgery. That means your gratification is delivered far quicker with the full bariatric gastric procedure, and lets face it, most of us want to see those results immediately. Still, I tend to think the slow but steady lap-band progress makes the most sense for long-term success, as instant gratification has a history of questionable to bad long-term results.
Full bariatric surgery is an expensive and sometimes dangerous procedure, while lap-band surgery is both less expensive and less dangerous. It can cost as little as $20,000, and your surgeon may allow the procedure even if your weight-loss goal is less than 100 pounds. There are even companies that offer financial loans for this procedure, as it often is not covered by medical insurance.
I would love to have the lap-band procedure, but no way am I taking out a $20K loan for it, and even if I could, they might not allow it with my recent medical history. This is why I'm generally focusing on exercise (energy output) over dieting (calorie intake), since it's likely to have a longer-term impact, even though it will take longer to reach my goal.
Onward and upward (make that downward, scale-wise!).
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