Okay, I know - I'm not a year out. I'm not even eleven months out.
Nonetheless, I had my one-year follow-up on March 4. I was in New Haven for a conference, and it seemed smart to make an appointment while I was in town.
My last follow-up was on June 30th for a two-month visit, and I was not happy when I left. They didn't seem to be very happy with my progress. Even though I was exercising a lot and eating 500-800 calories a day, I was told to eat less and move more. I left the appointment more confused than ever about how to make my surgery work.
This visit was markedly different. According to their scales, I was 185.0. There were compliments all around. Of course, they also admonished me to watch my weight and labs very closely. My surgeon advised me not to become complacent and allow weight to creep back on. I've already been through the slow regain thing before, and I'll do whatever I can to avoid it.
My surgeon asked me if I had an ultimate goal weight (phrased in such a way that he was asking for my "dream weight" more than anything touched by realism.) I gave him my random goal weight of 152, which is half of my surgery starting weight of 304, and would give me a high-normal BMI of 24.2. He actually said that I could even go into the 140s (?!), but tempered that by raising the excess skin issue. He didn't give me any specific goals, but he mentioned that 170 might be reasonable, considering that I'm likely to have 15+ pounds of excess skin.
For now, I'm sticking with my 152-156 goal including the excess skin. I see my body. There's a lot of fat left on it that I should be able to lose before heading to the plastic surgeon's table.
This is a side note, but I recently read that BMI is not a good way of determining optimal health for African Americans, particularly African-American women. Apparently, black women tend not to show negative health consequences of a high BMI until it's over 38. Hmm.
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