Day 144 - Going Through the Closet, A Journey Back in Time

Now that the weather in Los Angeles is actually feeling winter like (and yesterday, city is inundated with strong gust like wind), I began to feel that the leather coat that I've been wearing the past 2 months is inadequate.  I bought the coat back in 2004 (I think).  It has the benefit of being loose enough for me to wear.  At my maximum weight, I was having problem fitting into it.  As this week's cold weather have shown me, the coat is now way too large to offer me protection against cold.

So I dig into my closet (I almost never throw anything away) and look at a leather jacket that I haven't worn in at least 3 years.  When I first bought it all those years ago, it was a loose fitting jacket.  Now, it still feel very tight, and didn't help that my belt is now encumbered with 2 smart phones holster and a Leatherman multitool.  But wearing these older clothes that I discarded on my way up the weight scale is akin to traveling back in time.  Perhaps I don't have to buy as much clothing as I feared.

I only managed to do one instance of Heroic yesterday (all of the justice points will go towards my retribution offspec, so the urgency is not there).  I did spend a bit of time yesterday leveling my Death Knight, first spending over a hour mining obsidium (to 500 mining so I can mine everything else in Deepholm).  I then spend the next 3 hours doing 2/3 of the Deepholm quests (getting 2 out of 3 Wolrd Pillar fragments).  By the time I handed in the second pillar fragment, my character reached level 83.  Seeing that I'm leveling the Death Knight mainly to level the mining and blacksmith, I opted to go to the next zone, Uldum.  So now I get to experience the entire Uldum leveling experience all over again, except this time, I'll be level appropriate.

115/71/59 242.6lb 104 mg/DL

Day 143 - And Paying the Price

Ok, I cannot eat cake.  I have my father's birthday cake this morning, albeit, I was being rushed out of the house, so I ate faster than I had planned.  Still, my digestive system is currently giving me the clear and unambiguous message of "What are you thinking of?"  I'll lay off of cake from here on out.

I'm also starting to drink decaffeinated coffee at the office.  I can only drink so much Crystal Light before I got sick of the flavor.  I'm also starting to get sleepy again.  Last night, at 9:30 PM, I literally doze off in the midst of farming for ores in  Vashj'ir.  Thus, I actually got in 7 hours of sleep last night.

And this morning, I'm becoming utterly broke in Warcraft.  I spend my last 6 thousand golds getting Elementium Earthguard.  Perhaps I should wait for some Blacksmith in guild to make the Hardened Elementium Girdle.

109/71/57 243lb 96 mg/DL

Day 142 - Going for the Forbidden Fruit

Today's my father's birthday.  So on my way home, I'll be dropping by the Cuban bakery to pick up a strawberry shortcake.  A couple of months ago I blogged about my experience with office cake party.  That was an uncomfortable experience.  2 3/4 months out, lets see how this cake panned out (by the way, the office cake and this cake I'm picking up are both from the same bakery).

122/80/74 243lb 100 mg/DL

Day 141 - Three Down Two to Go

Last night, I ran a couple of guild members through two and a half heroic instances (still cannot go through Grim Batol heroic).  Of the two that we went through, one was easy (Lost City of Tol'vir) and one was fun (The Deadmines).  In the midst of heroic The Deadmines, I got exalted with the Ramkahem faction which means I got three out of five PVE factions reputation maxed out.  In addition to the tanking bracer Ramkahem sells 2 camel mounts at exalted reputation level.  That brings my mount collection up to 130 mounts.  There really isn't anything that I can use from The Earthen Ring faction, so I'm now concentrating on Guardians of Hyjal as the faction to grind next.  Fortunately, thanks to the ridiculously amount of reputation you get just from doing Hyjal quests, I'm now about half way through revered.  Tanking cloak awaits.


123/79/81 243.6lb 105 mg/DL

Day 140 - Things You Notice in the Mirror

I look at myself naked in the mirror about once a day (shower). I really don't pay much attention to myself, after all, it's me. Therefore, there are times and things that I don't realize sneaking on me.

For example, I actually notice my collar bones at this morning's shower. To be sure, it's always been there, but for the first time in recent memory, I can actually see the outline of the bones, instead of buried under a mound of fat. And to that extend, I can also see more of my shoulder bones as well, not as well defined as the collar bones, but still, another reminder of the progress.

Yesterday, for breakfast, I opted to add in toasted croissant into the mix.  Now, when I did this, it was 'round 9AM, and I was actually in so much of a hurry to get out of the house to go watch Tron Legacy, I didn't even finish my coffee/protein drink until I got back.  For lunch, I had some of the left over stuffing/mash potato from Christmas dinner, plus the Costco chicken noodle soup (minus the noodle of course).  The number came out today and it was encouraging.  One thing is puzzling me is the blood sugar measurement.  It's been 103 for 3 days straight.


117/75/65 242.2lb 103 mg/DL

Day 139 - End of Week 20

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-26-2010 Front

12-26-2010 Side

Sorry about the photo today.  Tried using a different light source, and the camera wasn't align straight.  I will try something different next week.

This week has been trying for me in terms of weight.  3 our of 7 days I was stucked at 244.2 pounds, and even went up one day.  I'm still not where I wanted my bodily function to be, but we all need to take it one step at a time.

My Paladin Dianora has now finished all of the leveling content of the new expansion.  I took a bit of time this weekend and finished up the last 2 zones that I completely skipped, Mount Hyjal and Uldum.  I've already covered Uldum in a previous post, but I was surprised at how much reputation you gain from Hyjal.  By the time I'm through with that zone, I'm 9000/21000 towards exalted.  With all of the other factions, I have to grind through heroic dungeons wearing their tabard.

I also got engineering up to maximum level, mainly for the 2 epic crafted item.  In doing so, I blow through most of my bank roll, and there won't be any more easy quests I can do to level up.  I guess I'll have to start asking for guild members to help me out with leveling jewelcrafting, which will be expensive as well.

118/78/73 243.6lb 103 mg/DL
Week to Week 1.8lb
Total Weight Loss 84.4lb
Body Mass Index 34.95

Day 138 - Christmas Day 2010

Well, the tally from yesterday's food intake (I also have 2 bowls of Hot & Sour Soup with 4 dumplings for dinner) was agreeable.  I'm back down to 244.2 pound.  At least I'm making some progress.

As usual, since we didn't buy stuff early enough, Costco ran out of seasoned turkey roast.  So we're going to have to settle with what we can get.

This weekend, I planned to finished up the 2 remaining zones I haven't done yet, Uldum and Mount Hyjal.  Uldum quest is divided in two.  The first half is the Ramkahen quest chain that also gives out reputation to that factions.  It ended suitable with the Ramkahen defeating their zone wide enemy.

The other half is the Harrison Jones quest that also spanned the entire zone.  To say this is Indiana Jones territory is an understatement.  Whole scenes straight out of the 4 movies are used in this quest chain.  I look forward to leveling my other alts here.

115/80/70 244.2lb 103 mg/DL

Day 137 - Buffet Again

I had a scheduled blood donation this morning.  Seeing that I barely wake up at 7AM, that idea is moot.

My uncle's family are in town in so we went back to The Odyssey again.  I think I did far worse this time than last time.  Plus, my bowel movement wasn't great this morning.  Lets see what the damage tomorrow is.

117/76/68 245.2lb 105 mg/DL

Day 136 - Additional Exercise in the Afternoon

Yesterday, I decided to try to do another 30 minutes of walking into my daily routine.  After 10 minutes, I have to stop, seeing that was my limit.  I didn't have problem doing the 30 minutes of walk this morning, so perhaps my attempt at doubling my exercise routine is going too far.  I'll aim for 15 minutes this afternoon.

Yesterday I have Sashimi again for lunch.  And as part of my experiment, I ordered 1 bowl of white rice.  I only ate about half of the rice, but that's enough to boost my morning blood sugar measurement up by 8 points.  I'll stay off of it for a while.

104/81/74 244.2lb 108 mg/DL

Day 135 - Archaeology in World of Warcraft

I'm totally being consumed by the new World of Warcraft Secondary profession archaeology. It's designed as a time sink and a way of imparting in game lore. But what I really wants are the rare artifacts. I've already solved Fossilized Hatchling which earn Dianora the title of Assistant Professor.  I've also solved Chalice of the Mountain Kings which summons 4 dancing dwarf swordswomen.  Now, I'm trying to concentrating on solving Fozzsilized Raptor which will bring my mount total to 128.  Unfortunately for me, there's no keystone for fossil artifacts and i have to gather the pieces the old fashion way.  30 more pieces of fossil to collect.

Update...

Well, got my Raptor mount with matching hatchling pet.  Next project, Clockwork Gnome.



124/79/75 244.2lb 101 mg/DL

Day 134 - Suviving Office Lunch

Yesterday, I was invited to go to an office lunch about 2 miles away from work. It was raining cats and dogs outside. I've never been there before. It also have almost no parking. So getting there is a bit of challenge. On top of that, the restaurant is a Teppanyaki style restaurant. Now, I do enjoy this kind of grilling now and then. But with my greatly reduced stomach size, I know eating would be a challenge. I ordered shrimp with steak that's cook rare. Eating the shrimp isn't much of an issue from my experience with the buffet 2 weeks back. After getting the steak, I know that in the future, I should ordered the steak cook medium, but that's for future consideration. The meal also come with miso salad (I took a couple of bites), soup (couple of sips), grilled onion (once again, I already am grilling onion at home) and fried rice. Now, I know full well that I won't be able to eat the steak with rice, so I took about half of the steak and all of the rice home for dinner. And I was able to finish the dinner without much issue.

This morning's measurement is the one I was kind of dreading considered what I ate previous day (McDonalds scramble eggs with bacon and sausage, grilled shrimp and steak with fried rice). Surprisingly enough, my number came in much better than expected. I guess I've finally graduated to being able to eat rice.

108/75/65 244.8lb 100 mg/DL

Day 133 - One Pound Gain?

This morning I got awaken by the yet another incident.  As a result, I forgo my usual breakfast, and head into office.  I have to postpone my exercise until this afternoon, and of course, I forgot to take my morning vitamin.

Another unpleasant surprise this morning is that I weigh one pound more than yesterday's weight in.  Now granted, I did this at 5AM today, and 9 AM yesterday.  But it's still an unpleasant shock.  I guess Costco chicken noodle soup with actual noodle is not such a good idea.

Now, I'm hunting for breakfast with protein.

Oh, yesterday, I took the leave of running Dianora through heroic until my brain melt.  I only did 2 heroic and all of the cooking/fishing daily.  I did spend a couple of hours leveling a Worgen hunter alt Kycilia.  This is the second Worgen alt I've started, so the Worgen starting zone is familiar to me.  It's what happened after I got out of Gineas that differentiated the 2 alts.  Right now, Lonchaneyjr is sitting in Stormwind just doing daily cooking/fishing.  I decided to do the entire Redridge Mountains zone because I've heard that Blizzard have put their spin on Rambo in the zone.  By the time I finished the zone, I was already 2 level above the zone, but the experience is well worth the effort. 

122/85/80 246.4lb 102 mg/DL

Day 132 - End of Week 19

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-19-2010 Front

12-19-2010 Side

I swear, if my head wasn't attached to my head I would have lost it.  Lets just leave it at that.

This week is another week of modest improvement (as oppose to no improvement).  It's been 2 weeks since I stop taking my diabetic medication.  I've been on Metformin (one form or another from 500mg to 100mg) for almost 10 years.  Not having to take it is a different experience.  Not exactly sure how long it will take for Metformin to leave my system.

Much to my surprise in my daily heroic run today, Pauldrons of Edward the Odd dropped.  I won it, and it's a very good upgrade for me.  Odd that I still have not get past Grim Baton's first boss in heroic, let alone the entire instance. 

114/76/72 245.4lb 105 mg/DL
Week to Week 3lb
Total Weight Loss 81.6lb
Body Mass Index 35.21

Day 131- On Call Saturday

Sorry for another very late post.  Things got busy today.

Normally on Saturday that I'm not on-call, I'm the one placing the flowers at my mother's urn.  This weekend, my brother also went on-call.  Since I do have remote method of handling my on-call duty, I decided to stick to my normal schedule of buying flowers at Costco, Rose Hills, Lunch and then home.  Added to the wrinkle to this schedule is the rain that has dotted the freeway.  Southern Californian simply do not know how to drive when the road is wet, and the rain added to the delay.

I've also decided to replace the CRT tv in my room.  I've been struggling with the audio on the TV for the longest time, and it's time to put it to someone else's hand.  And I pick up 27 inch flat screen from Costco near my house.  I can afford bigger one, but I don't have room for it.

114/78/72 245.2lb 102 mg/DL

Day 130 - More Adventures in Sleepless On-Call

Nothing much to report today, except to say that being on-call is a serious drain on my sleep time.  I didn't bother trying to go into work due to the 4 hours I spend this morning working on a severity 2 issue starting at 2 AM.  I may still try to do my exercise later today, but I sincerely doubt if I have enough energy to do that.

114/74/71 246.2lb 105 mg/DL

Day 129 - Uneven Melting of Fat

I oversleep this morning.  As part of the new on-call procedure, I now also need to be on-hand to check the systems that were patched.  That took far longer than I anticipated.  Also didn't help that I turn off alarm on Tuesday night, since I work from home on Wednesday.  Note to myself, always check alarm when I'm in the working rotation.

I've noticed that shedding of fat is going about in a very uneven pace throughout my body.  If you looked at my before/after pictures, it's pretty obvious that I'm loosing inches around my belly.  In particular, I have another notch smaller for my belt.  But that belt region is loosing fat much faster than the areas above and especially below.  My love handle felt very loose, but much of it remains.  The area of my stomach remains stubbornly larger.  So what I have are these two valley of depression to the right and left of my belly button.  Perhaps I should start doing sit ups.

117/82/73 246.2lb 104 mg/DL

Day 128 - Traffic

The drive back from yesterday's support group meeting is just utterly horrendous.  I got out of the meeting at 7:15 PM.  It took me 90 minutes to traverse from Cedars to 101 Freeway.  I also noticed that Google Navigation seem to be going out of its way to directing me into really weird turn.

Managed to upgrade my Droid to Android 2.2.1.  The smallish 2.2 to 2.2.1 upgrade zip refused to work on my phone, at least with the way I de-installed things.  I have to get a more complete package.  Haven't had much of opportunity to do things with it yet.

117/76/78 247.2lb 95 mg/DL

Day 127 - Amusement Park

Due to my weigh and how much I don't enjoy walking with them, the past couple of years, I've not been avid attendee of amusement parks.  I get tired easily, and it's becoming difficult to fit me into the standard size seats.  Last night, I have an company event at a well known amusement park, and for a change, I actually enjoy it far more than before.  I have to pick up my older brother first before heading down there, and the drive was so dreary boring that I had to slammed on the brake hard once to avoid rear ending someone.

Once there, due to a slight mistake in taking the off ramp road, I spend the next 15 minutes trying to get back on track to the park.  By the time we got there, it was 8PM already, so the first priority is to get something to eat.  My usual restaurant was not open, so I opted for BBQ Pork sandwich.  I ate the meat only, with pickle and some fruits.  The BBQ sauce was a bit too sweet for me, and since I didn't bring any water out of the car (I wasn't sure of the policy of carrying water into the park), I went without water the whole night.  We manage to walked and ride around for 3 full hours.  By the night's end, I was feeling slightly cramp on my calf muscle, but I managed to get home without much issue.

This morning, I got up at my usual time of 5 AM.  I had debated whether to do my morning walk and decided to stick to the routine.  Even as I write this, I'm still feeling the burn in my thigh muscle.  The morning numbers are encouraging consider what had happen the previous night.

Tonight is the support meeting, which last occured 3 weeks ago.  I'm down  10.2 pound since then.

Since I got home at 12AM, obviously I didn't spend much time on Warcraft.  I did got bored and decided to do some archaeology digging around and advance my skill a bit.

114/74/71 247.4lb 99 mg/DL

Day 126 - 80 Pounds Lost

I've lost 80 pounds since 2 days prior to the surgery.  This particular 10 pound mile stone seemed to take longer than last time (3 weeks).  But any gain towards my goal is better than no goal.  I'm about half way through my targeted weight of 163 pound.  Most literature I've read on the effect of the surgery states that the first 6 months is the golden period of weight loss.  By 6th month, the body will have adjust to the new stomach, and the weight loss will become tougher.

Ran 4 Heroic instances, 2 of them as a replacement tank (Blackrock Cavern and Thrones of Tide).  One of them lead by a guild healer (Heroic Shadowfang Keep), and one as an all guild run (Stonecore).  Stonecore is definitely harder than the rest, but not impossible.  Managed to pick up several pieces of upgrade, including the Earthen Ring revered head enchant.  The guild also managed to grab the new Tol Barad raid run with whatever we have on-hand.  Since not all guild raiders have gotten up to level 80 (and geared yet), the raid make up is weird.  After 3 wipes, we got him down.

I now have a bit of decision to make.  I level Earthen Ring reputation for the head enchant.  Their epic plate item does nothing for my tanking.  Wildhammer Clan's epic tanking plate boot is great for me, but it's at exalted.  Guardians of Hyjal has a easily reached tanking neck piece at honored, which if I go through their entire quest chain, I should be able to reach.  Ramkahen at Uldum has both an epic tanking wrist and the fun camel mounts.  After one week, my time playing WoW will be much more limited, not to mention that today I start my on-call agian.

127/86/69 248lb 99 mg/DL
Milestone 80lb

Day 125 - End of Week 18

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-12-2010 Front

12-12-2010 Side

Now that I'm allowed to have one shot of coffee a day, I've changed my usual 2 eggs breakfast a bit.  I put dietary fiber, protein powder and blend them into a latte.  It actually has more protein (at least 25g of protein vs 14g) than my old formula, and it taste good.  I'm going to have to get some more sweat shorts, another one of my old trusty is not only too big, but the draw string on it broke.

Last night, I got into two different pickup group random heroic dungeon run.  The last one is the most fun I've ever had at dying at Worldcraft.  The group seemed to have high tolerance for wiping against the unknown, so as long as we learn how to do the content.  We draw Heroic Deadmines.  Deadmines was one of the best designed instance in the original World of Warcraft.  In Cataclysm, for maxed level character, it has been updated to Heroic, which means things hits a whole lot harder.  In all, I picked up 2 piece of upgrade loots: Cookie's Tenderizer which despite how it looks is a dream weapon for dual wielding Death Knight.  I'm using it for tanking.  I also pick Foe Reaper, which is a significant upgrade from my quest 2 hander for the Retribution set.

121/82/75 248.4lb 96 mg/DL
Week to Week 3.2lb
Total Weight Loss 79.6lb
Body Mass Index 35.64

Day 124 - Buffet Aftermath

Well, the moment of truth...  As I stepped on the scale after the morning exercise, my weight actually came in lower than yesterday.  It's still higher than Friday, but still better than I expected.

I'm seriously considering doing the exercise when I get home.  That will take my routine to 1 hour of 3.5 miles per hour walking.  Lets see how it works out tomorrow.

115/75/77 249.6lb 92 mg/DL

Day 123 - Lunch at Buffet

Today's the last day of vacation for both my brother and I.  So he decided that he want to take our father out to a restaurant for lunch.  We pick The Odyssey and eat the buffet there.  Now, I just order clam chowder and nibble on the other seafood that they bring.  Perhaps this is not the best of ideas as I still feel very full 5 hours after the lunch.

My character reached the max level last night, and I decided to get some upgradable gears.  Fortunately, I do have enough PVE currency around to upgrade both my head and shoulder armor.  Since I'm revered with  Therazane, I can buy the lower version of the shoulder enchant.  Therazane also sells iLevel 346 rings, so I got those as well.  I also just bought the tanking pants from Earthen Ring faction.

129/89/86 250.4lb 89 mg/DL

Day 122 - Fourth Months Since Surgery

Today is the fourth months since my surgery.  The weight loss is slowing as I would expected.  But I'm happy about my progress.  My main character is currently at level 84, one more level to go.  Unfortunately, Twilight Highland starting quest Aiming High! is bugged, so I guess I'll be spending some time doing Deep Holmes quest to gain reputation for the shoulder enchant.

119/78/63 249.8lb 96 mg/DL
Month 04 14.4lb

Day 121 - Worgen Druid

After the many run of instances yesterday, I decided to closed out the night by leveling the worgen druid and mostly to enjoy the starting zone.  I have both feral and spell caster gear send over to her, and the mail box is literally 30 yards behind the character creation.  The worgen starting quest is fast and good.  I ended at level 7, after my infection curse took place and I was made a worgen.  As good as any spot to finish.  I got her up to level 12 this morning, but the current round of quest appears to be bugged on my server, so I cannot advance any further.

120/78/83 250lb 101 mg/DL

Day 120 - Catacalysm

Sorry about the late post.  Being busy all day with the expansion.  For some mysterious reason, Fry's Electronics wants to do a invoice write up of individual customer before they'll sell the Collector's Edition.  That particular system wasn't working, and I opted just convincing them that they have me on record anyway.

I choose the watery zone of Vashj'ir to start leveling.  Hellfire cease fire that we experience during the first expansion was definitely not around this time.  Some of the quest was not anticipating the sheer number of players involved.  Some pick up item from the floor basically devolved into players clicking as fast as possible.  I saw 30 to 50 players of both faction trying to tag the quest mob.  And of course, standing on top of the quest NPC to provoke accidental attack is a time honored tradition.  Some of my guildy give up questing and opted to just do instance.  I ran through 4 instances: Blackrock Cavern twice, Throne of Tide twice, Vortex Pinnacle 3 times and Stonecore once.  In the order of difficulty, that is the order.  In order for us to queue up using dungeon finder, we have to meet certain criteria, minimum level and gear requirement.  We also have to discover the entrance of the dungeon.  Most of the are easily found, but Stonecore is a bit of a challenge.  You do get send to Deepholme until level 82, and I was tanking BRC and ToT at level 80.  I have to be summoned to outside of Stonecore to get into the instance while at level 81.

I also leveled up the new secondary profession Archaeology a bit.  It's somewhat tedious, and I haven't gotten anything but vendor trash.  It does reward experience point, so it's not a total waste.

113/86/68 250.6lb 89 mg/DL

Day 119 - Annual Donation Drive to Indian Casino

Today is the first day of my week long vacation.  It's also the lastest quarterly followup check with my primary physician.  The numbers from the blood test done last Thursday was good, my Glycated hemoglobin is 5, well in range of 4-6 of my lab.  As a matter of fact, it's my best number ever.  So, I'm officially off Byetta and Metformin.  I'll still have another follow up in 3 months, and if that goes well, my check up will be 6 months after that, and then just annual physical examine.

After the doctor's appointment, I took my brother to the company store to do his office Christmas shopping.  One particular item jump out and he decided to buy 21 of them, thus finishing all of his shopping in one trip.  By the time we got there, the restaurant was switching from breakfast to lunch, so I just have an espresso double shot for breakfast.

And now for the title of this post.  I usually take one week off early in December so I can still accrue vacation time.  This year happens to coincide with the next Warcraft expansion, so it works out well.  On the Monday of every one of these week long vacation, I usually take out the amount of money I'm comfortable donating to the Indian casino and drive there to have lunch and a little bit of gambling.  I call it my annual donation drive to the Indian casino because that's really what's happening.  I go with my usual method of limited action: put the winning into the winning pile, and when the original pile is through, the gaming is done.  I watch as other people come in and casually loose $500 in less than 4 hands.  My little pile of money lasted me about 30 minutes, and I have the exact same amount of money as I started.  At least the Casino didn't loose their shirt on me, as we have lunch there.  No buffet this year as it makes no sense this time around.

118/82/65 250.8lb 96 mg/DL

Day 118 - End of Week 17

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

12-05-2010 Front

12-05-2010 Side

Consider the way my weight behaved all week, I'm happy with the very modest 1.2 pound of weight loss.  More on that later.

126/84/70 251.6lb 93 mg/DL
Week to Week 1.2lb
Total Weight Loss 76.4lb
Body Mass Index 36.10

Day 117 - Another Make Up Post

This is yet another make up post.  I spend so much time yesterday leveling my gnome priest that this daily posting slipped my mind.

Technically my vacation does not start until Monday December 6, so I have some schedule work related task that I have to do.  Lets just say that the work is done, and I considered myself on vacation.

124/92/72/252.4lb 96 mg/DL

Day 116 - New Pants, New Belt, New Stomach Sensation?

I posted this over at DiscussWLS, but worth repeating over here at my own blog.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I tend to wear loose fitting clothing before my surgery, and continue to do so after the surgery inside my own house. With me going through at least 2 different pants size change, I finally dug out older clothing that doesn't have elastic bands around this weekend. I also have to buy new belt, as my current belt will not go with the smaller pants.

I'm day 5 into my new pants/belt experience, and I'm feeling something weird. I've gotten used to how my stomach feel in the past 4 months since surgery. But this current round of clothing change, I'm feeling physically incapable of eating a whole lot more than with my previous clothing. Just tossing this out to see if anyone experience this.

I wrote back in November 27 how farming Mr. Grubbs was different for each one of my max level characters.  Well, Fidie got to  Eastern Plagueland yesterday, and I did the questing normally, not going out of my way to farm creatures for the pet.  The pet dropped out of the third bag of extra loots.

123/89/79 253.4lb 94 mg/DL

Day 115 - On Healing with Gnome Priest in Warcraft

I got my gnome priest up to level 42 last night.  Since I had the dual talent specification bought, I might as well use it to heal as my off spec.  Mind you, when I started in vanilla World of Warcraft, my one and only max level character is my paladin.  Back then, you basically have one option if you raid as paladin, you heal.  I got used to just looking at my Grid raid frame and topping everyone off.  About 6 months into the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, I got burned off from healing, and switched to tanking (Blizzard finally acknowledge that warrior only tank was not an option, and actually made tanking viable option, albeit, on TBC, paladin was pigeonholed into AoE trash pack that was specifically designed for, Mt. Hyjal).  In Wrath of the Lich King, all 3 specs are made viable, so I have my protection spec for raiding, and retribution for my off spec.  My my reckoning, it's been at least 2 to 3 years since I heal in either instance or raid.

I figured that I can probably get into random dungeon finder faster if I queue up as a healer.  And sure enough, I got into Scarlet Monastery Cathedral.  Healing that was not much of an issue, fixing my keybind and Clique setting was.  After getting my feet wet, I went back to shadow to dps in the next queue, Mauradan Princess section.  The rest of the evening is split between questing and queuing up for more instance as healer and fixing the UI.  While I have no problem healing in Uldaman, the last instance I ran in the evening is far more problematic.  Scholomance, is a significant step up in terms of difficulty from everything I've done prior on this character.  For one thing, the trash pack has fearing or knock back ability that will wipe the party.  Crowd control is recommended if you got one in the party.  For another thing, no one in the party except me have actually been to the place before, and I became the party leader to do crowd control and pulling.  We wipe 3 times, but I feel that it's time well spend.

On other news, my weight seemed to be at a standstill this week.  I actually weight 1 more pound than yesterday morning at the scale.  I'll try to drink more water and see what will happen today.  Today is also the day I get my blood drawn in preparation for my quarterly appointment with my primary physician.  Unlike the vitamin test, they only need to draw 3 tubes of blood, and the technician claimed that they were able to spot a juicy vein right away.  Unfortunately for me, she had to prod a bit before finally hitting the vein.   

120/80/74 254lb 92 mg/DL

Day 114 - New Companion Pets

So after the excitement from Monday's failed expansion of food choice, I'm back in the office today.  Unfortunately I forgot my water bottle, which means another opportunity to experiment again.  I'm currently going through the office supplied non-caffeinated tea bags, so I can avoid drinking plain water.  Thus far, if I don't think of them as tea, and just as hot drink with flavor, it works.

For today's lunch, I actually went back to the same restaurant.  Ordered the same thing, except skipping the noodles.  I still feel that I overate, but at least this time is mostly just the soup.

Yesterday, Blizzard introduced 2 new companion pets, Moonkin Hatchling and Lil' Ragnaros.  Seeing that I'm a dedicated pet collector, I bought them as soon as I found out they're in the store.  $5 of the proceeds from the hatchling goes to charity if you don't want to just donate the money to Blizzard.

120/80/77 253lb 90 mg/DL

Day 113 - Vietnamese Noodle Experiment

OK, I walked to a Vietnamese Noodle shop for lunch yesterday.  While I have almost no problem with the meat and the vegetables, the rice noodle turns out to be an bigger issue than I anticipated.  It got so bad that I didn't have dinner as I doubt my system could handle it.  Next time, I'll just ordered it without the noodles and go from there.  For me, I'm only having protein added latte for Breakfast and Korean tofu soup with fish for lunch and dinner.  Enough experiment for this week, and I have things to do next week.

I upped my morning walking pace  from 3.3 MPH to 3.5 MPH.  The adjustment seemed to be a bit hard on me than going from 3.0 MPH to 3.3M MPH.  Lets hope I don't injure myself while doing this. 

I'm having a blast leveling the gnome priest.  It turns out that farming lower level zone for pet is not the best way to level.  Leveling in level appropriate zone really helps.  One more level, and she'll get the shadowform.

122/79/63 253.2lb 96 mg/DL

Day 112 - Gnome Priest

This is Fidie, formerly a dwarf priest I created to hold all of the excess gems from my main character.  With the advent of Shattering, Gnomes now have priest class available.  Fortunately for me, I've already leveled 2 other cloth wearer, so the heirloom gears are already available.  move all of the valuable off from the bank toon to my other bank toon, delete the toon and then recreate the gnome priest.

114/79/76 253.2lb 94 mg/DL

Day 111 - End of Week 16

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

11-28-2010 Front

11-28-2010 Side

Once again, modest improvement on my weight loss this week.  Being that this is holiday weekend, I feel good about the it.  I'll be heading out to get gifts for my co-workers.  Kind of funny that my family do not celebrate Christmas, but I felt obligated to give gifts to my co-workers.

I try something else today for lunch.  I went to the mall and have some Korean BBQ.  I partake some rice and noodles, and for a change, my stomach is not complaining much.  We'll see tomorrow how that pans out.

I'm currently grinding Argent Tournament to get that last couple of pieces of heirloom gears.  I'm actually thinking about consolidate my alts and delete my gem priest for her spot for my gnome priest.  Good thing I have a guild bank alt that's her own guild master.



111/77/77 252.8lb 95 mg/DL
Week to Week 4lb
Total Weight Loss 75.2lb
Body Mass Index 36.27

Day 110 - Grinding Rep

Day 5 of Patch 4.0.3a.  After 3 different character got their Mr. Grubbs in 30 minutes or less, my warlock took 3 hours of solid farming in Eastern Plagueland to get hers.  My main character, Dianora is already maxed out with Justice Point and reputation with Worgen faction.  Now it's time to grind all other characters.  After that, I'm most likely going to re-do all of the quests before Catacalysm.

So after fitting with the old-new pants, I realized that I need new belt.  My previous observation is that I probably need belt size 44-46.  There is no such size.  So I opted for 42-44.  It's a bit tighter than I'm used to, and the belt is lodged at the first notch.  But that shouldn't be an issue for much longer.

126/84/81 253.2lb 86 mg/DL

Day 109 - Black Friday 2010

So Black Friday is upon us.  Normally if I want to shop for anything, I'd just shop online and avoid the headache of finding parking.  This year, I truly need new clothing, as my old one are not only falling apart, but way too large.  I may have to break my tradition and go into shop.

2 thoughts after I came back from shopping:

1. I'm almost ready to leave the big & tall store for my clothing, but not quit.  Currently my pants size is about 46, right at the edge.  I still can't find underpants of that size easily at normal store.
2. I can shop for shirts at normal store.  

I bought 6 shirts for work from Target and 8 underpants from the big & tall.  I'll buy the undershirts from Costco tomorrow.  I'm buying them not only because my current clothes are badly oversize.  They're literally falling apart, and I really need replacement.  In a couple of months, I fully expect to be buying new pants (though the shirt I can probably survive).

Surprisingly enough, my weight in number today is actually lower than yesterday.

112/78/61 254lb 87 mg/dl

Day 108 - Thanksgiving 2010

Sorry, this post came 1 day late.  I was busy leveling my main character's reputation with the new worgen faction and having fun getting new pets for all of my toons.

We didn't have a whole turkey this year.  Instead, we opted for seasoned turkey breast from Costco and cook everything else.  My NuWave got used to bake asparagus and the turkey breast.  I had 1 slice of turkey,with mash potato, gravy and 2 asparagus for lunch.  For dinner, I skipped the asparagus, as it was too fibrous.  We didn't have that much turkey left, so my brothers cooked up a pot of sweet and sour soup.  We'll see how much weight this adds up to.

112/76/62 255.8lb 96 mg/DL

Day 107 - Coffee!

So in our support meeting yesterday, I was told by the dietitian that I should be able to have 1 cup of coffee a day.  Making the most of it, I'm spending it on my morning latte (albeit, I probably need to pre-mix the milk and the protein powder).

The Shattering yesterday of Azeroth from patch 4.0.3a actually went a whole lot smoother than I anticipated.  By the time I got home, the server was up, and fairly stable.  The only mod that was badly broken was Routes which is not a daily use mod.  Of course I tried to check out as many new thing as I can, but my priority is to get the newest thing around, and that of course is the Singing Sunflower (or Brazie's Sunflower, the naming is inconsistent.  It's Singing Sunflower on the spell book, but Brazie's Sunflower when you put it on the action bar).  Took me forever to find it.

Here's what it looks like:

Yes, she sings (by Laura Shigihara) and cute as a button.

125/91/83 257lb 96 mg/DL

Day 106 - The Shattering

Last night was my guild's final official raid for Wrath of the Lich King.  We had 4 bosses left in Icecrown Citadel, and we managed to one shot everything, even the bosses that we only managed to kill in heroic mode 2 weeks ago.  I picked up heroic Last Word as my last piece of main spec upgrade.  With the exception of my cloak, Relic and 2 trinket, all of my gears are now iLevel 277.  With this coming week being Thanksgiving, and the Cataclysm expansion in 2 weeks, this seemed to be the place to call it quit in so far as guild raid goes.  It's a good way to close out this expansion.

As expected, The Shattering, breaking of Azeroth occurs today, which means for the extended server side outage, all of the old world texture are getting switched (this is so that players can continue to play on the first second of the expansion).  I parked my main character Dianora at the inn at Goldshire, as Stormwind was under elemental invasion when I logged out.  I left all of the rest of my character back at Northrend as I still need their Argent Tournaments tokens.

Day 105 - Preparing to Level Druid Alt

We have 2 weeks left until the expansion.  I'm trying to save Justice point for when my main character reaches level 85, so I'm using Argent Tournament token to get Heirloom items.  It has just dawn on me that my druid alt set is not complete.  I have the Feral set, but no spell power set.  I think I have enough money at 26k gold that I can stop working for that, and start working towards Preened Ironfeather Shoulders and Preened Ironfeather Breastplate.  Since patch 4.0.1, you get bonus for wearing the class appropriate gears.

123/91/90 256.6lb 97 mg/DL

Day 104 - End of Week 15

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

11-21-2010 Front

11-21-2010 Side

Modest improvement this week. Changing up the pace of the walking is starting to work.  I'm definitely going to need more new under shirt ad pants sooner than later.

Went to the shop and looked at the belt.  I'm currently in-between sizes in terms of the belt.  Guess I'll go ahead and punch that hole after all.

Today is another day of expanding my horizon.  I've knew that I can eat sashimi for a while, today is the first day I have a chance to try it out.  As it turns out, I didn't know the serving size of the restaurant, so naturally, I over ordered and over ate.  The fish is delicious though.

118/90/80 256.8lb 94 mg/DL
Week to Week 4.4lb
Total Weight Loss 71.2lb
Body Mass Index 36.84

Day 103 - Death of Pre-Catalysm Guild Raid

A month ago, I wrote that with the advent of patch 4.0.1, Pick up Group raid is all but dead.  Well, with the advent of patch 4.0.3 this week, and the expansion 2 weeks away, it would seem that even the guild raid is going the way of the pug raid.  Which is a shame since we have one more person that's just waiting for his post Shadowmourne Lich King kill to distribute his loots.  We may have to ditch hard mode just to give him his just reward.

Went to the barber to get my hair cut.  While she confirm that I'm not loosing any hair (as far as she can tell), she did told me that my head is a lot smaller.  Didn't know I can store so much fat under my scalp.

Oh, today I cross the 70lb line.  All the while I ramp up my walking routine to 3.3 mph while doing it for 30 minutes.

117/84/80 257.6lb 99 mg/DL
Milestone 70lb

Day 102 - Din Tai Fung

Well, if all goes well, I'll be taking 2 of my co-worker back to Din Tai Fung Dumpling House in Arcadia.  One of them have already been there, and it'll be a first experience for the other.  The dumpling there is one of the best (if not the best) in all of Los Angeles.  Yes, in all likelyhood, I won't be eating dumpling, but it's more for them than it's for me.  I'll probably just stick to soup, which is also excellent.

Well, that plan didn't panned out.  Unexpected scheduling conflict means that only I get to go.  Had spicy beef soup (which is basically Spicy Beef Noodle minus the Noodle).  Next time, I'll go for the Hot and Sour Soup.  I did buy some take out for the guys at the office.

120/90/65 258.2lb 100 mg/DL

Day 101 - Protein Smoothie

Back in week 3, I went to my local Vitamin Shoppe to restock on my protein shake.  Even back then, I was getting too familiar with the taste of the shakes.  For alternative, I bought a tub of Muscle Milk protein powder and all but forgot about it until this week.  My brother tried it with hot water, espresso shot and it comes out tasting funny.  This morning, I use Magic Bullet to blend my smoothie, except I added 1 full scoop of Muscle Milk, and for added madness, I added my dietary fiber powder into the mix.  The smoothie comes out very thick, but the taste is very much agreeable.  That's another 25 gram of protein that I can add into my diet.

The heat treatment helps a bit on my back muscle.  Even now, I'm wearing a ThermaCare Heatwraps, which isn't too hot, but does contain enough heat to help mew with the pain.  For added measure, I've added Fish Oil (for Omega 3) back into my morning vitamin intake.  
  
124/86/68 259.8lb 104 mg/DL

Day 100 - Back Pain

So the back pain that I'm been having the past 3 weeks is getting worse.  It's just a small localized area at my back just below my right rib.  The last doctor I saw determined that it wasn't kidney, as I have no difficulty or pain in urinating.

I'm not unfamiliar with back pain, having suffered them off and on for years.  I'm pretty sure this time it's because the way I sit either at home or at the office.  So right now, I'm going to make concerted effort on fully utilizing my seat back and sit correctly.  I'm also thinking about taking some of the old supplements that I've stop taking since my surgery (Move Free and Fish Oil). 

Yesterday, not enough people show up to warren attempt at heroic Sindragosa.  Since we have more than enough people for tanking Lich King, I ask to bring my warlock so she can have the 25 man raid achievement.  Didn't contribute much, she didn't make it out of the first transition, but still get the title.

124/86/82 260lb 98 mg/DL

Day 99 - Sweet Potato

Since I posted on DiscussWSL Forum on Beth in Texas's weekly weight-in, I might as well post my own week by week progress both in the sidebar.

Onto the revised topic of the day.  Over the weekend, I ask my brother who's doing his weekly Chinese market shopping trip to get me some yam and sweet potato.  I'm not exactly sure what he got, but he got 2 different  types yams and  2 sweet potatoes.  Despite what my other brother warn me, I went ahead and roast one of the yam on the convection oven.  It took 40 minutes, and the result is a wee bit dry, but very delicious purple hydrocarbon.  Next time, I'll listen to him and steam it instead.

118/76/67 261lb 104 mg/DL

Day 98 - Plateau 2

So it would appear that I'm hitting the another plateau on my weight loss program.  I've upped my daily walking routine to 30 minutes, up 5 minutes from just a week ago, and I'm not having any physical issues.  Even my walk this morning gave me a nice warm feeling all over.  Unfortunately, that has not translated to weight loss.  I've hit plateau before, and I'll get over this one as well.

Ok, for lunch, I bought these Healthy Coice Steaming Entrees from Ralph.  One of them is Chicken Romano Fresca with whole grain pasta and romano cheese and butter glaze.  You can probably figure out what's wrong with that meal with me.  Yep, even whole grain pasta does not agree with my small pouch stomach, and my body is currently rebelling against my choice.  Lesson learned.

128/84/74 261.8lb 100 mg/DL

Day 97 - End of Week 14

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

11-14-2010 Front

11-14-2010 Side

Not as much progress as last week, but progress none the less.  I went back to my routine of cemetery -> lunch yesterday, and sad to say, I over ate at lunch (Korean tofu).  This time I didn't bother with rice, but I must've over ate the kimchee.  At dinner, the rest of the family was having rice gruel, which in Chinese cooking is simply rice and lots of water.  As I understand it, the reason why WLS patients were having so much problem with certain carbohydrate is that they expand in our small pouch stomach.  Since rice in the gruel is already expanded, I figure I shouldn't have much of an issue eating it.  At one bowl of the gruel and had some canned sardine and tuna.  No discomfort at all.  So my theory work out.

This morning, I decided to up my morning walk to 30 minutes, and no discomfort as well.  Last night was not a cold as during the week, but taking no chances, I turn on the space heater in my room. 


127/89/76 261.2lb 96 mg/DL
Week to Week 1.8lb
Total Weight Loss 66.8lb
Body Mass Index 37.47

Day 96 - Vitamin D

One of the thing that bother me about my last doctor's appointment was the problem with iron and vitamin D level in my blood.  I was taking 18mg of iron a day, and as far as I know, normal dosage.  well, that doesn't appear to be enough.  Fortunately, it was my refill time at the chewable suppliments, and I find the next step up, 29mg iron.  After I track down the over the counter coated iron pill, I discovered that it is 60mg.  Eating 2 pills won't cut it, so my daily dosage is now 87mg of iron.

On vitamin D, they actually give me a perscription.  I was havig problem deciphering the dosage, so I just took it into my local pharmacy.  It came back as 50k unit of Vitamin D for a weekly dosage.  My chewable version provides 1k unit of Vitamin D, so using that to make up the difference is out of the question.  Looks like I'm taking the gelcap pill.

137/84/73 260.8lb 88 mg/DL

Day 95 - Fat As Insulation

This is a re-edited version of a forum post on DiscussWLS.

I've noticed that as my weight decreases, the fat I'm loosing are causing some issues.  First off, I felt a lot colder than I'm used to.  When I sleep, just between the blanket and my own fat, I was able to get comfortable in my own bed.  The last couple of days belay that a bit.  It gets far longer to get the bed warm, and going to the bathroom at night felt a whole lot more uncomfortable.

The second insulation is the fat from my butts.  Due to my work, I sat in a chair for at least 15 hours a day.  I use Aeron chair both at the office and at home.  Just mere weeks after the surgery, I start to feel the tail bone discomfort that I never knew was there in the first place.  The forum suggest I tried getting a medical seat cushion, perhaps I can look into that.  (The medical supply stores all seemed to be in the business of selling motorized wheelchair for medicare, so my hope for them carrying what I need is low).

Yesterday is a non-raiding day, so I tried something different.  On Maintankadin forum there was a discussion regarding dungeons that can be run solo for making money.  Someone mentioned that Magtheridon is supposed to be easy to solo.  I tried with the suggested talent and glyph.  After my 6th wipe, I give up and went over to Karazhan for my weekly Fiery Warhorse farming.  Of course it didn't drop, but I decided to recoup some of my money by finishing as many of the rest of the instance as I can to get some money.  I got Attumen, Moroes, Maiden of Virtue, The Big Bad Wolf of the Opera Event.  And decided to farm Ghostly Philanthropist, which used to drop 11g per mob.  But Blizzard have completely removed the money drop from these mobs.  I was able to break even with the Karazhan farming.



120/83/83 260.8lb 96 mg/dl

Day 94 - Making Money for the Expansion

With the expansion 3 weeks away, and we're chasing down the last bit of achievement before the race to the max level began anew, I'm actually low on things to do in game.  I've stopped doing the daily heroic all together.  I've run the fishing quest if it's not the hated The Ghostfish.  One thing I have resume recently is to do the Argent Crusade faction daily quest.  The money is good for 30 minutes of work.  All of my toons are capable of soloing all of it, including Threat From Above.  And the added bonus is that every 4 days, I get to buy a faction only pet that I can sell on the neutral auction house for more money.  Thus far, I've upped my bankroll for the expansion to 18k gold. 

134/83/74 262.2lb 97 mg/DL

Day 93 - Nutritional Label on the Box Lies

OK, maybe lying is too strong of a word, but at least misleading.  I like drinking coffee and caffeinated drink.  I like the Costco bottled diet ice tea.  Both of which I stop drinking on Saturday morning August 7 2010 at 12:01 AM (yes, I have my lost shot of espresso right as I start my 2 days of pre-op clear liquid diet).  Fortunately for me, I'm not physically addicted to caffeine. I suffered no withdraw symptom, but the urge to drink them still exist (I'm surrounded by the coffee machine both at home and at the office, where they feed you quality coffee as a means to get through the day).  3 weeks ago, I started adding Crystal Light to my bottle water, and my water intake increased.  On Monday, as I sat in the off site meeting, I discovered that one of the Crystal Light packet contains as much (if not more) caffeine as a can of coke.  After I got home, I double check the nutritional label on the box, and sure enough, absolutely no mention of caffeine

So, my lesson to myself and to whoever that's reading this is:  be careful of the buzzword on the box.  The Wild Strawberry and Citrus Splash are prefixed with words like Focus and Energy.  Chances are they have caffeine, and for those of us still getting used to our new stomach, best avoid it until much later.

Edited on Saturday 11-13-10...  Ok, I went back and re-read the box again.  Caffeine is listed.  However, you'll have to read really carefully to find it.

On a happier note, the redemption code for Smoldering Murloc Egg from Blizzcon LiveStream was mailed to me, and I bind it to my account.  When I get home for the remainder of my ICC25 raid, I should be able to parade around with that cute Murloc around.

126/86/71 262.6lb 93 mg/DL

Day 92 - 11/12 Hard Mode Done

After a long long day (woke up at 4, drive 90 minutes to off site meeting, standing in the cold wind for 40 minutes, drive back that took 2 hours), I realized that I was not in any condition to do my 25 minutes of walk yesterday.  Well, no point in crying over spill milk.

Yesterday, we took our latest shot at Heroic Sindragosa.  It was a long and hard fight.  But with enough people finally listening to the instruction (stop casting when you're about to blow up on everyone around), we finally got her down.  We're now 11/12 hard mode boss down for the expansion (kind of odd that we're still chasing these 4 weeks before the next expansion), but good for the guild none the less.  We got 2 shots in at heroic Lich King and his 105 million health.  After trying to call it a night on normal Lich King, we have 1 spot open, and sold the 25 man achievement for 2k gold for the guild bank.

136/90/85 264lb 98 mg/DL
Month 03 15.4lb

Day 91 - Offsite Meeting

Not a lot to talk about.  I have an offsite meeting 54 miles away from my house.  Going through two separate traffic congestion point through the rush hour isn't my idea of fun.

The drive as it turns out wasn't too bad, though I leave the house at 5:30AM.  However, due to some snafu, the offsite location wasn't informed of our arrival. Good thing I brought my coat, standing in the cold drizzling rain wasn't my idea of fun.  The breakfast offered by the meeting contain stuff I can't eat (bagels and muffins).  I opted to get my own breakfast, eggs and sausage.  Once again, whenever I ate out for the first time, I have a tendency of  over eating.
 
131/81/74 264.2lb 97 mg/DL

Day 90 - End of Week 13

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

11-07-2010 Front

11-07-2010 Side

Another week, and we're on the last day of my on-call.  Today is the end of daylight saving, odd, I woke up at my usual time, and for me, that's 4AM this morning.

My 3rd month appointment with surgeon was this past Friday.  For some reason, my iron and vitamin D level are too low, with my current chewable vitamins and supplements.  I'll need to go to the pharmacy to find out just how much I'm supposed to take.

Yesterday's dinner was the beef noodle soup minus the noodle.  I only have enough stomach for about 1/2 of the soup, and the rest will be my lunch.  At least I have no adverse effect from that meal. 

119/81/65 263lb 101 mg/DL
Week to Week 6.4lb
Total Weight Loss 65lb
Body Mass Index 37.73

Day 89 - MacRib

Yesterday, I was fresh out of idea for lunch. I ran out of my spicy tofu, and being on-call, I don't have the luxury of going too far out for lunch.

I decided to try MacRib, since it is available from a MacDonald's a block from my office, and I've never tried it before. I eat it the way I eat all sandwich now, using the bread as cutting board for the meat. No idea what was actually in the meet, but it's serviceable. I had more trouble eating the french fries than the meet in the sandwich. Note to myself, skip the fries in the future.

Had some marathon work related calls to make this morning, took all of my morning. Since my surgical teams suggest that I walk 30 minutes, I opted to increase my walk time this morning to 25 minutes. Baby steps.

114/81/66 264.2 94 mg/DL

Day 88 - Token

Last night, Kasukabe, my warlock went to a ICC25 pug raid. We wipe three times. Twice on Professor. The off tank was unclear on the concept of how to drive abomination, and by the time we got the professor down to 48%, the entire room is filled with slime. By the second wipe, it was clear that we cannot do the boss with the raid composition. I can do the abomination tanking, but I was also the second highest damage dealer, and removing me won't help the situation.

I was able to pick up a Conqueror's Mark of Sanctification, and bought the Sanctified Dark Coven Shoulderpads. Thus, my little warlock's current wardrobe is of consistent coloring. Here's what she looks like now:



117/90/68 265.8lb 101 mg/DL

Day 87 - Chasing the Achievements

We're half way through our scheduled weekly raid.  Yes, none of this matters in 4 weeks, but within the last 2 weeks, we've managed to slay heroic version of Professor 3 times, including last night.  Things were going so well, we actually have an full hour of time to spend working on Heroic Sindragosa.  We got to phase 3 twice.  On Monday, we'll have at least 2 hours of quality raiding time on her.

114/76/69 266lb 95 mg/DL

Day 86 - Getting Resistance Exercise into My Daily Routine

I was introduced to the resistance exercise  last week's support group.  Other than 2 of the routines involving knee bending, I should be able to do the rest of routine.  Unfortunately I've been having problem adding them to my routine.

123/85/74 266lb 97 mg/DL

Day 85 - Bruise

Odd thing about bruise.  Last Friday, on my blood test, the technician punctured my vein through and through before pulling back enough to draw the blood.  I was certain that I'll get a decent size bruise at the site.  Oddly enough, 4 days later, I can't even find the puncture.

This morning, I noticed that one of the places that I use for injecting Byetta has a dime size bruise, with the puncture at the center.  That's one slight negative on this weight loss, I really cannot find any pain free area to do the injection.  Hopefully in 2 months, I'll be off that medication.

Oh, yesterday, I switched over to my long sleeve shirts.  Not the best day for doing that, since we're unseasonably warm right now.

On the work front, the on-call only woke me up at 1AM this morning.  Only took 30 minutes of sleep away from me.

As for dreams, last night I dream of World of Warcraft Cataclysm leveling, even though I'm not in beta program this round around.  We had a less painful night of raiding last night, managed to get Heroic Professor in 3 pulls.  We got a couple of shot at Heroic Sindragosa before we give up and finish the rest of the content in normal mode.  I'm still collecting gears for my Retribution spec in anticipation for the leveling.

123/82/74 268lb 99 mg/DL

Day 84 - 60 Pounds Lost

So, I've officially lost 60 pound today.  I can walk much further than prior to surgery.  I still have a very messed up sense of hunger.  60 pound.  And we're half way through the honeymoon period of weight loss.

I woke up 1 hour early.  It would appear that being on-call and sleep does not agree with each other.

I think I can safely avoid French Onion Soup for lunch in the future.  It just does not agree with me.

134/90/76 268lb 95 mg/DL
Milestone 60lb

Day 83 - End of Week 12

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

10-31-2010 Front

10-31-2010 Side

I've been on the 3 MPH 20 minutes morning walk for a week.  My thigh muscles are a bit sore, but otherwise, I have no problem with stamina of doing the exercise.  I will have another follow up with surgeon on next Friday, hopefully the vitamin blood test number comes in ok.

And tomorrow morning, I'll actually be on-call earlier than usual, the person currently on-call have a doctor's appointment that they cannot get out of.

I got bored this weekend, and actually finish up my mage's Blackwing Lair attunement quest.  It was so easy, I decided to do the same on my warlock, who has more survivable abilities.  

122/78/63 269.4 96mg/DL
Week to Week 2.6lb
Total Weight Loss 58.6lb
Body Mass Index 38.65

Day 82 - Make up Post

For some reason I completely missed the post yesterday.  This is what I would've said had I remember to post.

This week is my last day of none on-call week.  Next week, I'm back on-call, which means next Saturday, I won't be making the trip to Rose Hills.  I usually use that opportunity to go to eat things that's normally out of my day to day meal routines.  The last 3 weeks, I've been experimenting with Korean Tofu soup.  I tolerated them fine.  Today, however, I decided to add some plain white rice into the mix.  This did not go well.  I'm not ready for that yet.

122/82/62 268.2lb 100 mg/DL

Day 81 - Food on the Run

I have my vitamin blood test done this morning (or as I like to call it, 12 tubes jamboree, even though they only took 10).  I've thought by loosing 58lbs I'd be an easier draw, especially considering how much water I've been consuming.  I was wrong of course.  After the first technician wrap and check for suitable vein on both arm, she settled on my right.  After trying it with the standard needle, it hit no vein, but plenty of nerve.  So, technician #2 step and wrap my left arm.  At first, I thought that wasn't going to hit it as well, but she probed and probed and finally withdraw the needle a bit, and settled in my vein.  Even though she hit the vein, the needle went though it.  It was a wee bit painful, and I'll most likely going to have bruise for a couple of days.

Due to me being late for work following the blood work at the clinic, and the fasting it required, I didn't eat anything for breakfast.  Went to Jack in the Box and order a breakfast sandwich.  Didn't eat the bread, but the sausage and the egg.  Note to myself, I definitely CANNOT eat 2 breakfast sausage. 

112/79/58 268.4lb 97 mg/DL

Day 80 - Clothings 2

I noticed today that I actually went down another notch on my belt.  I wasn't conscientiously trying to tighten the belt, but it just happened that way.  This would be the 4th notch down since the surgery, another measurement to go by on my progress.

122/88/81 268.4lb 96 mg/DL

Day 79 - Clothings

As I mentioned back on October 18, I don't like shopping for clothing.  Even back when I wasn't overweight, I didn't like shopping for clothing.  After I became overweight, it's mainly for replacing clothing that I've outgrown or clothing that has fallen apart.  When I dress, unless there's a special event that demands different dress code, it's usually the next shirt on the closet rack.

As I'm heading towards the end of my third months post surgery, I'm coming up to a problem.  I usually switch from wearing short sleeves shirts to long sleeves shirts after Halloween.  My summer shirts was still in pretty good shape, albeit, they're a couple of sizes too big, and I've only been wearing them for 3 years.  My winter shirts is in terrible shape.  I've been wearing them for at least 7 years.  They are threadbare and falling apart.  The problem is that I have at least 3 more months of golden weight loss to go, and whatever I buy now it'll most likely not going to fit.  It certainty won't fit when I get to my initial target weight of 180lb.

117/85/84 268.6lb 93 mg/DL

Day 78 - Finishing Up Achievement before Cataclysm

So we spend 3 hours last night fighting 2 bosses.  Professor Putricide Heroic mode and The Lich King normal mode.  We've already killed The Lich King numerous times, so that wasn't our priority as the end boss of the Plague Wing.  3 hours of little mistakes of various type.  I racked up over 150 gold repair bill, spend 8 fish feast.  But we got him on the last pull on Heroic mode.  Nothing drop for me, of course.

Prior to going into Icecrown Citadel, I ran all 4 of my 80s through the holiday boss, Headless Horseman in hope for goodies.  Dianora walked away empty handed still, but Ogiue did scored the much desired The Horseman's Reins.  Now I just need one for my main character.  Kasukabe, my gnome warlock went into a Vault of Archavon to get the last remaining piece of loot of interest from there, Sanctified Dark Coven Leggins.  It dropped, but the other warlock win the roll.  I bought it for 1900 gold, which is a good deal all around.  I'm into completing a set, and now I have 3 piece Sanctified, and all but my shoulder is iLevel 264 gear.  Who care if it'll be replace in 6 weeks.  The other warlock got enough gold to buy old world flying skill.

I tried green onion pancake again this morning, 1/2, heated via toaster oven.  For some reason, I didn't take to it as well as I did 2 weeks ago.  I was in such a hurry getting out of my house, that I forgot my pack lunch.  Thus, when lunch time comes today, I went out to an Italian restaurant I haven't ate for months, Pinocchio.  Once again, this is a time of trial and error.  I ordered 2 Italian sausage with potato salad.  As I've said, I have the sensation of what I perceive as hunger.  What I don't have is fullness.  At least I know how much I can order from here in the future, just 1 Italian sausage.  

132/89/78 269.2lb 96 mg/DL

Day 77 - Pills

I'm currently taking 1 prescription pill (Metformin) and 1 prescription injection (Byetta). I crush the Metformin into fine powder and take it with water, and take my injection as normal. The rest of the supplements I take are in chewable or dis-solvable tablets. Yesterday, after enduring 2 days of constipation, I went and bought laxative pills from local pharmacy. The instruction was quit clear on NOT crushing or grind the coated pills.  Last night when I took it prior to going to sleep.  Stupidly, I took both pills with a health dose of water.  For the longest time (3 hours) I thought the pill have stucked.  This morning, when I woke up, I still felt the same thing.  The pills are working, since my bowel finally release its content in the morning, and I was able to eat the breakfast without difficulty.  But still, a somewhat unpleasant experience.

Today is the 2nd day of extending my morning walk from 0.625 miles to 0.75 miles.  If this goes well, I might want to push it to 1 miles in 2 weeks.

120/89/83 270.8lb 96 mg/DL

Day 76 - End of Week 11

08-07-2010 Front

08-07-2010 Side

10-24-2010 Front

10-24-2010 Side

I adjusted my morning treadmill routine by adding additional 5 minutes.  I now do 20 minutes a morning.  Thus far, no ill effect.  I clearly can do it.

Last night, Swift Razzashi Raptor dropped off from Bloodlord Mandokir from Zul'Gurub 20 man instance from Vanilla World of Warcraft.  I've already gotten Swift Zulian Tiger from High Priest Thekal.  As the raid instance will cease to exist, and will turn into an outdoor questing area come Cataclysm, this marks the end of my mount farming of this zone.  Here's what the mount looks like for me:

131/89/68 272lb 105 mg/DL
Week to Week 2.4 lb
Total Weight Loss 56lb
Body Mass Index 39.02