Critics

I politely call them "Haters" on facebook, but I've had more than a couple people impolitely suggest that I'm going about losing weight all wrong. The main source of the criticism comes from the amount of time that I've gone between fills. To be a "good" post-lap-band patient, I should show up at my doctor's office once every 30 days and get a fill of saline solution put in my band.

Life has a way of interrupting that process.

My first fill on April 6th of 5cc's of fluid. That is the single largest fill that a lap-band patient will receive throughout their treatment. Just imagine taking your already smaller upper stomach and basically cutting that in half. That was what my first fill was like. I had to go on liquids and pureed food for a week because it was so extreme. I had to reschedule my appointment in May because of work, you know, since I live and work about 50 minutes away from the Giant Medical Center where I got my band.

Then I went to Shanghai from May 7th - May 15th with my MBA class. Want to guess what almost every meal in China had? Rice. Want to guess what I struggle to eat? Rice. I tried to eat as much protein as possible while I was over there, but I ended up eating a lot of processed food to keep myself full without getting sick. I'm not proud. I encountered the first of several critics of my progress in China. Well, I more just heard about their thoughts regarding my weight. They never said anything to me directly or anything. Perhaps it was in response to me complaining about how I look in the photos from Shanghai.. Here's a good example:

That is my good friend, Leo, using chopsticks for the first time and eating pork leg, a local delicacy in Zhouzhang. In this picture I'm: 1) Hot; 2) Trying not to puke up rice; 3) Very pink looking; 4) Almost 1 2/3 the size of Leo.

Here's another one from the same day trip to the water city, also known as Venice of the East:

Now, it's very possible that I'm hanging out with five of the skinniest people in my program. Clicker would also like to point out that Michael and I are the only two people that are squared away to the camera and that makes us look bigger in comparison to everyone else. I would have to officially categorize these photos as me - still fat during Post-Op Week 10.

But photography is all about angles and light, no? Evidence A:

Here are two of the photos that Allen Crosby took of me during our photo shoot on March 20th, less than four weeks after surgery:

Nevertheless, my critics said that I hadn't lost enough weight. I don't know. In their mind, I suppose that it was just supposed to melt off me.

I've lost 22 pounds on my doctor's scale and I got my second fill on May 20th. The doc was worried about my last reaction to the fill and decided to only put in 1.5 cc's so I didn't start puking everything up and risk band slippage. I said that was fair, so I now have a total of 7 cc's around my stomach and it's an adjustment. For the past two days, I've been complaining that I now have two stomachs: my upper and lower. My upper stomach gets full so fast that my lower stomach is still hungry. Then I wait a bit and the food passes into my lower stomach, which usually doesn't agree that I've eaten enough and the cycle continues.

My critics can pipe down now. I'm going to go eat some soup.