prepping for surgery!

Surgery is only 25 days away! I can't believe it's almost here.

In preparation for surgery I've done a few things recently:  I had a physical (all is A-OK!), got my blood work done (didn't hear back yet) and I got my RMR tested.

So, RMR testing. If you don't know what that is, it stands for Resting Metabolic Rate. Basically, it's the amount of calories you burn by simply just existing in the world. You then factor in your activity level and that gives you the number of calories you should eat per day in order to maintain your weight. If you want to lose weight, you then subtract how ever many calories you need to in order to lose weight each week (3,500 calories=1 pound). Sometimes weight loss surgery messes with the metabolism making it slower than normal. Since I still want to lose a few pounds before surgery, I decided to have it tested. Then I can figure out how many calories I should be eating in order to get to my goal.

The test involves breathing through the mouth, while your nose is closed, into a small device that measures your oxygen consumption. The dietitian then inputs the resulting RMR into a program in order to generate a report for me. The test was easy, but strange. I'm not a mouth-breather, so I didn't like having a clamp on my nose and being forced to breathe through my mouth. I really had to concentrate on my breathing in order to not panic. I also couldn't swallow all the saliva that was collecting in my mouth, so that was fun. When the dietitian took the mouthpiece out I basically drooled all over myself.

It turns out my metabolism hasn't been affected, at least not that I know of, and I'm really happy about that. Actually, it's faster than I thought it would be and that's likely because I've built muscle through strength training; muscle burns more calories than fat. My RMR is 2,100 calories. So, I burn 2,100 calories just by living. If I factor in my activity level, I need about 2,300 calories to maintain my current weight. However, activity level was difficult to determine, because I'm doing strength training and not cardio, which is what all the websites use. I fall in between light and moderate activity, so we're going with about 2,100 calories to maintain. Since I want to lose two pounds a week (preferably more!), I need to cut 1,000 calories a day to total 7,000 calories a week (that equals two pounds per week lost).

So, the final result?  My diet is staying right where it is for the next few weeks:  1,200 calories a day.  All I have to do is stick to my calorie budget and I'll lost the weight.

Now I need to buy my post-surgical garment AKA sausage casing...