{"id":16158,"date":"2014-01-21T19:19:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T03:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/?p=16158"},"modified":"2014-01-27T20:55:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T04:55:30","slug":"the-skinny-on-the-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/?p=16158","title":{"rendered":"The Skinny on the Skin"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is me today. I haven’t worn this dress in several months and I was really pleased with the way the horizontal lines don’t appear to swoop around quite like they used to. I haven’t lost a ton of weight since I last wore it, but my skin has tightened a lot and my tone is better. I felt good walking around in this all day! <\/p>\n

That said, I’m a slave to compression wear. Or, at least, I have been for quite a while. Only recently have I stopped wearing it full time, enough to remark to Bradley at the grocery store the other day that I wasn’t wearing one. He looked at me, shocked, because I never<\/em> leave home without one on. My stomach skin used to flop all over and hang out everywhere- I pretty much had to tuck it into my waistband- so the compression gear was helpful, but I’m not having that issue anymore. I can let my belly breathe again! Ha ha!<\/p>\n

I do think about skin surgery still. When I began last year to try hard to lose weight I would actually visualize myself after the surgery as a motivator- slender and with a flat belly! I spent hours online looking at befores and afters and for bodies that looked like mine. I was determined<\/em> to have the surgery, no questions asked. At this point, I’m probably at a 70% yes –Oh My GOODNESS YES<\/strong> I want the surgery<\/strong>, with 30% simply feeling prideful of just having lost the weight! Who cares about the skin? However, I think that it would be nice to get it gone. If you’ve seen my website, you’ve seen my tummy in one of my many befores and afters. It’s saggy and hangs in a w across my waist. I will totally cop to standing in front of the mirror lifting my belly skin up and marveling at what a flat stomach would look like. Then I do it with jeans on. It looks awesome- I can’t lie. It would be so nice to not have to deal with extra skin, compression gear… I would just rather it go away on its own. Wishful thinking, huh? <\/p>\n

One of the biggest reasons to ditch it the skin is for running. The way it flops and wiggles is super annoying. When I’m running I HAVE to wear the compression shirts or I will just get out of control, so I sweat like crazy, get insanely hot and run, run, run! Plus, it gets rashy if I don’t wear the compression gear because it irritates itself. Not fun. Not classy. That right there is reason enough to have skin surgery.<\/p>\n

I do worry over the money … My insurance covers more than half- if my policy doesn’t change- but it will still cost a couple thousand dollars for the copay. While I often think I would prefer to take the less selfish route and take my family to Hawaii instead of have surgery, the other side of me is always hyper-aware that I have only one life. I want to live it as completely as possible, why not invest in myself and get rid of something that will always be a reminder of something that I spent years trying to get rid of?<\/p>\n

And the last (weirdest)<\/em>part? The skin is kind of cool. Weird, I know, but it feels neat. Like a squishy, warm water balloon. Wow. Talk about a little TMI. But seriously, beyond the neat-o, warm bread dough-y feeling, I also have a weird sense of pride to have this empty-ish skin. I find it absolutely amazing that at one time it was all full and it serves as a magnificent reminder of where I don’t want to go back to. I mind the skin, but then I really don’t at the same time. My kids love it, they stroke my arms lovingly and jiggle it about when I reach over them. My husband loves me however I come to him. No one is complaining…<\/p>\n

Of course, it will be a long time until I have to actually decide. I have another 40 pounds to lose before I even know whether or not I want to be done, then another six months before I’m even eligible for the surgery. Factor in the school year, holidays and sick days and it is a loooong way off!
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\nYou may have heard: I was featured at Runs For Cookies<\/a> for Motivational Monday! It was pretty exciting, first, to realize that I’ve been doing this successfully for about a year now, then to have my story on my most personally motivating website was pretty amazing. I feel proud to have made it on her website and proud of how much I’ve accomplished.<\/p>\n

I’m celebrating my one year blogging anniversary with the Runs for Cookies 5K this Saturday. If you want to sign up, here is the link<\/a> to the sign up site. It’s free and just for fun!<\/p>\n

It’s been really fun to read the comments and see the web traffic flow through here! Welcome to all of my new visitors and welcome back to anyone who returned. It’s nice to have readers. \ud83d\ude42
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\nThere’s a new look here at TamaraShazam! Bradley and I were lazily making a laundry list of things to change on my Shazam site for a one year anniversary tune-up, and all of the sudden he was sketching and we started messing with stuff and before I knew it everything was different! I like the new look! I’m learning to add some links that will go to some pages that will give the Shazam 101 course in how and why this all began, a links page to the before\/afters and some other buttons too. After a year of writing, it would seem I’ve written a lot and it could be handy to, I dunno, organize things for people to make the site more accessible or something crazy like that.
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\nMy goals are not going terribly well- but it is only Tuesday! <\/em>I’m at 50 minutes for elliptical and two weights workouts. I suppose I like to be an overachiever and get ahead of the game or something… I felt awful today, though, when I got home from work and moving sounded terrible. Turned out I needed to eat a little more. Today I hardly sat down for lunch and ate a few bites between tasks before I had students back in the classroom ready to learn. Tomorrow will be better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is me today. I haven’t worn this dress in several months and I was really pleased with the way the horizontal lines don’t appear to swoop around quite like they used to. I haven’t lost a ton of weight since I last wore it, but my skin has tightened a lot and my tone … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-littlejohnt","post-16158","format-standard","category-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16158"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16263,"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16158\/revisions\/16263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.littlejohnesque.com\/shazam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}