Demanding health and happiness.

- Two sausage patties and three scrambled eggs with low carb ketchup
- Pistachios and a few strawberries
- Two low carb pancakes with sugar free syrup
- Chicken breast chunks, breaded with egg and Parmesan cheese, pan fried then baked with low carb honey mustard
- Too much movie theater popcorn

We went to see the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and it was really good. It was just us and two other couples in the movies. We ended up getting this bucket from the movies with free refills, so I'm sure there will be more movie nights to come. It is refillable until April 1. I think a movie night every other week is okay, but next time, I won't eat so much popcorn. I was almost going to stay on-plan, but sometimes it helps me to have a planned deviation so that I feel like I don't have to make up for it after the fact. A few Halloweens ago, I didn't eat any sweets and I felt so deprived that I literally "made up for it" (aka binged on horrible foods) for months to come. A little bit of a planned deviation goes a long way for me.

I notice that especially with the working out, my body is changing. My waist is getting a lot smaller. At Goodwill, I got eight new tops, all size Large in women's. It's so nice to no longer be in an XL or even plus size clothes at all. There was a point where I was at the bigger end of plus size clothes and I still can't believe it when I'm in the "regular" department in the store.

I knee news, it's holding up pretty great. (For new people, I had a femoral open-wedge osteotomy which basically is just a fancy term for sawing my femur in half and inserting a wedge of my own bone in the inner part of it and allowing new bone to grow in the space that was created. My surgeon calls it fancy carpentry tricks with my bone and calls me his hero for whatever reason.) I often times find myself walking around the house without a cane and even forgetting where I placed it. I'm only taking half of a pain pill now instead of a full pill and I'm down to 2.5 to three pills a day, whereas before I was up to seven or eight a day. My rx allows me to take up to twelve a day, but I've never needed that many. This surgery was just so severe pain-wise and lifestyle wise that I really hope that I do not need another surgery. I will find out February 15th. In some ways, I do hope that I will get it done (on the recommendation of my surgeon) because my knee is still grinding and I do have the 3/8 of an inch leg length difference. I got a pair of shoes and boots before Christmas and I had a 3/8 of an inch lift put in them and they are so much better than the full one inch lift. Even walking around feel so much difference with my knee being at the correct angle where the femur comes together with the rest of my knee.

I have to give huge props to my gf for being so supportive about this whole thing. When we first met, she was just shocked at how awful my knee was and when I bent my knee, it felt like glass breaking, it was grinding so badly. She was confused as to why I wasn't seeking help for it. She later understood that my knee was in the shape it was in mostly due to a surgery gone wrong, so of course, I was leary to have correction surgery when the surgeon who operated on me for knock knees did the surgery way too early, which caused it to "overcorrect" (read: be very deformed).

I have to take the credit for going under the knife and that was single handedly the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It felt like I ran off of a cliff and only hoped that a net would catch me. She has been there for me to cook for me, do my laundry, help with our expenses, help me shower, on and on. When you are a strong-willed, once-independent woman like me, it's hard to even ask for help, much less from your significant other.

Losing weight, quitting smoking and getting the surgery done have all been life-changing, but they are all at the root of them, due to me being happy and wanting a long and happy life for myself. Before the surgery, I really considered myself as damaged goods and thought I would probably die young, so why bother going through with the surgery at all. Subconsciously, I was killing myself with cigarettes, marijuana and food. I would use all of the above to zone out and not even be able to cope with the reality I created for myself.

Since meeting my girlfriend, I feel like a whole new world has opened up for me. She has also for the first time in her life been able to lose weight and keep it off, from eating real foods. Since meeting one another, something just clicked in our own minds that makes us want to be healthy and she swears we will both live to be 100 years old. Even though we have only been together less than ten months, I swear that I have made more positive decisions for my life than I ever even dreamed of. I sought happiness, found love and now I demand health and happiness... That is the difference. Since my first e-mail to her, we have both lost close to eighty pounds each, but what we have gained is a lifetime together.