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 A lot has happened in terms of learning how to live with the band but not a great deal yet on the weight front. Ok, I weighed in at 235 after my few weeks of liquid only, crash dieting I had to do before the operation along with the 2 weeks after the op when I couldn’t eat solids. When the swelling went down my appetite returned with a vengeance!
Even though there was no real restriction, I found that I was unable to consume the volume of food that I had before. But as we know, after any attempt at dieting, on resuming ‘normal’ eating you will find that you gain weight very quickly on fewer calories, it’s simply the body defending it’s set point. The dietitian warned me about the likely weight gain so I was unsurprised to find on my first fill date 9th of December I weighed in at 242. 7 pounds up even though I was eating very normal amounts.
For my first fill the nurse injected 2.5ml of saline to make a total of 4.5. Personally I did not feel like it made a blind bit of difference. Over Christmas and the holidays I enjoyed much the same diet as I’ve always done. There was a very minor change in the volumes consumed a fact my sister commented on but again this is to be expected with the band practically still empty. They make it very clear to you with every telephone consultation not to expect much from the first few fills, on average it takes 4 fills to get good restriction.
About a week before I was due to get my second fill yesterday 9th Jan, I got my first ‘stuck’ episode. I had just eaten a supper of overly dry meatloaf, mixed vegetables and yorkshire puddings which I wolfed down without chewing well. It was not fun, I had sharp pains behind my ribcage (where my stomach lies) coupled with unbelievable heartburn. It lasted 15 minutes until the food went down! Since then I’ve given meat the absolute respect it deserves. To begin with, I don’t eat much of it any more, I’d rather have the safer fish option and when I do, it’s got to be tender cooked in a sauce. But that’s as far as saucy food goes for me.
I had my second fill today, the nurse only added 1ml for a total of 5.5ml. At this stage they put in very little into the band until you reach that sweet spot. She said she’s not sure if I will get to the sweet spot with this fill, more than likely the next fill should do it. What surprised me was that my weight was down 4 pounds to 238, over the Christmas period which is an absolute shocker!
The eating plan recommended during the weight loss period is ‘dry & crunch textures’. Basically avoid overly soft saucy foods. My meat must be cooked to tenderness but I should avoid at all costs the sauce the meat is cooked in otherwise the meal will just slide through the band. Good foods are roast or boiled new potatoes (they fill you up in 3 minutes flat!), baked/steamed oily or white fish, steamed, roasted or stir fried vegetables (cooked al dente), pasta al dente, toast (if you are inclined, I’ve found myself no longer much interested in bread, I used to be a bread freak!), meat if cooked tender but scrape off sauce while serving, minced meat again without much sauce.
Bad foods would be lasagne (fatty, carby, saucy and soft!), cottage/shepherds pie, mashed potatoes, soft pasta or noodles, soft rice (we stick with the hard parboiled kind these days), couscous especially with sauce, pies with soft pastry, sauce of any kind with the meal, dry barbecue meat will only get stuck, chocolate & ice cream will just slide through the band, cake, soft bread, chilli or entire stewed meals will just slide through, fizzy drinks (will cause you pain like no other! When that gas starts expanding in your little pouch, you will curse the day coca cola was invented) etc you get the picture.
Looking at the bad foods list, these are the things I was practically living on, I loved chilli, paella, jambalaya and biryani all made with plenty of sauce and soft rice. You know how they say that obese people love carbs, actually for me it was always about the fat & carb mixture and a soft texture. I’ve never been much of a pasta eater!
Another important thing I was told is to start eating off a side plate instead of a normal dinner plate and taking smaller mouthfuls, no bigger than the size of your thumbnail. It takes forever to finish eating but I rarely finish my food these days so that tells you something.
In the past don’t think I have ever got the ‘full’ signal, it was always either hungry, I could eat, or stuffed! These days however, I get the full signal loud and clear so that’s one of the best things about the band so far. At first I feel the stomach fullness but I’ve always been one to eat when not truly hungry and I may try to get some more in particularly if there’s still food on my plate but at that point my throat constricts as if my brain is literally rejecting the food. I call it reaching the wall (a place I had never visited before!). I hear if you try to climb over the wall vomiting will follow almost instantly. I’m happy to report that I have never attempted to do so. I found over Christmas that I can’t finish an entire slice of cake before reaching the wall.
Well anyway, I am planning to go back to the gym this week seeing as I haven’t been since before the op. Some light cardio like walking will be ideal, can’t do swimming at the moment because my hair is too pretty! Since I only got my fill, I am on liquids today and soft foods for the next couple of days before resuming my normal diet. Somehow I find that I am enjoying food more these days, I suppose it’s because I feel in control of the food now. Food no longer controls me, it’s a lovely feeling.
I was reading a thread over at lapbandtalk and a lady was describing to a new ‘bandit’ what it feels like to be at the sweet spot. Her response
It’s not a feeling of being “Full”, as if you’ve overeaten, it is more of a “Lack of Interest” in eating. I believe it is a signal the band sends to the brain, same as if you were full, but you’re not full, telling you “You Don’t Have To Eat”
This is probably the reason why weight returns without fail after dieting of any kind. Your brain KNOWS you are hungry, or that you are eating differently by avoiding fat or carbs, or meat, or onions! Your metabolic rate is dialled down and you are smack bang in the middle of starvation mode eating fewer and fewer calories with less and less to show for it. With the band, your brain thinks you ARE full with smaller amounts so weight loss feels effortless. Can’t wait!
It’s been 14 days since the operation, I weighed in at 234.0 this morning and the shoulder pain has all but dissapearred. I don’t need paracetamol any more and I am almost coming to the end of the pureed food stage so this past week I’ve been living on mashed potatoes, pureed eggs and the occasional pureed sausage (I use as a sauce over the mash!). In any case it’s a vast improvement over the liquid only phase and I am starting to feel hungrier than I did just after the surgery. I am still only able to eat about 3/4 cup of food by volume at once before feeling uncomfortably full and I find that I am only getting hungry twice per day so I skip lunch most days.
I also noticed in my hospital release notes that my doctor filled my band with 2ml of saline! No wonder I’ve had a reduction in hunger. I was also told on release that the doctor had fixed a hiatus hernia while he was installing the band which I hear is common with obesity but since release I’ve been taking high doses of ibuprofen which it turns out should not be taken by those with hiatus hernias! They should tell you this on release shouldn’t they?
My food calories barely come to 500 but with the endless cups of tea and occasional chocolate bar that I am sneaking, I reckon I’m getting about 1000 calories per day at the moment. Honestly, if the hunger remains at this level ( normal instead of the constant hunger I had in the past), then I don’t see the need for another fill. That might change however as the weeks pass and I fully heal, I hear that one gets hungrier . . .
Spaghetti Bolognese for supper tomorrow methinks!
So I made it, I finally got my gastric band! The whole experience was overwhelming, the stay at the hospital was as restful as I’ve ever had but the operation was over in a flash. it was my first time under general anaesthetic and it wasn’t, like I was led to believe, anything like sleeping. Waking up certainly felt like you were waking from sleep but the sleeping bit was just not the same. It was like one minute you were staring at the anaesthetist putting a mask over your face and next minute you are waking up. Very bizzare, no dreams or anything. I’ve got a few small scars on my tummy to show for it but I dare say they will fade to look better than the collection of stretch marks I already have there!
Its funny that you hear of how pain free the operation and scars are and it’s true. I mean sure my tummy is a bit tender when I push down on it a bit but no genuine pain there. What you don’t hear much about is the gas pains. Apparently, and I only found this out after the operation, they blow CO2 gas into your abdominal cavity to make room for the laproscopic instruments that they use. After the operation, even though most of the gas is expelled, a few pockets may remain causing shoulder/chest pains. It horrible because you can actually feel the pocket of air move from your shoulder to your chest but until the gas is reabsorbed by your tissues you just have to wait to ‘pass’ it. In the meantime my left sholder hurts like hell (ibuprofen does little to help).
I am on strict liquids for the next 2 weeks so mostly milkshakes, protein shakes, soups, yogurt, fruit juice etc. They say that you should have 2-3 litres of fluids per day but I find that when I’m hungry and I have just a few sips of whatever I’m having, I get incredibly full, I’m barely managing 1 litre per day. I’m sure this is just temporary and after the swelling goes down, I will be able to handle more. In the meantime I’m relying on a mutivitain, Vit D3, B12 & vegetable juice to at least make sure I’m getting all essential minerals & vitamins daily. I am also blending up my own soups in the vitamix. God bless the vitamix!
Even with my surgery date looming (its tomorrow!), I still enjoy reading different points of view in the health community. It fascinates me to see that we are all running around like headless chickens trying to find out what the root cause of obesity is in the hope that once we know what causes it, we will know how to reverse it.
Yesterday I watched an episode of Mythbusters where they were looking at the myth that it is impossible to walk in a straight line when you are blindfolded. Humans will actually start walking around in circles! The myth was confirmed, it was hilarious watching Adam and Jamie waliking and swimming round and round in corkscrew circles! Anyway, it got me thinking that we are doing the same thing with obesity. At the moment, even with all the research on the subject, there does not seem to be a clear consensus on what causes obesity or how to reverse it. Most diets just treat symptoms of obesity i.e food intake. Dont eat fat and you lose weight you hear some gurus say. Yet not eating fat does not reverse obesity, not in the long run. Don’t eat carbs, others say. Again this does not reverse obesity for everyone in the long run. Time is a great equalizer with all diets, none of them work.
Carbsane had a blog post that really spoke to what I’m trying to say:
“Wheat belly says it’s wheat, except when it’s oats or any other carb. Lustig says it’s fructose. Rosedale says it’s those leptin-spiking carbs. Kruse says it’s some epigenetic switch that flipped off your leptin receptors or something about quantum levees and puffy afghans. Taubes says it’s really all about the insulin. Stephan Guyenet says food reward is a dominant factor. I find that last one closest of all to explaining the SAD-provoked obesity epidemic.”
When humans are blindfolded and cannot see their destination, we walk around in circles. That’s how it feels trying to make sense of the maze that is the weight loss market. Pills, potions and diets all with little to no long term success. I’ve just decided to put my money on something that has a bit more of a chance in the long term, weight loss surgery.
My pre op diet ends today, hooray! I thought this day would never come. Eating 500 calories per day is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. This time round, I did the diet only for 7 days and I found more satisfaction eating high protein, high carb and pretty low fat. None of the low carb nonsense that I struggled with at the beginning!
I will update once I’ve recovered.
I’m pretty sure it’s not just me who’s noticed that people who were obese/overwieght and turned to a low carb diet to lose weight often lose weight but rebound to a higher-than-conventionally-slim weight where they seem to settle. Some don’t lose all the weight they need to get to a healthy weight, they just lose a few pounds but plateau at a weight that is still overweight/obese (I was the latter). I don’t like to be mean but when I see low carb proponents bleating on about how great low carbing is, I want to take a closer look at their vital statistics and so far, I haven’t seen the slim bunch of people I expect to see.
The way I see it, I want to emulate previously obese people who currently have the results I desire. And many of those who fit into that category don’t actually adhere to a low carb high fat lifestyle. In fact many of them will only slightly reduce carbs to help with fat loss but without smothering everything with butter or coconut oil and once they are out of the fat loss stage and are actively building muscle, they eat higher than average carb levels for better physical performance.
It leads me to think that if after my gastric band operation, I opt for a high fat low carb diet (I wouldn’t coz I can only stick to it for a day or so!), I would more than likely remain obese just like it’s proponents. If I was to be pushed on what macros I expect to be consuming, I would say that a high carb, high protein, lowish fat diet will both be easier to stick to and also more difficult to overeat (provided I look at the reward value of the foods I choose i.e. ditch the wheat.
No point in me dwelling too much on this subject, I think it has been touched on plenty of times in the blogosphere:
Carbsane’s series:
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/05/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-i-define.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-ii-theres.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-ii1-what-it.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-iii-why-so.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-iv.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-v-health.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-vi-at-least.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-vi1.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-vii-its.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-lc-morphing-to-haes-part-viii-can.html
Anthony Colpo, he comes across a bit rude but he’s funny and dead on with the points he makes:
http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=1929
Mike Howard:
http://www.diet-blog.com/11/nutritional_fanaticism_i_extreme_low_carbers_pt_2.php
Leangains:
http://www.leangains.com/2009/02/low-carb-talibans.html
It just doen’t seem feasible to me that the macronutrient that we are supposebly allowed to consume with abandon (fat) is the one that is the most difficult to obtain isolated in nature. I know, I know not many things in nature are composed of just one macronutrient but if we were really meant to eat 70% of our calories from fat, you would think that nature would have made it easier for us by providing trees that we could just tap pure fat from! But nay even the paleo friendly coconut oil has to go through a great deal of processing to come into existence. and don’t get me started on vegetable oils!
I’m just sayin….
I was hopping mad last week when I got a phone call from the nurse (on my birthday no less) to tell me that the operation had to be postponed until the 27th October. Nothing much to report at the moment except to say that I immediately went back to eating ‘normally’. I’m still not making wheat or rice a regular part of my diet because of their reward factors. I am slowly beginning to weed out foods that make me overeat. Lamb is another culprit. When we make roast lamb at home, shortly after eating, I will usually go and nibble on some more even when I’m not genuinely hungry. It’s the strong flavour of the meat I think, I certainly don’t feel the same about beef and certainly not pork either. Chicken is touch and go so I will keep it in for the moment.
I weighed in at 239.8, about 11 pounds down from when I started the pre op diet. I will start the pre op diet again on Tuesday and do it for 9 days this time. Here’s to hoping that there are no more delays!
To answer that question, I think I would have to consider first what made me obese in the first place and once obesity is established, can it ever be reversed? The way I see it, there are only two ideas worth looking at:
- Carbohydrate theory – I ate a higher carbohydrate diet than I should have
- Food reward theory- I ate palatable & rewarding food that increased my body fat setpoint
Looking at the first idea of the carbs, it goes like this. You eat too many carbs, blood sugar goes up, insulin responds to remove sugar from your bloodstream, sometimes insulin overshoots and your blood sugar goes too low which makes you hungry and crave some more carbs to push up the blood sugar again. Cycle continues. In time you are consuming excess calories and weight goes up and with chronic high blood sugar, eventually you get metabolic syndrome which may lead to diabetes and CVD. Makes sense right? The only problem with this from a personal standpoint is that it doesn’t always wash. Sure when I eat a slice of home-made carrot cake, I enjoy the slice immensely and less than an hour after eating it, I want another one. Same goes for doughnuts and cookies (especially cookies!). When I eat a baked potato with beans however, an hour later am I climbing the walls to get my hands on another one? Nope. I often eat a baked potato for breakfast and can go a solid 7 hours without thinking of food again. Same goes for oats and yams. They are the most satiating food I eat bar none.
It puts me in the mind of another Atkins diet attempt that I tried about a year ago. After reading primal blueprint, I came to the conclusion that the reason why all my attempts at Atkins were failing was because I wasnt eating enough fat. I started spooning up to 2 tablespoons of butter or coconut oil over my steak to see if it would make me fuller for longer. It didn’t. In fact a couple of hours later and still hungry I considered just trying to eat the fat straight to take the hunger away! For me, it makes carbohydrate theory a wash.
The food reward idea for me stands on more solid ground. It so simple it’s criminal. Basically, “If it makes you want to eat more of it, it’s going to make you fat.” You find plenty of low carbers not losing weight while eating nuts & cheese etc even though their carbs are outrageously low. You also find low fat proponents stalling while snacking on crackers.
The food reward theory makes sense because obesity does not form for the same reason in all of us. For me when I was growing up, it may have been the bread I ate every day with heavy rice meals for supper (rice has huge reward for me!). And for the person growing up in India, it may be the chapattis he had daily for lunch and for the American, it may be the krispy kremes. For most people, the high reward foods will be the high fat, high carb, high sugar goodies. Ben & Jerrys anyone? But the gorgeous thing about this theory of obesity is that it is truly individual to the person. Bottom line, if you want to eat more of it shortly after eating it, you have no business eating it. Doesn’t matter if it’s low carb, low fat, low flavour. Whatever.
On to the question of whether the gastric band operation in a few days will ‘cure’ my obesity. Well yes and no. I may lose the outward signs of obesity in that I (hopefully!) will no longer be fat. But will it cure my urge to eat 4 croissants in a row. Erm no. That’s something that I will have to do on my own. I have renewed hope though. Gone are the days of counting fat grams, carbs or calories and onto a new era of looking at food as an energy source and a pleasure without the hedonistic urge to eat just because it tastes good. It’s sad to admit but there will be no weight loss diet for me that includes croissants and a full fat latte for breakfast, a burger for lunch and a 3 course steak meal for supper complete with 8 carat gold carrot cake for dessert!
I am stunned, today is the first time since the pre-op diet started 6 days ago that I have felt satisfied after a meal. I’m not saying that I’ve not been hungry at all today, anyone would feel hungry eating 500 calories a day but I was stunned at just how different this is compared to the low carb version that I began with. Today I had oatmeal made with water and sugar free hazelnut syrup for breakfast, I was genuinely full afterwards. I had drinks for the remainder of the day but I didn’t eat again until supper where I had baked fish, sweet potato and salad. No hunger after supper, a total of 550 calories today. Considering that my low carb version a few days ago when I was starving were at 1000 calories, I am suitably impressed.
A little background about my proper low carbing days. I often wondered why I never felt full on Atkins. And why everyone always said that they suddenly had tons of energy after a few days, that was never the case for me. I was on Atkins induction for 3 months 10 years ago and I was hungry daily but lost 30 pounds (not that great consdering I was about 90lb overweight). The further 3 months I managed on the diet was at 20-40g carbs daily where I regained about 10 pounds. I never wanted to go out because I was tired all the time, and when I did, it was just to cruise the bread isle at the supermarket inhaling the wonderful smell. Now I’m not saying that bread is such a great thing to eat, it the epitome of a junk food. However, being on Atkins had made me into more of a carb craver than I had been previously! Atkins was in fact my first ever diet.
The strange thing is that for years afterwards, I was always of the opinion that carbs made you fat and unsuccessfully tried about 3 times a year for 10 years to restart low carbing, after all, if I even attempted low fat it would make me fatter right? Yes I actually believed the nonsense that it is low fat dieting that was making us all fatter! I will put my hands up and say faithfully that I had never in fact been on a low fat diet during my childhood when I was first diagnosed as being obese. Fat, Carbs and Protein in excess are what made me fat. Period. In the period of being a low carb advocate (albeit remaining obese), I read every low carb book out there which further reinforced my belief that only low carbing worked even though it had never worked for me. Good calories bad calories, South Beach Diet, Carb addicts diet, Protein power and I was an avid follower of a few blogs Jimmy Moore’s blog, Primal blueprint to name a few but I could never make any of them last long enough for any substantial weight loss.
I did have a period there of sustained weight loss doing the Burn the fat feed the muscle program but it all got too stressful counting calories and truth be told, I was lazy and was looking for a ‘eat all you like from these foods but don’t eat these foods’ type of diet. I got that a few months ago when I decided to take the opposite stance. I decided that since I could not do a low carb diet, I would try to do a low fat diet for the first time. I was a vegan for about 4 months but I never did give up the oils. Predictably, I didn’t lose any weight. I didn’t gain any either which for me instantly debunked the whole insulin, carbohydrate theory of fat gain. I did try the McDougall diet (about 10% fat and 80% carbs). I lost 5 pounds the first week but at the weekend I had KFC and that was the end of that!
My conclusions are logical,
- I feel lousy when I don’t eat carbs and no period of becoming ‘fat adapted’ changes that for me.
- It takes a certain volume and calorie density of food for me to feel satisfied when I eat. When I try low carb, the fibre goes down hence volume is reduced and I feel hungry. On low fat, there is plenty of bulk and I feel full faster but without the calorie density, I also get hungry faster. I tried Dr Fuhrman’s diet a while ago and attempted to eat just vegetables alone. I remember a day when my stomach was genuinely full to the brim from a huge pile of vegetables I’d eaten but I was still getting hunger pangs. Insane.
- I can’t fool my appetite with ketosis for an extended period of time. Eventually I overeat even the fat and protein preventing weight loss.
- I thought I’d found something in low carb that worked for a time and I was romanticizing that period and trying to re-create it. I can never recreate something that never was, low carb was torture the first time round and has remained so ever time I’ve attempted to do it again.
- Ketosis – a starvation diet by another name. Not sustainable in the long term.
- Plenty of amylase in our saliva proves that we ARE adapted to eating starch at least as a portion of our diet. I doubt nature is trying to kill us by carb!
- Carbs never made anyone fat. Carbs and fat on the other hand . . . Think bread and butter, potato chips, fries, cake, ice cream, cookies etc etc. All examples of high fat, high carb highly palatable processed foods.
- Coconut oil is not a weight loss supplement, chronically ill patients use it to prevent wasting as a result of treatment
- Way too many low carb advocates remain overweight in continuing to live the low carb lifestyle. Either they are finding the diet too difficult to sustain in order lose the weight or maybe the diet doesn’t work that great all the time. Either way, I can’t ignore this fact.
I am no longer blinded by the certainty of low-carb’s superiority, I was never convinced by calorie counting and I don’t believe low fat is sustainable in the long term. I am no scientist or researcher, I only go from personal experience and common sense. Since all diets inevitably fail in the long term, attempting one is futile at best. The odds are so against your success, you may as well just buy a lottery ticket! Obesity is disease for which there is currently no cure. The only way of controlling obesity that has had the ‘best’ success at keeping the weight off at 10 years after the loss is achieved is weight loss surgery. Notice I don’t say cure because some degree of overweight is left in many weight loss surgery individuals and some even sabotage their weight loss efforts and manage to their re-stretch their little egg sized stomachs to their original size. Even with all the imperfections of the approach and procedure, for my money, put me under and strap a band to my stomach. I’m tired of trying to fight my hunger!
Oh oh! I just realised today that I’ve been eating the wrong pre op diet. Never one to follow rules, after the first day of consuming just milk for my pre op diet, I jumped online to find an alternative, I wanted to see what other doctors recommended to their patients. The general theme with most doctors seems to be a low(ish) carb reduced calorie diet. I was getting 1000 calories repeated often so naturally, I assumed that this is what my own doctor wanted me to do. Considering that the milk only option is about 800 calories, I didn’t think I was far off.
Now instead of go through the actual food plan that I was given, I just figured that if I kept below 1000 calories per day and ate low carb, I would be ok. For the last few days I have been eating very low carb (I feel starving and miserable). I start with a protein shake in the morning and don’t eat again until supper where I have some sort of meat with vegetables. I don’t know who said that protein makes you full but that’s never worked for me. In the past, when I didn’t eat carbs with a meal, I felt like I hadn’t eaten, regardless how much meat, butter or coconut oil I added to my food. Maybe it’s just me that this theory doesn’t work for or maybe I’m just incurably addicted to carbs!
Back to the surgery, it made sense to me that if all the doctor wants is to have the size of my liver reduced then all I have to do is eat low carb for a minute and all the glycogen stores will shuffle out of my liver thereby shrinking it. Right? Today, out of curiosity, I decided to finally carefully read the recommended diet and after I entered the values of everything into fitday, I was horrified to learn that it is actually a 500-550 calorie diet that I am supposed to be doing. It’s a good thing I still have 6 days to go before my operation anyway so still plenty of time to salvage the situation! I also noticed curiously that the diet is not as low in carbs as I’d imagined. Here is a sample day:
Breakfast – 25g cereal and 150-200ml semi skimmed milk
Lunch – 1 medium slice of bread, 50g plain lean meat & small salad
Supper – 1 medium egg sized boiled potato, 50g plain lean meat & small salad
Also included is up to 1/3 pint semi skimmed milk a day & calorie free drinks can be taken freely
It will be interesting to see if my hunger is higher or lower with the increased carbs but reduced calories. I will not eat any of the bread options, bread is one of my hedonistic, ‘eat just because its there and tastes good’ trigger foods and I would very much like to remain sane. I will not eat any lunch, I’d rather save my measly portion and enjoy a more ‘normal’ looking supper instead. Maybe after the operation I will reach a stage where 240 calories for supper will be normal. I’m not there yet . . .
Incidentally, I weighed in at 250.2 on the day I started the pre-op diet. My highest official weight.
I had my consultation with Dr Sigurdsson of Surgicare Medical Group. He put me at ease with the idea of surgery and explained the whole process to me. and I have made my payment of £5500 (bank loan) and the operation is booked for 13th October 2011. I half considered changing the date (unlucky 13 and all that! lol) but I’m not superstitious and to be honest, I am so excited about the surgery now, I don’t wanna wait any more!
The only unfortunate thing is that my birthday is the 11th so unfortunately I will be on my pre-op diet during my birthday. Speaking of the pre op diet, it is in essence a liquid diet. You are allowed 3 pints of milk (or alternative product like slimfast, cambridge etc), a couple of pots of low fat yogurt, 2 x 10 calorie jellies and a stock cube (for the salt). There is an alternative on based on solids but for someone like me who is used to eating larger volumes of food than what is allowed, the solid version will probably be quite unsatisfactory. 1 slice of toast and 1 scrambled egg? Yeah right, I’ll stick with the milk thank you! The purpose of the diet is not to lose weight believe it or not but to shrink your liver in preparation for the surgery. Apparently your liver sits on top of your stomach so a large liver makes for a difficult surgery.
The pre op diet is to be done for 7 to 14 days. I have been asked to do it for 10 days so for me it starts tomorrow morning. I know I will be starving in a couple of days but I can’t wait to get started. It’s a means to an end.
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