I had my first big FUCK with the band today.

See, it started at breakfast. I tried to eat an apple. I warmed it up in the microwave (I like warm apples, it is nummy!) and I tried to eat it. It was harder than the apples I’ve had around, and even though I chewed, either the skin (which if I try apples again, I will cut off) or the apple itself didn’t sit well with me, and it was uncomfortable. But after some vigorous walking and Wii bowling, it passed.

A few hours later, I was still hungry, since I had only eaten and gotten down a few bites of apple. So, I figured I’d have something easy, that I’d been eating all week – Grandma’s leftover meatloaf. Its nice and moist and soft. It went down ok, but it sort of hurt sitting there. But I took a nice long walk, and felt better pretty quickly.

Then came my cousin’s birthday party. I had eaten a few chips with salsa, which I knew were ok, as long as I eat in moderation. Then, my aunt brought over a new thing she cooked – bits of chicken wrapped in bacon. I *knew* it was bad, but tried one anyway. I though I had safely nibbled, but somehow, everything got stuck something awful. I was in so much pain, and felt like I wanted to throw up, but couldn’t. I had seen someone on a lap-band forum mention her doctor suggesting a little soda or other carbonated beverage to help open things up, but that didn’t work either. Just came back up.

I felt so so bad, and I was on the damn floor curled up over the trash, heaving and such. Eventually it started to subside, and I walked around the house, bouncing a little. I know it sounds silly, but somtimes the bouncing helps.

Any way, eventually things subsided, and I was finally able to eat some of the spinach artichoke dip in thing flaky dough my mother made, and then I had a bit of  ice cream cake (What!? It goes down easy! And its nice to have a little treat now an then.)

Anyway, I’m feeling much better, but not totally happy. I did not like that.

Other wise, exercising has been going well, the weight is coming off nicely (227.8, woot!) and I’m feeling wonderful. In fact, I felt my ribs today!

My pal Viviane sent me this interesting article

Women Less Able to Suppress Hunger than Men

- January 20, 2009

WASHINGTON – Faced with their favorite foods, women are less able than men to suppress their hunger, a discovery that may help explain the higher obesity rate for females, a new study suggests. Researchers trying to understand the brain’s mechanisms for controlling food intake were surprised at the difference between the sexes in brain response.

Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory and colleagues were trying to figure out why some people overeat and gain weight while others don’t.

They performed brain scans on 13 women and 10 men, who had fasted overnight, to determine how their brains responded to the sight of their favorite foods. They report their findings in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“There is something going on in the female,” Wang said in a telephone interview, “the signal is so much different.”

In the study, participants were quizzed about their favorite foods, which ranged from pizza to cinnamon buns and burgers to chocolate cake, and then were asked to fast overnight.

The next day they underwent brain scans while being presented with their favorite foods. In addition, they used a technique called cognitive inhibition, which they had been taught, to suppress thoughts of hunger and eating.

While both men and women said the inhibition technique decreased their hunger, the brain scans showed that men’s brain activity actually decreased, while the part of women’s brains that responds to food remained active.

“Even though the women said they were less hungry when trying to inhibit their response to the food, their brains were still firing away in the regions that control the drive to eat,” Wang said.

Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Addiction and a co-author of the paper, said the gender difference was a surprise and may be because of different nutritional needs for men and women, although she stressed that idea is speculative.

Because the traditional role of the female is to provide nutrition to children, the female brain may be hard-wired to eat when foods are available, she said. The next step is to see if female hormones are reacting directly with those specific parts of the brain.

“In our society we are being constantly being bombarded by food stimulus,” she said in a telephone interview, so understanding the brain’s response can help in developing ways to resist that stimulus.

Eric Stice, an expert on eating disorders at the Oregon Research Institute, called the findings provocative.

“I think it is very possible that the differences in hunger suppression may contribute to gender differences in eating disorders and that they are likely linked to gender differences in estrogen and related hormones,” said Stice, who was not part of Wang’s research team.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35.3 percent of American women and 33.3 percent of men were considered obese in 2006.

Rosalyn Weller, a professor of psychology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, said she was surprised by the results and “thought the dissociation between subjective reports of hunger and brain activation in women but not men was very interesting.”

The results suggest that training in reducing food desires or in reacting to food cues could be effective treatments to combat obesity, said Weller, who was not part of the research team.

Weller was a co-author of a recent paper in the journal NeuroImage that studied women’s brains when participants were shown pictures of food. They found that obese women had a much stronger reaction than normal-weight women in brain regions related to reward.

Wang noted that behavioral studies have shown that women have a higher tendency than men to overeat when presented with tasty food or under emotional distress.

This may result from differences in sex hormones, he said, and further research is planned to see if that is the case.

Alice H. Lichtenstein, an expert in eating behavior at Tufts University, called Wang’s research “very interesting … I hope to see more like it.”

But, she added, a lot of different factors figure in what and when we eat.

“As we learn more about the different factors that go into making that decision we’ll be better at helping people regulate” their eating, said Lichtenstein, who was not part of the research team.

Obesity has been increasing and Wang also suggested that another part of the reason is changes in society.

While food choices were seasonal and more limited for our ancestors, choices today are wider and the food is so tempting, he said.

“You go to the buffet, you see the food, you want it,” Wang went on. “Some people go to the buffet, they don’t eat so much, some do. There is something different in the people.”

The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and by the General Clinical Research Center of Stony Brook University.

—

On the Net:

PNAS: http://www.pnas.org

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

So, I had my second follow up at the nutritionist this week, marking four weeks on the Optifast.  I did…ok. I didn’t gain, I didn’t lose.

I think the problem was my little night of cheating at Callie’s birthday, and the fact that I didn’t realize that peas were a no-no -too starchy. I also hadn’t known that sweet potatoes were off limits as well. So, now I know, and I’ll do better this week. The nutritionist also said that it could be bloating, as I’m getting my stupid period soon.

Stupid period.

Next Wednesday I have my follow up appointment with the Surgeon. We’ll be going over all my test results and hopefully setting an official surgery date.

Once I have my surgery date, things really start rolling  – I’m currently doing what they call Optifast light. Two weeks before surgery, I have to go on Optifast full liquid. Four shakes and one bar a day. Approx. 800 calories.

This will help me by shrinking my liver before surgery, as well as helping me lose those last few pre-surgery pounds.

As of now, 12 lbs have been lost. I need to lose 26, so that means there are 14 more to go. I’m sure if I stick to my diet, and get some more exercise in, I can lose that before surgery – I’m hoping to lose about five this week, before I see the doctor on Wednesday. Stick to the diet, do some more walking, get my butt up and moving more, and I’ll be ready to go.  Go me!

And another wonderful bit of goodness – I had a decent job interview today! It will be a pain in the ass to get to (I’m in Queens, its in Nassau) so I’ll have to take the LIRR and a bus, but what can you do…I’m broke, and between giving me money to spend here and there, and paying for all the doctors visits, prescriptions, and Optifast, I’m becoming very expensive for my parents…especially since they also were nice enough to bail me out of debt. I’m sure they also didn’t expect me to be returning to any familial nest, theirs or others, you know, at all.

Anyway, a job would be a good thing. I won’t know if I got it or not for another two weeks, which is also good – gives me time to finish up pre-surgical testing and such.

Anywho, the next few posts are going to have pictures – I took photos and need to up load them for the full tale of ‘The Barium, the x-ray, and the sonograms’  and ‘What the fuck is a breath test?’

I’ve started with all of the pre-surgery appointments, and the first was the sleep study.  I’m going to start bringing my camera around with me to photo document what I’m doing as well. these were taken on my camera phone.

I got to my appointment at 9:15, and met Shawn, the technician who would be monitoring me for the evening.

This was my lovely bed for the evening, and those are all the wires that were wrapped around me, as well as the stack of forms I had to fill out. Shawn explained what all the wires were for and where they would go, and then left me to get changed and fill out forms while he saw to the other patient he was monitoring for the night.

Comfy looking, ain’t it? Yeah, I made sure I brought my own pillow.

I watched some TV until Shawn came back to hook me up, around 10:45. It took a while to hook up all the wires and stuff, and god I looked ridiculous!

There were electrodes attached to my cheeks and chin, and tubes in my nose to monitor my breathing. they were all hooked up to two different contraptions, one strapped to my chest, and another on the night table. Lovely.

The worst though, were the electrodes attached to my scalp. They used a paste to hold them down, and those were kind of uncomfortable. Plus, once they took the electrodes off in the morning, the paste stayed in until I showered.

\

See, you can see the paste and electrodes. Lovely.

Anyway, it went pretty smoothly. I read for a while, and then it was time for lights out. I manged to fall asleep in about a half our or so. It wasn’t very restful sleep, since I wasn’t allowed to sleep on my stomach, which is how I normally sleep. I woke up a few times, but from what the technician said it was from coughing, and not apnea.

After I woke up, we headed over to a lab for some blood work to be done.

They took about five different vials of blood, had me pee in a cup, and do a weird test where I took a deep breath and blew air into a bag. Then I had to drink a some sort of substance, wait fifteen minutes, and blow in a different bag. I think that tests the bacteria in my stomach.

Next, I head off to the cardiologist! Woo!

I’m Wendy Blackheart. Some of you already know me from my sex blog, Heart Full of Black.

I’m you basic run of the mill twenty something living in NYC, trying to get by. I’m going back to school to finish my B.A. I’m looking for a new job. I’m active in the BDSM and sex positive communities. I like to read, write, and sew. I like meandering around Manhattan.

I’m also clinically obese. I’m 5′4”, 260lbs, and I have a BMI of 44.1.

I have tried hundreds of times and ways to lose weight. I have worked out, dieted, tried diet pills, weird exercises, Curves, Richard Simmons, Weight Watchers…I’ve tried it all. Truly, and with all my will. In fact, for the past two months I have kept a blog with my best friend todocument out eating patterns and exercise. She has lost 20 pounds. I gained 4.

However I have managed at this point to maintain at 260. While maintaining is a good thing, I’m still about 100lbs overweight. I’m beginning to physically feel the strain. My knees and hips hurt. I find myself out of breath going up more than one flight of stairs. I don’t move as fast as I used to, or would like to. I’m tired all the time. Exercise is difficult.

I’m also scared. I’m worried about developing diabetes. I’m worried about my heart and my joints and my lungs. I want to be healthy.

So, I started looking into surgery. Specifically, the Lap Band.

Tomorrow (9/25) I’m going to a seminar at a local hospital, and I’ll be seeing what I have to do to get it done. I qualify with my insurance so far, but there are tons of other things I have to do, but I’ll be doing what I can.

So, hopefully there will be a little bit less of me soon.