Friday, October 26, 2007

I had my appointment at Mercy today!

So I went to Mercy Capital (formerly Des Moines General) for my appointment today at 8am. Marsha weighed me and did my BMI (Body Mass Index) and measured me. She said they'll re-calculate everything at about each 25 pound mark. Hopefully that means just under once a month!

I then met with the dietitian, Amy. Amy was awesome! We're planning on getting together soon to have her go thru my cupboards and fridge with me and look at my food choices (most of the food is my roommate's). She's also talking about coming over to cook a meal with me. I love to cook! She's also talking about going grocery shopping with me to see what I buy then to show me some tips and alternatives and whatnot. She was a blast. We had an immediate rapport. She's going on maternity leave in like 8 weeks and she said she's going to ask her boss if she can still come in to meet with me while on leave because she wants to see me succeed and because of our good rapport. That's awesome! That's support!
She gave me options:
I can go on the Opti-fast program (I think that's the one where they replace all of your meals with shakes and bars). Or I could do the Opti-trim program (I think that's the one where they replace like 2 of your meals with shakes and bars but you get to have one self-prepared meal). The other option was to continue to do prepare meals myself like I've been doing the last month but this time to have the support of Amy, the dietitian.
I'm totally leaning to doing it on my own. The Opti-fast program (again, I could be switching the two names around) where they replace all meals seems like a step back for me since I've lost so much on my own in 30 days by cooking for myself just with healthy food.
The Opti-trim option sounded ok because it would still allow me to have some 'real' food.
I think the option where I continue to prepare my own food is best as long as I learn about nutrition from Amy.

I then went on to meet with the doctor. He gave me a good once-over. Checked some things out, etc. I normally hate going to the doctor, but Doctor Sutcliffe was cool. He was a bit camera shy, but cool. I think he was a bit surprised at my being as healthy as I am for being overweight my whole life and eating as bad as I was.

I then went to a behavior class. See, Mercy has a great thing going here....they're helping you in all aspects: body AND mind. You have to learn why you got to the point that you're at and how to not go back to that point. There were 4 ladies in the class. I think that they were a bit put off by me initially (well me and the camera). I dunno, I just felt a vibe. I probably would have been as well. Maybe they weren't and it was all just my feeling being out of whack. Anyway, 3 of the 4 women chose to not be recorded audio or video-wise. They seemed to warm up to me a bit, I think. I imagine that it's hard to have a guy in the room let alone a brand new guy and a camera. I think that they warmed up to me, though when they saw that I was genuine and doing this to actually lose weight and not on a lark (What am I 60? Did I just say 'on a lark'??).

I then went to Mercy Hospital to meet with the personal trainer, Debbie. She took me on a tour of the facilities. She wanted to do the stress test thing where they have you ride a bike for so long, and check your bicep strength, and check your reach, but nobody had told me to bring clothes to work out in, so she didn't want me doing it in jeans. I'm going to go in on Monday morning at 7am to do that. We're then going to meet on Wednesday morning bright and early to begin my regimen followed up with Friday morning! Yowza! I might even walk Tuesday and Thursday on the bike trail or go to 24/7 Xpress by my house to walk. We'll see.
Oh yeah, Debbie let me know that the Mercy Wellness Center is open 6am-1am so there's no excuse for not working out! She's going to start meeting with me 3 days a week, then eventually 2 days a week, then eventually 1 day a week. We're going to be doing a mix of cardio and strength training. I can't wait to hit the weights again! I used to lift a lot on my own back when I was in school. I had a weight bench in the basement.

I didn't leave there until 1:30 or 2 pm! Then back to work! It was a great day! It was cool because Mercy's press guy had been Sonya Heitshusen's news director in the past! Apparently, as Sonya put it, there's life after TV. You go on to do press relations stuff like Gregg is doing. Gregg was a great guy and really made me feel welcome and let me know many times that they're there to help me and for me to take advantage of it all.
I'm excited to get it started!

So, how much do I weigh now after a month of doing it on my own?! What's my BMI?! That gets its own blog!

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