No More Moaning

"Blythe eyed up the Cadburys Caramel lustily"

Week 16
Weight: 12 stone 2lbs
Weight loss: 4 stone 1lb

I just wanted to do a quick post but, given just how grotty and moany my last couple of posts were, I thought it might be nice to be a bit more positive. Aaaanyway, I have managed to get myself much more together this week. I started walking again on Sunday and have been everyday this week (although the sheep have gone :( not sure where, actually I can have a good guess but, it doesn’t bear thinking about really. That reminds me, must get some mint sauce…. KIDDING ;)

Also I have been swimming every morning. I actually look forward to getting up at 5.45am and going for a swim (sadist) but, the biggest advantage has been how much it has improved my concentration at work. Instead of needing an hour to really ‘get going’, now I am able to get straight down to business and faff a whole lot less.

I went to see the dietician tonight; she was pleased with my progress and has booked me in for my next fill on the 27th June. That will be 10 weeks from the first ‘uber-fill’ and should give me good restriction for much longer, although she reckons that it will remain and I won’t need another fill with any luck.

As for my current restriction, well it has totally gone but, I am going to take advantage of it and eat tonnes of meat, fruit and veg. Well, okay, I suppose I should admit that I have added a bar of dairy milk or caramel to my daily allowance. I was just starting to feel a tad deprived.

Right, it’s Friday night and not the time to be sitting in front of the pc methinks.

Onwards and downwards.

Ooops I Did It Again

Week 15
Weight: 12stone 8lbs
Weight gain: 7lbs

Sorry for going AWOL. As you can probably guess I’ve been quite a badly behaved, one woman, eating machine. I can’t really begin to say why as I hardly know myself. I’m not going to go on and on about it but, suffice to say, I seemed to have a fortnight of rebellion.

What’s the most interesting is that my restriction seems to have disappeared but, will catch me out with something totally innocuous in a completely random way. For example, I’ve been able to eat anything and everything and then on Wednesday night I had half a vegetable crisp-bake and spent the next three hours bringing up literally pints of gunk. Horrible.

Anyway, I’ve been a lot better the past couple of days but, it seems once I start on the cycle of sweet stuff I lose the plot. So I am weaning myself off it again. It’s funny because I’ve eaten all the things that I fancied and to be perfectly frank, nothing tasted as good as I thought it would.

I have an appointment with the dietician on Friday and I will be booking in my next fill I hope. I don’t want it for another 4 weeks though as I have a weekend away in June with friends who know nothing of the band, so I don’t want to give the game away.

Right, I’m off for a walk with my mate (I haven’t walked for 10 days – I really have been on a rebellion!).

I’ll post more later on this week.

Onwards and downwards.

The Struggle Continues

"Blythe got up, put on her dressing gown and accepted that today was a brand new day"

Golly, 3 posts in 3 days. Clearly I am a bit rattled ;)

After waxing lyrical about my ‘plan’ that I follow in the week at work. I thought it only right and fair to balance this out with just how spectacularly I can fall off the wagon when I don’t have enough to do. I’ve mentioned many a time what a nemesis the TV is for me and any semblance of my eating in a controlled way. Well, yesterday I not only fell off the wagon, but, I was dragged screaming behind it for a good couple of miles, hitting every boulder on the way!

So here we go again … let me recap. I have an addiction. I am a food addict. The learned doctors labelled me with the diagnosis of ‘Binge Eating Disorder’ many moons ago. This, in layman’s terms means that I eat over and above what a ‘normal’ person would eat in one sitting but, I don’t purge (get rid of the food and/or calories) as someone with Bulimia would. I personally feel that many, if not the majority of people with chronic obesity have the same disorder.

Along with this compulsion that I have to binge, I am afraid that I suffer with what I can only describe as ‘black and white’ or concrete thinking with regards to food and exercise. In other areas of my life I am as flexible as a Russian Olympic gymnast. With food, I can be ritualistic, negative and completely self-destructive. As a therapist by profession, I am often filled with feelings of hypocrisy that I have difficulty in getting ‘my own house in order’ when I am able to facilitate my patients and families to reach their goals, despite them being extremely poorly. The plus side to this, I guess, is that I have the insight of my professional knowledge to use on myself when I feel emotionally robust enough to do so.

So what happened? Well, the day started off well enough. I was up early, wrote up my blog, showered and dressed, read the papers and then had a walk up to my mom’s house for a brunch-time smoothie. I had intended to stay on liquids for the day as my ribs felt like someone had punched me in them after the boiled egg incident the day before. I had a lovely time with my mom, as I always do and, on the way home, I incorporated my normal route power-walk. I didn’t attempt any running today – just didn’t think my poor bust would be able to take it ;)

I got home and Jack was around at a friend’s watching the football. I was invited to go but, ironically didn’t want to as they always try and feed us with naughty crapola. So that left me with the house to myself. It was at this point that the crapola devil appeared on my left shoulder, whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Funnily enough, St Bandy, the guardian angel of weight loss surgery who normally resides on my right shoulder, was clearly having an off-day. The battle between good and evil was a brief one and the crapola devil knocked St Bandy out in the opening seconds of the initial round.

Now, the house had no crapola in it that I could eat. Sure, there were plenty of Jack’s coffee cakes and Battenberg but, of course they are purchased deliberately because I hate them. So, by now in full-on, ‘planning a binge’ mode, I toddle off to the local shop. I bought everything that was wrong. Things that would go through the band without too much bother, uhuh, that’s right, all that highly processed, high fat, high sugar nonsense.

I then proceeded to eat as much of it as I could, yes I slimed a couple of times, but blow me if I didn’t just keep going. I wasn’t able to eat anywhere near as much as I would have pre-band but, the intentions and the calories were still there.

I fell into bed on a complete, brain addled, sugar induced ‘high’ and woke this morning with those, all to familiar feelings of shame, disappointment and anger at myself for being so weak willed. However, this is where the work needs to be done. Ordinarily, pre-band, I would be on this binge journey for days, weeks, even months, having been dieting successfully and then falling off the wagon. In this time all the weight lost would go back on and the cycle of despair (melodramatic, moi?) would start all over again. This is how the band seems to help me now. I am able to dust myself off and get back in the saddle again so much more quickly. Yes, my head is telling me this morning to eat nothing but dust and water for a week to counteract the damage but, I am going to be sensible. I have put the remainder of the crapola in a carrier bag, opened all of the packets and poured washing up liquid all over it. It’s a waste but, it’s the only way I know to stop myself from obsessing over it and getting it out of the bin and eating it.

I am telling myself that today is a day independent of the events of yesterday. I am erasing yesterday from my mind now. Today I will nourish my body with wholesome foods and strengthen it with exercise that I actually enjoy. That means no running (don’t actually enjoy it and am only doing it because I feel forced to run The Race for Life in June) and just power-walking which I do find pleasurable.

I am going to sort out our office/grown-up’s playroom. There’s a set of bookshelves that should keep me busy for a few hours.

So the struggle continues. Onwards and downwards.

Some People ...

"Blythe decided listening to the seashell was preferable to listening to people"

People are strange creatures…

Today I came across the first negativity to my weight loss, being banded and my weight loss goal. Where did this happen? In a club? In a ‘skinny-Minnie’ clothes shop? At the gym? Nope. It was at my local weight loss surgery support group. Now before you think I am about to slate the support group, I am not. The support group is run brilliantly by one of the loveliest ladies I’ve met on my journey and the structured part of the group is always facilitated with sensitivity and tact. I am committed to attend every month, despite this month’s experience. So what happened? Perhaps I am being too sensitive, it has been known ;) but, at the time, I just felt the comments I received where mean and bloody ignorant.

There were only a couple of familiar people there that I knew (and a big shout out to them :) and the rest of the group was made up of people I hadn’t met before. There were 5 banders that I hadn’t met and it was from a couple of them that the comments came. I’m not sure if they were intended to be malicious, I hope not, I’m telling myself that they were just thoughtless and ignorant.

You tell me. Am I over-reacting?

The first comment happened just after I arrived. One of the banders looked me up and down (I kid you not) and then said, in what I can only describe as a hostile tone, “Well you didn’t have the band on the NHS did you?” What the f**k is that supposed to mean? That I only had it done out of vanity, as a cosmetic procedure? That, because I wasn’t prepared to put on the extra 4 stone to get my BMI over 50, and get local funding, I am somehow less deserving of being banded? I have to say I was really taken aback by this comment and I found myself trying to justify why I had paid privately for the band. She continued to be hostile, either talking over me or ignoring me, for the rest of the meeting. Some people!

The reality of my journey leading up to the band was not an easy one, it certainly wasn’t a decision made out of vanity and being banded, whilst being the best decision I ever made, isn’t the easy-option. The decision to be banded was my ‘last chance saloon’ and it came after 2 years of increasing health problems:

Gynaecological problems: In August 2005, after a year of having extremely irregular and absent periods, I started to bleed. Not just bleed but, quite literally flood. I couldn’t be further than 45 minutes away from a toilet at any time. I would be on a home visit to a patient and just know what was happening, the humiliation. I couldn’t really sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time without waking up in a pool of blood. This went on for 15 months with little more than a day here and there without the flooding. I spent a good 3 months trying to get help from the GP, who was convinced it was down to my obesity (and, yes in part, they were right). However I was scared out of my mind thinking the worst. Eventually I had the scans, hormone tests, etc and I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). I was started on 3 different pills for this, 2 to try and stem the bleeding and 1 for the PCOS itself (Metformin). Unsurprisingly I was also severely anaemic so they added an iron supplement too. I was told that I needed to lose weight, that I wouldn’t be able to have children naturally, I would need help with conception and that they wouldn’t even consider helping me until my BMI was under 25. At the time it was 42.

Hypertension: I have always had high blood pressure, even when I am lighter and exercising it is still worryingly high. I was on 2 different pills for it by the time of my operation. My family history on my mom’s side is extremely scary with regards to heart disease. My grandmother died of heart failure in her early 30’s when my mom was 4 years old. My mom had her first heart attack when I was 3 years old, and has had several since then. Neither my mom, nor my grandmother were overweight, in fact quite the opposite. I was 33, I had a very high blood pressure and I was in the very obese category with my BMI. I was understandably concerned.

Type II Diabetes: Following on from my PCOS diagnosis, I was still feeling extremely poorly. Parts of my body were randomly swelling up like a balloon on, at least a thrice weekly basis. My face and tongue would swell up so that I had difficulty breathing and talking, my hands and arms would swell up so that I couldn’t even hold the steering wheel to drive and my feet were so swollen sometimes that it was agony even trying to walk around in the house. I was getting home from work, going to bed about 7pm and struggling to get up on time for work. I had lost my appetite (a good thing ;) and was piddling for Britain. I had recurrent thrush and my head always seemed to be pounding. My bloods showed that I had in fact developed diabetes. I’d been tried on 3 different diabetes medications, was bouncing between not wanting to eat and fighting an almost psychotic urge to eat bags and bags of boiled sweets (something that I generally don’t even like) and my blood sugars were constantly through the roof. The Tuesday prior to being banded I saw my diabetes consultant, he informed me that if I was not being banded in 2 days time that he would have started me on insulin that day. He gave me a 6 week grace period to see if the band improved the situation.

Depression: Yup, I was bloody depressed. I felt physically and mentally like crap and, what was worse, I felt that it was all my own fault and I’d brought it on myself. I felt so low at what I was putting my loved ones through and all because I was unable to control what I shoved in my pie-hole. I was on anti-depressants and I hated the fact that I relied on them. I felt I wasn’t able to do my job to the best of my ability, I had trouble concentrating and felt like I was giving all my capacity to exist, just to get through the working day and that there was nothing left over for me to live any sort of life. Many a weekend I spent in my pyjamas, too knackered to even be bothered to get dressed. The 12 months leading up to being banded were pretty grim.

I tried to get the band funded on the NHS. I jumped through all the hoops, I attended the ‘Obesity Clinic’ which, frankly was run so inefficiently that the minimum time I was sat in the waiting room was 2 hours for each appointment (the longest was 4 hours!!!). It was also run by doctors that I swear had almost no understanding of what it is like to be obese. The advice that I was given was at best cretinous and, at worse, downright negligent. I’m not going to go into details here but, suffice to say, as an educated NHS professional myself, it is my opinion that it was a noddy clinic run by noddy staff. The doctors then lied to me about putting me on the waiting list for surgery, I later found out that I wouldn’t have even been put on it until my BMI was over 50.

So, yes, I self-funded my operation. I was lucky enough that my mom had just received a modest lump sum for her retirement and she has given me an interest-free loan. Did I have the band due to my own vanity? Hell, no. Did I do it to, quite literally, save my life? Of course I did. Am I any less deserving of being banded? What do you think?

I am not on ANY of my medications now. Not one. My blood pressure is slowly getting there. It is better than when I was on any of the tablets. I have had 3 normal, monthly periods since the band. In just 13 weeks I am healthier, in my own opinion, than I have been for 10 years. I will be saving the NHS thousands of pounds in treatments and preventable illness. Ok, the plus side is that I look better and can wear smaller knickers, but that’s just an added bonus. I just wanted to feel well again.

The second comment was not said with malice at all but, it still took the wind out of my sails. It was said in a well meaning way initially but, I could sense the irritation behind it. I was asked how much more weight I want to lose. I said 2 stones. Now this is based entirely on getting my BMI under 25. If I lose 2 stones I just squeeze it under there, then I will be eligible for IVF if I need it (fingers crossed that my newly regular periods are a sign that my fertility may well be improving of its own accord).

I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I didn’t need to lose any more weight and the inference was that I was being a ‘silly girl’. The lass who was saying all this was 27 stone and I can understand that being 12 stone, for her, would be such an achievement. But, I am not her, I am me. The band is helping so much, that I want to aim to get my BMI down to about 23. And why shouldn’t I? It’s not an unhealthy or unrealistic goal. My waist measurement is still 38 inches. I am aware that, for women, anything above 35 inches is associated with increased health risks. At 9 stones, it is still 32 inches. I am an apple shape, I have no waist and I carry my excess weight around my middle. It is the first place it goes on and the last place I lose it.


Should I be vilified for wanting to get the most out of the band? I don’t want to be a size bloody zero after all. I just want to be the best me that I can be. Is that really so offensive to people?

After all that, I ended up eating my toasted egg sandwich too fast in the car park after the meeting and was a slime monster all the way home in the car. Sitting with a sandwich bag full of slime on my lap and having to pull over to be properly sick. I can honestly say it made me regret even bothering to go. But, I will return to the group. As I say, don’t let the bastards get you down. Am I being too sensitive? Am I over-reacting? You tell me.

Sorry to rant. Deep breath, onwards and downwards.

"Blythe spent far too long thinking about her 'plan'."

Week 13
Weight: 12stone 1lb
Weight loss: 4stone 2lbs

I’ve done it. I’ve broken through the 4 stone barrier. This is the lightest I have been now for 8 years. Since then I have yoyo-ed between 12½ stone and 17½ stone. I have thought for years that I would be happy to be 12 stone and I have been saying to my mom that at 12 stone I start to look normal. As one of my friends once said when I had lost a couple of stone a few years ago, “you don’t look like the fat girl anymore, just a normal girl who’s carrying a bit of excess weight”. Mmm, with friends like that eh? She kept her mouth firmly shut when I went back to being ‘the fat girl’ again.

So, in my head, I should be looking normal again – yay! I had set myself the goal of being 12 stone for my friend’s wedding next week, so only need to lose a pound this week and I’ll be there. I have to say I am working for this weight loss though. If I just relied on the band I wouldn’t have lost anywhere near as much. I’m not saying this to be boastful, far from it, but, more to demonstrate how I have been using the band as a tool.

I am still having blips. I am a sucker for crapola and am well aware that it goes through the band without any problem whatsoever. My strategy is to fill myself up on more ‘difficult’ to digest foods so that there isn’t the room for the crapola on top. It’s a struggle to be honest and some days I just can’t face the tightness in my chest feeling but, I’d say 5 out of 7 days I am being quite good. The days when I have a blip I just say to myself, “it’s just one night, swim in the morning, walk in the afternoon and stick to the plan for tomorrow”. The swimming in the morning seems to keep me on track to have a good day but, I do tend to overeat between 9 and 10:30pm at night.

I still have some restriction but, it comes and goes. For example on Tuesday night I was in full on muncharama mode. I had 12 oatcakes, small tub of humus, yogurt and a couple of ‘chocolaty bite’ mini-cakes. Ok, not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things but, it did double my calorie intake for the day from 1200 to 2400 in under an hour. The next night I had 2 oatcakes, they got stuck and I spent the whole of The Apprentice being a slime monster until I eventually productively burped them up. So the restriction is really a changing entity on a more or less daily basis.

My plan is to keep up the sensible eating and the exercise, whilst taking advantage of the reduced hunger and then use the band to help me maintain my weight. So here’s my current strategy for my weight loss. This is Monday to Friday whilst at work:

06:30-08:10 – Swim quickly and yet endeavour to keep my hair out of the chlorine water.
08:30-09:00 – Drink 2 pints (1 litre) of weak, warm, sugar-free squash.
09:00 - 1 Oatabix with 1 prune cut up into it, with 150mls of warm, skimmed milk.
10:15-12:30 - Drink 1 litre of warm squash whilst visiting my patients (need to wee quite a lot!).
12:30 - Lunch (made of ½ of previous night’s dinner).
13:30-16.30 – Drink another litre of warm squash.
16:30 - Small banana mashed with low fat yogurt (passes through band quickly for energy).
17:00 - Go for my power walk (6 miles)
19:00 - 1 litre of warm squash.
19:30 - Evening meal (½ tonight, ½ saved for tomorrow).

That’s the plan anyway. The reality is that come 9pm I am on the munch. I now save 200 calories from the day to let myself have yogurt or even a little crapola. It’s just really hard to stop eating it once I have started :(

My aim is to have between 1200 and 1400 calories a day. I am finding that being prepared is the key for me. If I have to faff about and try and think of what I am going to have for lunch, I lose it. I am so busy at work, running around like a blue-arsed fly, that I now take my 20 minutes for lunch and make myself stop and relax to eat it. If I try and rush it or if I am eating whilst writing up patient notes, or returning phone calls, then I get the golf-ball feeling in my chest. Now I actually sit at another desk, turn the radio up and have a daft gossip mag to browse through whilst I eat. My boss is so sweet, she has a friend with a band, so she fields the calls if she knows I am eating :) It makes such a difference.

I’m not perfect though but, having this routine means that, at least for the majority of the day, I don’t actually have to think about food and I eat very well. It’s just the evening that’s the problem. One of my strategies these past few days is to watch the TV only after 9pm and to watch it in bed. For some reason I am less tempted to munch and, if I do, then Jack can hear me go downstairs to the kitchen :)

Sometimes it worries me that I am such an obsessive about all of this but, I am convinced that I really need to apply a lot of mental energy in order to keep on track, ho-hum.

On a lighter note, I attempted to do some running during my power walk. This is for 2 reasons. One, my best friend and I are running the race for life on the 11th ? June (she insists that we run). And the other reason is that I want to reduce the actual time I’m out running. When I started the 6-mile route I was doing it in 1 hour 40 minutes. Now I can do it in 1 hour and 21 minutes. But, the running yesterday nearly bloody killed me. I have to wear 2 sports bras and then, when I am in the rural part of the route, I ran clutching my bosoms to try and control the bounce :) I can only run for a minute, walk for 4 minutes and I still turned into a beetroot face. I spent the time praying nobody would catch me doing the old boob clutch manoeuvre! Oh the shame.


Onwards and downwards.