My sixth surgiversary!

February the 5th marks my sixth surgiversary. Another year has passed and now it’s been six years since I had my gastric bypass surgery. Life is good, if not increasingly back to normal, and my gastric bypass remains a small but important part of my life story. The decision to have a gastric bypass remains as the best decision I have ever made for myself. Absolutely no regrets!

The biggest thing to change in my life last year were my exercise habits! For the last few years I’ve really been into running and have got so much enjoyment out of it. I tried for at least six months to get myself back into a regular running habit last year and it just didn’t take. I would have good patches and then a few weeks where I couldn’t fit much in for whatever reason and I’d feel like I was starting all over again.

In September a whole bunch of us at work signed up to do an eight-week boot camp at a gym down the road from the office and everything changed. The boot camp was exactly what I needed to get myself back into a regular exercise habit again. It was fun going along with my workmates and I made every single session, three times a week, for the whole eight weeks. Sometimes it was a juggle with sick kids and annual leave but I had committed and I did not want to let myself down. After boot camp I signed up to the full gym membership and I now do functional fitness classes five times a week! I have never in my life been able to keep up such a regular gym habit and it’s been over four months now. It’s challenging, it’s fun, there’s a great group of people in the classes and it’s keeping my interest.

Yeah, I lift weights now …

At the moment, six years on, my weight hovers around 81kg. My BMI is 29 and that puts me in the overweight range. I’ve continued to maintain in excess of 50kg weight loss six years after my gastric bypass. Out of interest I had a DEXA body scan done last month and I found out that I have 33.7% body fat. For my age (I’m 33 now) this puts me comfortably under the median so I was pretty happy about that.

2010-2019 Just a bit different

Last year my focus on getting back down to my pre-pregnancy weight. This year my focus has changed. I’m quite happy with my body, I don’t feel the need to lose weight. My body seems quite happy around the 80kg mark and seems to want to stay there. This year’s focus is to get stronger and to drop my body fat percentage under 30%. Since I started going to the gym my weight has gone up by 2-3kg but my measurements have all stayed the same. I’m building muscle and I want to keep that up. The number on the scale is indicative of where I’m at with those goals but it is no longer the measure I care most about.

I did the 11km distance in the Auckland Marathon and the Walking Stars half-marathon again last year. They were both great events and I will probably do those again this year, maybe with a couple of new ones I haven’t done before. Having events to look forward to keeps my motivation levels up.

My Auckland Marathon finishers medal!

It was a busy year for me but I got through it. You may notice my complete lack of posts for the last six months. It wasn’t intentional but life was busy and my blog was the ball that ended up getting dropped. It’s no joke working full-time with two kids. It took me nearly the whole year to get used to my new schedule, starting work at 5.30am, fitting the gym in and everything else that needs to be done to look after my family. The kids are doing well and I had a great year at work professionally so my hard work was worth it. I’m hoping things will settle down a bit this year, I can dream right! And my blog will be a bit more of a priority.

I did find time to get a new tattoo!

Thanks for sticking with me pals! Where are you at with your journey? Does six years’ post-op seem so far away in the future for you with where you’re at now? Comment below and tell me all about it, I’d love to hear from you.