Water Retention and More Weight Lost than I thought !

I finally got to go to the doctor today to find out about this water retention in my left leg and go have some lab work done to check my nutrient levels.
First of all I got GREAT news ;) Well great now, but it wouldn't have been so great in January had I known :) My doctor looked at my chart after the nurse marked my weight for today in it and said "you've lost 63 pounds since January, Helen ! That's remarkable !" I sat there dumbfounded at first. Then I said "what???? 63 ??? Are you sure??" He laughed and said "yes, your weight when you were here in January was 63 pounds higher than today!!" I thought it was just 50 !!
My old antique scales I was using when I first started in January showed me at 13 pounds less starting out so it was 13 pounds off ! (I got a great set of digital scales since then). I am SOOO glad I didn't know I'd gotten all the way back up to that then, but it sure sounds good now to say I've lost 62 pounds instead of 50 !
The girl who took my blood for the lab work kept going on and on about how good I look and how great I've done with losing weight. The office was a-buzz about it :) Boy did that feel great ;)
And about the water retention issue:
I showed him my leg and told him about Weight Watchers and my online support lists and all the working out I've been doing lately. He looked at my leg and said "oh yeah, you could have at least 10 pounds of water there! " He said some people just retain a lot more water than others and especially during all the heat and humidity we've had lately. He said also with all the working out I've been doing lately that I've been on my feet a lot more which also would cause the retention in my leg. He gave me a prescription for the same water pill I've been taking only at a much higher dose (and not expired like what I'd been taking ;) ). I thought what I'd been taking was the highest dosage, but it was only a medium dose. I told him it had expired in March and he told me it was probably giving me very minimal affect. Also, he said if I didn't notice a big change after starting the new medication to call him and he'd call me in a prescription for Lasix and it would definitely have me running.
I have to go back in 6 weeks to have some more lab work done to see how my potassium level is after starting this new medication.
He did lab work today and I'd fasted for it just in case so he was able to check more than just one thing in the lab work. I'll find out about that in a few days hopefully. My appointment was at 3:00 and I hadn't eaten all day, so when I left I went to my mom's (she'd been watching my son for me while I was at the doctor's) and we had dinner.
He checked my blood pressure and it was terrific he said. It was 112/71

so hopefully the water issue will come under control and it was GREAT to hear I'd lost 13 pounds more than I thought I had ;) that kind of cushions this slow loss I've had lately. Oh , and I told him about the 6 pounds I lost after stopping the Splenda and he said he'd never heard of that before. I'm kind of wondering about that whole thing now. I'm gonna wait 3-4 days after starting the new water pill and try a little Splenda again gradually and see how it goes.

Splenda Problems

Wow, you never know when the answer to your problem will pop up when you least expect it. I'd been on a nasty plateau for three long weeks ! I'd been having water retention like crazy and even water pills weren't relieving it.
I was going through my digital scrapbooking list email late last week and after being very behind in it, I was deleting quite a few of the emails. For some reason one of the emails caught my eye and I opened it and read it. One of the members of the list was talking about her doctor taking her off Splenda products because it was causing her to retain water really badly.
I'd been using a lot of Splenda products since starting Weight Watchers in January but until the weather had gotten so hot, it was only one or two servings of it a day. But lately we've been in the midst of a huge heat wave and my husband has been making a lot of iced tea with Splenda in it.
I'd been drinking a lot of his iced tea hoping the diuretic effects of the tea would take care of the water retention, which obviously didn't happen.
So...after reading that post in my digital scrapping email I decided to cut out the Splenda and see what happened.
I've lost 5 pounds in the last 3 days. I think it's safe to say I have a sensitivity to Splenda :)
I may stay off it another week or so and then go back to just one serving of it a day and see if I can tolerate small doses of it.
Anyway, I see it as an answer to prayer at this point after praying a lot about the plateau and how to break it. So for now I'm just thrilled to be back to the losing game :)

Currently

And finally, this brings me to current. This is me now.
On a plateau for three weeks now and frustrated to beat the band. But still plugging away...

Progress since starting WW

These are my progress photos so far since starting WW in January.

As I explained in my first post, after losing all that weight with my surgery and getting pregnant with my son I gained 55 pounds back after I'd had him (not with the pregnancy).
Then I joined Weight Watchers online and Curves for Women fitness center and have lost all but 9 pounds of that regain. These are pictures of me after the regain just before joining WW in January 2005.

These are my pregnancy pictures after I'd lost 157 pounds with the surgery and got pregnant with my son.

Highest weight photos

This is a set of my pictures from my heighest weight before my gastric bypass surgery. I was diabetic, had high blood pressure, constant bouts of cellulitis in my leg and had a mild stroke when I was 33 caused by a hole in my heart from birth called a patent foramen ovale that caused a clot to form at the opening and broke loose blocking oxygen to my brain.

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First Post

Ok, so I lost 157 pounds with my weight loss surgery in 2001. It was one of the best (and most difficult) decisions I've ever made. Then I got pregnant with my son (THE best thing to ever happen to me).
After I had my son I regained 55 of those 157 pounds over the course of a year and a half. I started cracking down and eating healthy and working out in January of this year (2005) and I now have all but 9 of those pounds back off.
This is my place to chronicle my recent journey to losing the rest of that regain and then a LOT more after that.
My tools? Weight Watchers, Curves, and lots of working out and more.
I did not regain any weight during the pregnancy. In fact, the day I had my first post-natal appointment after having my son I weighed in at the exact same weight as the day I found out I was pregnant. During the first two trimesters I actually lost weight!! Then in the third trimester I regained what I'd lost and 15 pounds as well which I lost with the birth of my son. If only I'd stayed at that maintenance weight ! :)
So how did I regain if not due to the pregnancy??
I had a lot of pregnancy complications and to make a long story short, I had a total of 13 ultrasounds during my pregnancy. The ultrasounds kept showing my son to be very tiny and it's believed that that was due to my bypassing a lot of the nutrients I was eating. So I had to make myself eat a lot more high calorie foods to get as many calories to go to my son to help him to grow well. And it worked. For my son anyway ;)
Once he was born a healthy, but tiny little boy at 5 pounds 13 ounces I'd been in the habit of eating junk food again for all that time. But once I had him I didn't need all those calories anymore but it had become a nasty habit that I didn't break until this past January.

I'm not quite sure what "clicked" and got me to get back to the efforts to eat healthy again but I'm glad it did. It was a combination of pictures taken during the fall and Christmas holidays and wanting to eat well to be a good example to my son as he grows up to help to break the chain of obesity in our family with me.
So far I've lost 46 pounds and have become really focused on counting points through the Weight Watchers program and working out at Curves as well as walking on the new treadmill my husband bought me and walking outside as well. I have a new bike that my husband had bought me for my birthday when I was pregnant with my son and didn't know it yet so I haven't ridden it since then. I had him pump the tires up today though and hope to try it out tomorrow evening. I also got my rollerblades back out :)
Watch out world. here I come lol.