Approaching The One Year Mark....

Wow!!!! It's been 5 months since I have posted on my Blog and there have certainly been many many milestones and significant moments over that period of time. Let's just say that life has been moving along...really fast...and my activity level has increased monumentally!!!! So much so, that I have not had time to sit quietly and just reflect on the past year of my life...

It was a year ago on August 1st that I began my pre op diet in preparation for my Gastric Bypass surgery...I began really watching my portions, slowing down on the sugars and fats and eating an array of healthy foods and protien shakes for a month or so before surgery. At that time I weighed well over 450lbs...

On September 22nd, 2009 I began the most life changing experience of my entire journey thus far in my 33 years of living...it has been a whirlwind to say the least, one with ups and downs but one well worth the time, energy, waiting, wondering and hard work....

Today, I am almost 225lbs less than what I weighed a year ago and my life is not the same. I live! I actually live life beyond the four walls of my home and office cubicle. My everyday is filled with activity or sorts, from taking a walk to Tim Horton's or Starbuck's, to playing street hockey with my son, splashing around in our pool in my bathing suit or taking a leisurely ride on my brand new bike with the kids...I even broke out my old rollerblades from over 10 years ago and took them for a spin!!! What a feeling! What a rush...and no, I didn't fall!!!

Life is so different for me today...I no longer panic if I can't find a parking space close enough to the door at the grocery store...before I would break out in a cold sweat at the thought of having to haul myself that far from the truck to the door, not to mention the sweating as I walked through the grocery store and the pain in my back and legs...it was so painful....not only physically, but mentally and emotionally too. That 450lb woman was not Ally. She was merely trapped inside this morbidly unwell body...it had to change...and it did.

I went to Florida for a week with my mom and my best friend, Hannah, to celebrate on year of my new life. Again, it was awesome!!! Not only did I walk with ease the marathon of Pearson International Airport, I sat in the seat on the flight and snapped my seatbelt closed liesurely like all the other passengers on board...the "normal" people as I call them...no seatbelt extension for me, thanks! For once it was a wonrfully comportable flight...

Once I got to Florida I enjoyed so many activities that a year ago I would never have even dreamed or entertained the thought of doing! I went to the beach almost everyday...yes, in my bathing suit and I took my cover up off to go in the water with pride...so happy with my new body!! Even though I have a massive amount of skin and the remnants and scars of being that overweight for so long still show, I was proud to be standing on the beach in my new bathing suit and comfortable to just be me, Ally, and enjoy the water and my surroundings instead of being on the side lines as I had been for so long...watching and longing to be free.

The shopping was a whole other story, which, I am not going to confess in full lest the Customs Agency ger wind of it!!!!! My goodness...I have never ever in my entire life had the shopping success that I had this trip!!! It was absolutely surreal to walk into a plus size store and be at the smallest end of the sizing...and even more fantastic to just pick items off the shelf in my new size, put them on, and have them actually fit like a glove!!!! It was litterally a dream come true...all those years as a little girl being on the chubby end of things and wearing tight pants and ill fitting shirts, the crying in the change rooms over jeans that I desperately wanted to wear but they just didn't fit...all the tears, all the struggles, all the disappointments of the past as it related to my weight were redeemed!!!! And it was because of my choice a year ago...and the support of so so many people in my life who encouraged me to do what I had to do to be healthy and "live"....

There is so much more I could pour out but I have to sign off for now...have to go fill my pouch with a little protien!!!

Thank you to all of you who have continued to follow my journey and show such interest and support...I could never have done it without each and every one of you...

Love yaz all...keep watching...there's more to come....

The journey continues....I'm not done yet!!!