Shhhh…don’t tell him since it will ruin the surprise.

So there I was, wandering my way through Macy’s — screw Disney World, Macy’s is my happiest place on earth — planning to head straight to where they sell stuff that guys like, when two things caught my eye.

Those things were some really pretty dresses and a sign that read “One day only sale; extra 60% off.” I am easily distracted by bright shiny things. Bright shiny things on sale will almost always stop me dead in my tracks.

So I tried on a couple of dresses and hey did I mention this was in the women’s department and not the plus size department? Yeah. That was kind of a big deal in itself. Anyway, the dresses I tried on fit nicely and I was super excited.

I exited the fitting room with a “I am buying new dresses” contact high and was headed to the register when I noticed one more dress — bright pink with embellishments on the neckline — that I would never have dared to wear a year ago.

But it’s not a year ago. It’s now. And why the hell not?

I didn’t try it on. I bought it in size XL and figured if it didn’t fit now it will before the summer is over.

I brought it home and I tried it on and sure enough, I was right. It doesn’t fit.

Because it’s TOO BIG.

BOOM!

Yes, I will be exchanging it for one size SMALLER.

It’s totally true that I am losing weight to improve my health and fitness, but I can’t lie. Cute clothes are a nice bonus.

And since I just bought new clothes, I thought I should probably buy some new shoes. After all, weight loss doesn’t really affect shoe size, so footwear is actually a longer term investment. And the shoes were also on sale.

Except I guess even my feet have slimmed down because I bought a half size smaller than I was wearing just a few months ago.

Oh, and then I did buy my husband his Father’s Day gifts.

But don’t tell him. It’s a surprise.

Every day I log all my food into MyFitnessPal and all my activity is tracked through my Fibit. These two apps provide a summary of calories consumed and burned, total protein and carbs, percentages of vitamins.

I rely on this report to ensure I am meeting all my nutritional needs.

This started me thinking about other numbers.

255: My starting weight on Jan. 2

163: Days since Jan. 2

47: Pounds lost since starting this process

30: Minutes per day I exercise (minimum)

20: Inches I have lost since Jan. 2

14: Days until I have surgery

11: BMI points I’ve dropped since Jan. 2

8: Pounds I need to lose to drop below 200 for the first time since 1997

7: Loads of laundry I do each week because of the limited amount of clothes that still fit me and my husband

6: Fitness classes I attend each week (on average)

4: Pants sizes I’ve dropped since Jan. 2

3: Miles per day that I walk now (on average)

1: Regret since starting this process — that I didn’t do it sooner

0: Fucks I give about anyone who thinks this process has been easy or that bariatric surgery is an “easy way out” for fat people

This has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while now. Like since Jan. 2 when we started this process.

Lately, it’s becoming an obsession.

I know that eventually I will probably be able to eat almost anything I want. But for a while, probably a really long while, I won’t be able to eat much of anything. And while I am OK with that — it’s what I signed up for — it’s making me feel nostalgic for the beloved foods I will certainly miss.

My husband is still recovering from his surgery (it will be two weeks on Thursday, the same day I start my liquid diet) and he is on pureed foods now. So right now I feel especially guilty about being so fixated on food.

But the heart wants what the heart wants.

So last week, I made a stop at our favorite Asian restaurant for sushi and fried rice. Pictured here is my favorite maki roll — salmon with crab and asparagus. But I made the mistake of being very, very hungry when I ordered it and I inhaled it instead of savoring it.

I did, however, savor the half cup of rice I let myself eat from the whole order (the rest went to my daughter.) Rice is a pretty dicey food in the bariatric world, so this might really have been a fond farewell to this old favorite.

I kind of had a mental list of things I wanted to eat this week: A doughnut from Dunkin’ Donuts. A gourmet chocolate cupcake from a local bakery. Salty tortilla chips with salsa and queso dip. A really great cheeseburger and fries.

So today I decided to check the burger and fries off the list with a trip to Five Guys for lunch.

This is my “little cheeseburger” with grilled mushrooms and a small side of fries.

I can’t say that it didn’t taste good. I mean, who doesn’t love Five Guys, a regional favorite and a frequent treat of President Obama when Michelle is not watching. But even in my heyday of heavy eating, I could never finish all the fries. Today is no exception. I ate less than a third of them. But I did finish the burger because, you know, PROTEIN, and then I pretty much felt like I had swallowed an entire cow.

Hours later, I can still feel it lingering like lead.

I really had forgotten how bad greasy food feels sitting in my stomach.

And that did it for me. The last hurrah. Scratch all the others off the list.  No doughnuts. No cupcakes. No chips and cheese.

I don’t want any other bad-f0r-me indulgent food. I will be perfectly fine sticking to my diet now.

Except I make no promises that at least one bottle of wine won’t be opened between now and Wednesday night.

The love of my life went under the knife last Thursday. I took this photo in pre-op. Isn’t he adorable?

The procedure took about two-and-a-half hours, and the surgeon said he did great and that I could see him soon. Of course, “soon” is a relative term.

It was more than two hours later before I was allowed back to recovery to talk to him for about 10 minutes. It was more than three hours later before the recovery room nurse took pity on him and moved him to a semi-private part of the ward so I could wait with him until his room was ready. That was almost another two hours later.

They may be similar words, but hospitals have little to do with hospitality. I totally understand why, but it’s difficult not to feel frustrated when someone you love is left in a recovery-room holding pattern for seven long hours.

Once I got to stay with him (the waiting room attendant was probably pretty sick of me giving him stink-eye and asking him to call back about three times per hour) it was better for both of us. He was in great spirits and not in much pain because of the magic button of of happiness he could push whenever he needed it.

He was up and walking the same day of the surgery. Next morning he was freed from the pee tube. The next morning he was liberated from all the other tubes and monitors and he got to come home.

Other than an understandable lull in energy, he has done incredibly well. He’s using very little of the prescription painkiller; he’s getting in all his liquids and proteins; he even felt up to going to our monthly WLS support group meeting last night.

I tell him every day how proud I am of him.

This is, as far as I am concerned, the beginning our new beginning. Phase two happens on June 27.

It’s very warm right now — high 80s — with bright blue skies dotted with creamy clouds. This is the kind of day when your soul soaks up sunlight. A sleepy breeze and low humidity made this an almost perfect afternoon.

And in a little while, Phil and I can comfortably watch the lazy sun as it slips down behind the western mountains from the chairs on our deck. Nights like tonight will soon give way to brutal heat and air so thick and wet that breathing feels like drowning. So we should savor nights like tonight. And we will.

On a night like tonight, there should be wine sipped while that sun sets. On a night like tonight, there should be meat and veggies on the grill and fresh sliced berries chilling in the fridge.

But Phil is having his bariatric surgery tomorrow morning. So that rules out the wine sipping and the food grilling and the berries chilling.

But that doesn’t matter. Tonight is a night for enjoying life, for celebrating love, and for being grateful for all that we have.

So we will take a couple of glasses of our finest tap water out to the deck tonight. And I will be with the man who brought me to this place — not just to this gorgeous view, but to this place of emotional peace where I can appreciate how blessed I am.

Tomorrow, I will have to be brave while I turn over the center of my world to a skilled surgeon. And there will be no elation greater than when I get to see Phil a few hours later in that recovery room, safe and sound.

But that’s tomorrow.

For right now, we have tonight. And it will be glorious.

So much of America has been revealed to me since I left my hometown, Indianapolis, almost 16 years ago.

I’ve lived in friendly Middle Tennessee, and now in gorgeous Southwestern Virginia. I have traveled across the country for business and for vacation. I’ve been to Los Angeles, Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Las Vegas, D.C. and more.

I’ve stood on the beaches of the Atlantic and the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. Hell, I’ve been to Mexico. And Canada. 

And all of those places are exciting. The boundless energy of New York City is intoxicating. The endless summer of L.A. and the sheer majesty of the Pacific Northwest are exhilarating. The warm beaches of Florida make me feel happy right down to my sand-wiggling toes.

But Indianapolis — flatland nestled in the crossroads of the flyover states — that’s the city of my heart. It’s the place I will always call home.

Today I am extra nostalgic because the Indianapolis 500 runs today, an event that holds memories for me since I was old enough to form memories.

(Growing up in Indy in the 60s and 70s, the race was always blacked out on local television. We listened to it on the radio, AM 1070, WIBC, every year, tracking the drivers with a pullout from the Indianapolis Star.)

And as good luck would have it, the Indiana Pacers, another legacy of my childhood, are playing the Miami Heat at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in downtown Indy tonight in the NBA Eastern Conference Championship series.

(As a kid, I could see the construction cranes that built Market Square Arena in the early 70s from the kitchen window of my home. That’s where the Pacers played until the Fieldhouse was built in 1999, two years after I moved south. Sadly, MSA was torn down in 2001.)

If we lived in Indy, we would have spent most of this weekend hanging outside the track, partying with old friends, eating Mug n Bun pizza and drinking ridiculous amounts of beer. There may or may not have been some Long’s doughnuts devoured this morning.

And I probably would have dipped into the 401K to score tickets to tonight’s basketball game.

More than anything else, I miss all the family and friends whom we love that are scattered all over the Hoosier state, from South Bend to Lake Tippecanoe to Muncie to Linton.

While I love where I am in my life right now — and anywhere my husband is will always be my true home — today I just miss the Circle City more than usual.

Here’s to a safe and exciting race, hoping the the Pacers beat the Heat, and that when my husband and I are both healed from our upcoming surgeries we can make at least one trip back home again in Indiana.

Probably the biggest question about our impending weight loss surgery, besides “are you sure you want to do this?” is “what can you eat after surgery?”

I can’t fully answer that yet, because the recovery period is long and during that time the answer is “not very much at all, but it centers around protein.”

Trying to learn as much about nutrition as I can before we both go under the knife, I know that protein is vital for our continued health — it helps to keep muscle from wasting away; the body uses it as fuel in the most efficient way and by taking in more protein than carbs, especially simple carbs, the body burns fat. It also helps speed up the healing process.

Protein will also help to keep hair from falling out — a HUGE concern to me.

Since the natural sources of protein can be difficult to digest, especially on a newly remodeled stomach, the answer is to drink protein shakes. I started drinking a protein shake every day for breakfast a couple of months ago. And while Phil is on his liver-shrink diet, we are both drinking two a day as a meal replacements.

Since we are avoiding all but a few complex carbs (that includes fruit and many veggies) planning the day’s only meal is a challenge and, with the nutritionist’s guidance, we are eating frozen diet meals with a small salad.

On top of all this, we take a multi-vitamin every day, and I take a potassium supplement powder. We will be taking a series of other dissolvable and/or chewable pills and wafers for other nutrients — including calcium, iron and B12 — for the rest of our lives.

While the shakes are tasty (they are all sweet, which I can see getting really old after a while) and they are chock-full of vitamins and of course the holy grail protein. But I can’t help but feel like this isn’t the way good nutrition should really work.

It’s like we are living in the age of “The Jetsons” and all our meals are delivered via a pill or a powder. Except we don’t have Rosie to prepare our pills for us.

(Mental note: We need a Rosie. We already have three Astros.)

I know this a doctor-approved diet and I cannot deny the results (Phil has dropped an unbelievable number of pounds since he started the liver shrink diet last Thursday) so I am not questioning its soundness, it just FEELS like we should be getting our nutrition through good food and not processed pharmaceuticals.

Eventually we will be able to eat healthy foods — just not in the quantity we could eat today. So that will be the next challenge after we are all healed: finding the best bang for our extremely limited nutrition buck.

My husband’s lost 50 pounds since Jan. 2 and I am so very proud of him. His surgery date is May 30, so last Thursday he had to start what is known in the bariatric world as the liver shrink diet.

In order to make laparoscopic abdominal surgery easier and safer, you basically have to starve all the fat from your liver. To do this, you live on a liquid diet. And not the kind of liquids to which my liver has grown accustomed.

Some dont’ make their patients do this at all. Some surgeons only make their patients do this for a few days, maybe a week. Some make patients follow the fluid-only diet from the entire two weeks. Our surgeon (we are both seeing the same doctor) is somewhere in between.

Our liver shrink consists of two protein shakes per day plus one calorie-controlled meal, like a Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice. To make it a little more appealing, our nutritionist said we could add a fat-free yogurt for a mid-day snack and a veggie-only salad with our delightful frozen dinner. We can also have sugar-free popsicles or Jello, and yesterday we had a little beef broth.

I say “we” because I am trying to do this with him. Even though my surgery isn’t until June 27, I wanted him to feel supported. He is vehemently against me doing this, but I remember that the word “obey” wasn’t in our wedding vows so I am doing it anyway.

Besides, since I was already doing a protein shake for breakfast every day, I didn’t think giving up one meal would be a big deal.

I was wrong.

The first couple of days was a little rough for both of us. And by rough, I mean WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL? WHO CAN DO THIS? WE ARE NOT CONTESTANTS ON “SURVIVOR”!

His reaction to co-workers on Thursday morning was “Why is everyone trying to piss off a hungry fat man?”

My reaction (I was also at work on Thursday) was “How busy can I keep myself that I don’t think about food EVERY MINUTE OF THIS FUCKING DAY?”

But it has gotten a little bit better. The only tough spot yesterday was walking through the grocery store shopping for more frozen diet dinners. I swear every pastry, every steak, and every bottle of wine was whispering love poems in my ear.

Can you get fat from aromas? Because I think I inhaled a few hundred calories hovering over the rotisserie chickens.

Grocery stores are the seventh circle of hell for people who can only chew food once a day.

But the numbers don’t lie: He’s lost more than six pounds since Thursday and I’ve lost three. I can only hope our livers are burning off all the fat, too.

Then I went to the gym. Walked a half mile around the track. Endured the CSWORX core conditioning class. Then stayed for 50 minutes of Zumba — a first for me. After that class — feeling like my chubby hips had shimmied in ways that are unnatural — I decided to stay for 50 minutes of yoga to stretch away the salsa-induced soreness.

Then I came home and settled on the couch for a power nap, snuggling with my dog, Coral.

It wasn’t pretty — much like my moves in Zumba. Apparently when I fall into a deep sleep after exhausting myself at the gym, I make a Grumpy Cat face.

Woke up to the delicious aroma of a grilled chicken salad that my husband made us for dinner.

Best Mother’s Day ever.

She told me a horror story about how she dislocated the kneecap on her mechanical knee and had to torque it back in place by herself and then wear a knee brace for eight weeks and couldn’t work out.

After I sufficiently recovered from the trauma of that tale and forced the image of my bionic kneecap roaming freely in my leg, I mentioned that I am having bariatric surgery on June 27 and she said the nicest thing I could imagine a stranger saying:

“You don’t look heavy enough to have that surgery.”

I thanked her very much (and thought she might want to get her vision checked) and then I told her I have lost 35 pounds since Jan. 2 going through the process of being approved for surgery.

Then she asked me the question I think a lot of people would like to ask:

“Well if you are doing so well on your own, why have the surgery?”

Excellent question, really. And it’s one I’ve tussled with more than a few times this year. The answer always comes back to the cliched analogy of the road: I’ve been down the weight loss road many, many times before and I always seem to end up back where I started or worse, farther back than where I started.

I read this post on Facebook the other day and while it is not from a medical journal, it cites plenty of studies and anecdotally I know it to be true: Except in the most rare cases, people who are pre-disposed to being obese cannot simply diet and exercise to drop excess weight and keep it off.

Two in 1,000 people who successfully lose significant weight with Weight Watchers (I am one who did) keep it off (I am one who didn’t.)

The article concludes that “statistically, the only option with any success rate is a horrible, horrible surgical procedure.

I’d rather not think of it as horrible. I still prefer to call it a stomach remodeling.

And then there is the deeper question that hides behind the question of why do you think you need to have surgery: “Do you just want to be skinny to look good?”

I have been well aware for many years that I will never be skinny. It’s not in the DNA cards I was dealt. And I really am perfectly OK with that.

Women are beautiful at any size. ANY SIZE. Beauty comes from confidence, style, and personality. I am not on a mission to make myself beautiful. I am on a mission to improve my health.

That said, nothing irks me more than presumptuous assholes who assume that any one who is overweight (and that’s two-thirds of all Americans these days) is unhealthy.

I have been overweight all of my life, always led an active life and, until the last 10 years, it has caused me no major health problems. I do not have diabetes (and I want to keep it that way) and my cholesterol has always been good.

But I have developed joint damage and high blood pressure, and I want to correct that now while I am still young. I also want to ensure that I can lead an active life for as long as I am fortunate enough to be here.

So while surgery may seem drastic, I think it’s the best decision I can make. And surgery alone will not ensure that I will keep excess weight off. I will have to watch what I eat and exercise strenuously for the rest of my life.

And you know what, after all that, I will STILL BE MEDICALLY OVERWEIGHT because I am a curvy girl. And I love that about me. Refer back to the DNA mentioned above.  Fat but fit is a badge I will be proud to wear. 

And that really is the answer to all the questions.