The Barnes Family

I am a few days late posting this thanks to a little bug that hit my house known as the flu. Poor Wyatt started feeling bad late Friday night and come Sunday he was diagnosed with the flu. It came out of know where and as of yesterday I heard half of his class was out of school. He has made a great recovery and today he is finally back at school and I am back at work. We are praying that no one else gets it since our Disney cruise is less than a week away. This weekend was a little harder than most. Cookies, Candies, Cookie Cake, Brownies, Drinks for Natalie's Lingerie party/ Girls Night out, Lunch at West Lake for Easter and on and on. However I will say that for all of you thinking that this Weight Loss Procedure was the easy way out, it was not. I am still very tempted by these things however now even though I may be tempted I definitely can not eat them because if I do, I will get sick. To much in this stomach now does not just mean the scales will not be my friend but I will...

There is one week that our Fitness Family looks forward to..... IHRSA!!! It's a fun trade show where anything related to fitness can be shown off. Classes, equipment, billing, clothing, insurance, you name it and if it relates to fitness and health it is going to be there. Natalie and Shannon try the new classes and equipment, my mom and I walk around and basically watch and take pictures of them doing all of that, Mike helps to find the latest new toys we can add to the gym and Bill attends the not so fun meetings. Night time is always fun because there is normally a great dinner to attend and well who doesn't love to get dressed up and go to dinner! This year the show was held in Orlando, which had its perks but I think I still love it being held in Vegas! The perk of Orlando though is when the show is over, there are a few great things to do there... like act like a kid again and hit up park! So Wednesday we picked Universal Studios theme park and for a day we were kids, w...

It has officially been two weeks and I am excited to say that I have officially lost 10 pounds! I am beyond excited about that! 10 pounds may not seem like a lot to some but it feels wonderful. I am also starting to feel better and slowly start to eat more than chicken salad and soup, which as much as I love my mother's chicken salad has been nice. Discovered that my feeling constantly bloated might have been one of the medications I was on, so after stopping that I am starting to feel a little better there too. I will say I never feel truly hungry. I have to remind myself that I need to eat. Smaller meals and Sip on water throughout the day instead of trying to catch up on the water I missed by chugging it at night. I was always bad at getting enough water! This is a quick update but wanted to let everyone know that I am doing great and thank everyone for their kind words and prayers!

I'm going to be honest..... Today is the FIRST DAY I finally woke up and felt normal! I got ready without having to take a break, I was actually hungry for lunch, I am no longer walking at a snail’s pace and I just all around feel better. Let me just say this is a relief this past weekend was rough for me and I am not sure how I made it. Friday, seemed to be fine. I got cleared for soft food, ate some chicken salad, all was right with the world until bed time when I was hit with the worst stomach pain! We were leaving for an overnight trip to Atlanta in the morning so I did all that I could do that night to prepare and made it to bed as quick as I could and found some relief in just laying down. The next morning I felt a little better, it took me forever and a year to get ready because I was completely drained of energy but we got packed and made it out the door. I also managed to get half a McDonald's oatmeal down over the course of an hour which was pretty good and hel...

Five days in and I am doing MUCH better than I thought I would be!! The doctor I met with in Charleston and Dr. Blaney had prepared me for the worst, endless nausea, vomiting, cramping, etc for at least 3-5 days maybe more. I went in knowing that could be what awaited me. So far, the only thing I have found is I have nausea, a little reflux and I am very weak because I can not eat more than about 3/4 a cup at a time. So for the last 5 days I have been on an all liquid diet and it hasn't consisted of much. Dr. Blaney also did a great job of prescribing medications that would help with all the symptoms I might have, and I am taking the medications around the clock to make sure they don't hit.  Someone asked if I could tell the balloon is there…. YES! I would say its not in a bad way though. I feel very full all the time. The feeling you get when you have eaten to much at Thanksgiving and you immediately regret it but its to late. The kind of overeating that makes it hard to ta...

I have gone back and forth on posting this and finally after much debate I have decide that I wanted to share in hopes that it might be able to help someone else. Today at 2:30pm I am scheduled to have the Orbera Procedure. I will not go through all the details of the procedure right now, but for more information on it you can visit, orbera.com. I have prayed about this, talked to my husband, parents and close friends about this and they are supporting me with this decision that I have made. I know that not everyone will, which I why I have gone back and forth on putting this information out there but I know at the end of the day, I also don't want to feel dishonest. I also know that I would like prayers right now. The first part of this is supposed to the hardest part. I know that some will say, "Can't you just do it on your own?" Please know, this is simply a tool, which I will explain in another blog, that will help me to reach my goal. I still have to eat righ...