Fifth fill - 8.5 ml

Since my fourth fill in May it's begun to feel a little more the way it ought to. I felt quite strong restriction during the first two weeks and three pounds came off relatively easily, without much willpower involved at all. I hoped from that point the weight loss would speed up a bit - at the present rate of a kilo a month I wouldn't reach my target for nearly 4 years! In week 3 it slowed down and combined with occasions when I knew I was swallowing more calories than usual - not bingeing, I can't do that any more, but I was consuming high calorie foods because it was such a relief not to PB. Last Sunday I finally weighed myself and was horrified to note I was up by 4lbs.

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I resorted to that-wot-I-shouldn't: I still had in my medicine drawer from 2005 some Leptos purchased on the internet from Vanuatu (!). The active ingredient is sibutramine hydrochloride monohydrate, which seems to act on brain receptors - if I've understood correctly - to tell them I'm not hungry. It doesn't have any speeding up effect like any other slimming pill I've taken, it works superbly on day 1, considerably less on day 2, and so on. Articles I've read do not recommend because it can affect blood pressure etc, and when you stop, your brain seems to work harder to make up lost ground. So not a good idea overall, and I'm definitely not recommending them - just telling you about it.

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Spookily it also had the effect of restricting me a bit - so in addition to the help provided by 14 lengths in the pool, I managed to lose the 4lbs in 3 days and it showed on the scales at the hospital yesterday when I attended for my fifth fill. I must be prepared for this next month and not resort to pills again.

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This visit was one of the least comfortable - it took them three goes before they found the port. I've noticed that when I'm in pain I'm usually 'brave' enough not to make any sound, but I have no control whatsoever over the expressions on my face, and I must have screwed it up something rotten, because they kept apologising! OK today though.

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I now have an extra half ml - 8.5ml in my band altogether. As expected I can't eat much and took most of the morning to eat my half cheese sandwich. Bread is still possible, but oh so slowly.

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I asked the bariatric nurse yesterday about the EasyBand, and to my surprise she knew about it, but very little - for example she thought that the patient controlled the remote which loosens or tightens the band, and didn't know if it was available in the UK (I think it is, but for now confined to one company who have exclusivity, so one would probably have only one location where it was fitted). All bandit bloggers by definition don't need to know about all this, as they're already "sorted", but in the interests of keeping informed of new developments in this amazing technology I thought it worth while mentioning.

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-oOo-

Ever heard of the “EasyBand”?

This is a TAGB - a Telemetric Adjustable Gastric Band - available in the UK under the brand name EasyBand.

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I'm certainly not advertising it of course, as I know nothing about it other than what I found out this week by Googling, but in principle it sounds like the best of all worlds. There are no fills, everything is done by remote control - I attach some blurb I found below.

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My own comment: surely it's therefore just a matter of time before they make one which we can control ourselves with our own remote? Imagine that - with a zap you loosen it a bit if you're uncomfortable or you want to enjoy eating out without restriction, then another zap and you're back on the straight and narrow.... I feel like Mr Toad in the children's book Wind in the Willows, who as Toad of Toad Hall is a rich landowner, always on the lookout for a new vehicle that's smarter and faster... (parp parp!)

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"A remotely controllable gastric banding device for placement around the stomach of a patient for the treatment of obesity. The device comprises a gastric band having an inflatable chamber for adjusting the inner circumference of the band, a pressurized reservoir with a valve for providing fluid to inflate the inflation chamber, a valve for releasing fluid from the inflatable chamber, and a controller for controlling the valves. The controller is remotely controllable from outside the patient.

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The new band - the EasyBand - is adjusted electronically. It consists of a silicone tube containing a metal loop instead of salt water. The tube also has a computer chip linked to a tiny motor (the size of a 10p piece).

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Once the band is in place, a wire attached to it is fed up through the body and into the chest. On the end of the wire is a tiny receiver, which sits just underneath the skin by the breastbone.

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To tighten EasyBand, a doctor presses a button on the handheld gadget. This sends a signal down a wire to a transmitter placed on the patient's chest.

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The signal is picked up by the receiver implanted in the body and forwarded to the microchip. The chip activates a miniature engine that tightens the band and reduces the size of the stomach.

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Information on the band's diameter is beamed back to the control unit, allowing the doctor to control any changes."
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-oOo-

Instructions to self

Some thoughts that are helping me to cope with the long road to what I perceive to be normality – in no particular order (and not including the E word, as I should, but that’s just my own foible. Go to the gym if you must…)

1. Patience – it won’t happen overnight. It took a long time to get myself into this mess. In any case it’s best that it’s slow, as it means less saggy skin, and gives my brain and body more time to get accustomed to the new regime, which will probably last the rest of my life. Better to have pitfalls along the way, and forgive myself for them – I can allow myself this luxury now without getting blue about it because the band will still be there the day after the pitfall. No morning-after pill necessary…

2. Calm down, slow down – no point getting in a state about body image, failure to eat the right things, indignation that the band isn’t actually padlocking my jaws together for me. Forget willpower, if I just slow down and think for a cotton-picking second, it will work. Maybe I haven’t reached the right fill, maybe I’m still stubbornly going to the supermarket and throwing certain things into the trolley which I know are anti-band, such as confectionery, snacks and crisps. Just think: if I cut those off my impulse shopping list, I could safely leave in my favourite main meal foods, in the knowledge that the band will take care of my not having too much of them. I can no longer gorge, gobble, bolt my food – the degree of physical pleasure has changed. I must slow down my eating process, and see how it starts to work. OK, so I may still PB, but nobody said this was going to be pain-free…

3. Promise myself I won’t go hungry – not get anxious about food. Think about ‘head hunger’ – why I feel it, what triggers it. Talk about it to John to bring it out into the open. If I’m still hungry promise myself a bit more after 15 minutes if I still want it.

4. Don’t weigh myself too often – I don’t need to. In the bad old days I would have liked to weigh myself three times a day if I could get away with it, and I’d punch the air in triumph – yessssss! – and that would encourage me to keep at it. Well now I know that with a few simple rules it’ll happen anyway, and if I tip-toe onto the scales too often (holding on to something, then slooooowly letting go…) and there’s no change, I'll get all despondent and whine at the first person I see afterwards.

5. Comfort eating: meet it head on – I’m unhappy, fed up, whatever, and in the past I’d immediately reach for a treat (deadly word) or a food that took me back to safe childhood, when adults told me it was OK to have it. Think this one through; ask myself if there are any other activities which could be used as substitutes. For me, eating is primarily a physical pleasure, and it’s possible that there aren’t that many available to each of us – our lives are all different. So try this for size: what works for me sometimes (Little Miss Perfect I ain’t) is to sit somewhere comfortably, preferably with very little light, totally alone, and daydream about the time ahead – which will come – when I’m at the weight I want to be. What will my party dress be like, how will I feel when I walk into a room, how will it change my approach to people I find difficult, how would it feel to find myself on a stage, what clothes would I now wear to feel and look sexy? Will I have a tummy tuck? Laser eye surgery to chuck out those spectacles? Teeth whitening? A skin peel to improve my complexion? A radical haircut or tint? Or the best fantasy – how will I now flirt with someone I fancy? The list is endless.

6. Distraction – there are days at work when there’s so much on that I’m surprised to find I haven’t thought much about food, and as a result have begun to appreciate the value of finding a project that will (a) keep me far from the kitchen and (b) thinking of other things. In the old days the tyranny of diets meant that I was obsessed with food all day long, when I was next going to eat, how many calories could I allow myself, etc. Then one day about 15 years ago I thought ‘enough’, I was sick to death of thinking of food. I stopped dieting, and almost immediately discovered a passion for photography which absorbed me completely. For a long time I didn’t gain weight at all – I was always out and about, trying out new techniques, joining a camera club, talking about F stops… but gradually I must have started to eat more, because slowly the weight started to creep up again. I should at this point have found something else to keep me busy, and I didn’t. Blogging is brilliant for this, by the way.

7. Know that the band is working without my having to remind it to do so, and I am comforted and cheered by the thought. So now all I need is patience, which is where we came in…

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-oOo-

From cherubs to piranhas

It's in my genes: I was never meant to be fit and muscle-toned. The twinkle in my father's eye held no hint of competitive spirit, and there were no steroids in my baby food. In Argentina in the 60's our 10 inch black and white portable telly only ever showed football, and I didn't want to learn to spit at 10 yards or call the referee's ancestry into question.

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At school I was the captain of my house, and was liked sufficiently to be cheered on by my school-friends as I was breast stroking (the watery version) my way down the pool, underlapping having left me in sole possession of the facility while my competitors were even then towelling themselves dry after their hot showers. In relay track events I fared no better - so eager was I to do as little as possible, that being positioned on the starting blocks in staggered formation lulled me into a false sense of security. I fancied I had a head start, and tried not to feel dismay as those way behind sailed past me... for a few minutes I had felt I was in the lead.

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So you could say that early humilliation on the sports field left me less than enthusiastic about wearing myself out, getting hot and bothered and smelling everybody else's sweat as well as my own, not to mention the sprains and broken limbs which were so easily avoided by simply doing something else. In those days girls had nothing to prove by being fit anyway - boys didn't like you any the less for being weedy, as long as you were slim and had big tits.

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What an unutterable drag therefore to have to discover that there was a direct correlation between calories ingested in the shape of food, and expended in the form of exercise. Worse, as you got older the correlation stretched out of all proportion - you had to starve and work out like a whippet in a race, just so as to avoid the metamorphosis from minor to major. Those of us unwise enough to take a sod-it attitude gradually ate ourselves to a standstill. We got too tired to move, our joints hurt too much to park further than a few yards from the bakery or the sweet shop, and we actively avoided parties where the buffet was of the stand-up variety. Standing-room only was a fate not worth contemplating.

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Then came the reckoning, the moment of truth, the epiphany - to continue as we were condemned us to a very uncomfortable old age, a nuisance to others and a terrible quality of life. To say nothing of the cost of buying new mirrors every time we threw something heavy at the image we saw in it, or the danger of pulling a muscle in an effort to dodge friendly family photographers during festive fun.

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Our particular salvation has come to us (if somewhat expensively) in the form of a gastric band, and here we are, we splinter group of weedy bandits, struggling with a new set of imponderables... how to continue our lazy daisy lives while becoming less roly poly. As I'm dragged away with my heels making tramlines along the floor, my arms waving with hysteria, I hear myself screaming in defeat "ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT, SO SOME FORM OF EXERCISE MAY POSSIBLY SPEED THIS UP." I've said it, so now the gym fanatics can wipe the smirks off their faces.

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The answer for me is wimmin' - in the wimmin' pool.

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It's my chosen form of heavy breathing torture because I'm weightless in water and thus am more likely to exercise properly, but don't start clucking approvingly - my progress is stately and sedate, and except where it's too shallow, a 45 degree angle suits me best. If the water is calm, then the whole experience is (I won't say it too loud) - quite enjoyable. But until the day I win the lottery and can have my own swimming pool, I'm destined most of the time to have to share it with a crowd of very annoying people and be accused of being a Grumpy Old Woman.

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At my local leisure centre the changing rooms are communal, likewise the showers, which are exposed and public for good measure - you can see the athletes foot really clearly under the flood lighting. There's a big choice of lockers, and you can get to try most of them each time as you search for one which isn't broken.

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The pool itself is an obstacle course if I haven't managed to be there within the 7.30 - 7.45 time slot when the kids are safely home tucked up with their fish fingers and the adults haven't quite got themselves organised after work or haven't finished watching the 7.30 TV soaps. This week the little darlings were having a whale of a time, and up there on his raised platform the lifeguard was terribly busy with a lot of mobile phonecalls to make. Why do perfectly normal children turn into begoggled screaming banshees when they spot water at 20 paces? Why is it fun to lunge across length swimmers when attempting a width? How can it possibly be a comfortable experience to stand over the deep end and jump in with a bloodcurdling shriek just as my head and arms are reaching gratefully for the rail at the end, thereby crashing limb against limb? The sight of an adult coughing and spluttering is obviously deeply satisfying, and an apology clearly would spoil the fun.

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King Herod was a very far-sighted monarch.

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If you want to steer clear of the children you could opt for the lane swimming, where purposeful young and fit people steam up and down doing the crawl, these human tsunamis totally oblivious or uncaring of slow-moving wobbly people trying to keep their heads above water. It's like doing 20 miles an hour on the motorway and being overtaken by a truck doing 100, and you use all your energy to avoid being sucked towards them or under, and to dodge those flailing arms. The music of "Jaws" echoes in your ears as you (yes, again) cough and splutter.

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I limp back to the changing cubicle, breathless, (from fury, not the excercise), where my anger is now re-focussed against my underwear which refuses to do anything I ask of it, and my trousers, which finally allow my feet to emerge and rest on the muddy, watery, hairy floor. Some torn seams later, I emerge red-faced, clothes smeared in talcum powder and smelling of chlorine to reflect on the drive home that I didn't swim enough lengths to burn off very many calories. I fantasize about having a small pool in my back garden where there would be an electronic tide I could swim against, and not a living soul in sight...

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Of course as a (newly) sporty person I have sports injuries - in fact I have one at the moment, a twisted ankle. Yesterday I had to climb on a chair to reach for something that was too high up for me, wobbled and put a foot back down to steady myself, and skidded on some magazines that were on the floor. But this is only for my blog. My colleagues have been told that it happened as I was taking a racing dive into the pool.

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-oOo-

The oldest and slowest slimmer in town

I now have 8 ml in my band - a half ml increase on last month. And yet, and yet... I still feel I haven't quite got there. The weight is coming off a tiny bit faster, though you can all rest easy, I'm in no danger of challenging any of my fellow bloggers.

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The pattern quite suits me: I've never been one to want to eat very much before early afternoon, when the Munchy Monster awakes, and the restriction is quite strong in the mornings. With no vending machines to tempt me at work, I stick to coffee taken in a thermos, two or three Bath Oliver biscuits (cream crackers, only denser and tastier, 50 cals each), and from about 12ish I'm eating my soft brown bread cheese sandwich very slowly. I always take two with me, because my "old" head can't believe I can get by on just the one, as the bread is small sliced, but I'm invariably surprised to find I really don't want the second one and it gets recycled on the following day. I do get hungry during the afternoon, but most of the time I get by because I'm too busy to think about it. Our stationer sometimes brings chocolates along with the stationery delivery, and I rarely resist them I'm afraid... unless my bosses are around (two ladies) who are very supportive and do their best to stop me from having any.

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At home I have a snack (either Special K cornflakes without sugar, or plain yoghurt with too much), and dinner is either another snack or a meat-and-two-veg when I have a good deal more than a teacup full. Psychologically, for this to work I can't tell myself I'm dieting and I'm afraid I don't virtuously choose the low calorie versions of what I realise I ought not to be having, and John saying "use your willpower" just brings on the anxiety and sense of failure. The fear of having to be sick is (for the moment) doing the job.

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However, this evening I did roast lamb, slow cooked with lots of gravy and steamed vegetables, and the familiar happaned - first two mouthfulls much too fast, got stuck, miserable half hour, food gone cold, then finished the meat and the root vegetables over the next hour, but unable to have the leafy ones. Enjoyed it in the end, but would have preferred it to be hot... Some crystalised ginger as a sweet consolation afterwards. I thoroughly recommend ginger: it satisfies a sweet craving but it's not that wonderful, and it burns your throat anyway, so you have to stop after a couple of pieces. You don't binge on crystalised ginger...

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There are less good days such as last Wednesday when we were home late from somewhere and it was easier to get a takeaway - and despite John's disapproving eyebrows (they join up at times like these) I got what I wanted: half a portion of chips and two fried eggs cooked at home. Lovely, but I knew I was swallowing a lot of oil. In the shower the following morning and still feeling full - didn't dare weigh myself - I couldn't help thinking that too many evenings like that and this whole effort to change my life is just going to take too long. I don't want to be a slim old lady, I also want to be a slim middle aged one too.

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This litany (are you still awake?) is to say that I feel I'm eating more or less they way I always have, within what the band will allow. I can't help but heed the regular reminders of its presence, and provided I'm careful not to abuse it very much, the weight is coming off without my feeling too "deprived".

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To the bloggers who feel angry that the band isn't actively stopping them from eating what they want, I would say cautiously that you can, within certain boundaries...

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(a) After a certain level of restriction, which varies from person to person, so you're just going to have to be patient till you reach that point;

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(b) Once you've learned how to avoid the blockages and the PBing by steering clear of certain foods and consciously making the effort to slow your eating right down, and by

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(c) Contributing only one bit of purely personal effort, in choosing not to have in the house - or eat - the very high fat addictive foods such as chocolate, crisps & ice cream.

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I can only claim to be trying to achieve them some of the time, and do so in a very imperfect way, but I can see now that this is the most painless way to get it to work.

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-oOo-

Weigh-ins, a whinge or two and a photo finish.

It’s been a better month on the whole, thanks to the increased restriction, and when I go for my fifth fill this coming Wednesday I hope there will be a bit more to show for it than the usual miserable kilo. I know, better than nothing, shows a downward trend…

Thing is – and have you ever done this? – I always wear the same light clothes (leggings, same blouse), but knowing how touch and go it’ll be, at the second weigh-in by Margaret at Taunton Hospital I casually removed my shoes before being weighed. At the third weigh-in I casually removed my socks as well, at the fourth weigh-in (desperation setting in) I casually took off my glasses too and tried not to fumble my way to the scales. What’s left for this coming Wednesday? Can I casually remove my bra without Margaret noticing? And next time cut to the chase and strip off altogether before wobbling towards the little electronic screen? If I whistle loudly as I do it, will she just assume it’s a foreign Patagonian ritual of mine?

We’re settling into a pattern, my band and me. Total cooperation in the mornings with most forms of ingestion, barring coffee, rewarded with horrible discomfort and discreet sprints to the toilet, returning to desk with flushed, blotchy face and enquiring looks. Once I get home, the band is AWOL (on the whole), provided the earlier PB hasn’t been too violent. About once a week, I feel that nirvana of eating a meal and being able to stop half way through because I’m full. But it’s rare, and what weight loss there is, is caused by the discomfort. On these occasions I’m still hungry but am forced to put up with it.

One occasion was revealing: John, a friend of his and me went to the theatre in Bath and had dinner after the show at 11 p.m. in an Italian restaurant. They took a long time to serve us, and I ended up with a modest starter and having to wait 20 minutes before the main course – ravioli – arrived. We didn’t mind, as we were talking animatedly about the play we had seen (a very dated Noel Coward piece), and I suddenly realised having had about a third of the helping, that I really didn’t want any more. Just as I started to say “I think I’m full, but….” John, delighted for me, swiped my plate from under my nose and scraped the remainder onto his own. I didn’t get to finish my sentence or my dinner, but reflected later that the starter probably prepared both my band and my brain. My brain had time to tell my stomach that the feeding process had started, and the conversation made me eat more slowly than usual and not have the usual “I’m-hungry-so-feed-me” blue flashing lights inside my head. Wish it was like this every day…

I’ve made no bones in the past about the fact that I detest most forms of (public) exercise, and that “no-pain-no-gain” and “you ought to…” type speeches just make me stamp my foot and throw a tantrum; however I’m gradually easing myself into certain forms of activity. Most of the time I’m now parking in the employee car-park at the hospital which is a seven minute walk from my desk, involving one gentle hill, and we’re now swimming once a week – and this may also explain the extra pound lost.

Although I enjoy swimming, the before and after are not a laugh a minute. Some weird incompatibility with the chlorine, acquired in middle age, means I have to take antihistamines the day before and the day after if I’m not going to develop strange itching, and as a diabetic I have to have high blood glucose when I go in so that I don’t get a hypo in the pool (you suddenly feel weak as a kitten, and hauling yourself out and getting dressed is like one of the labours of Hercules). I try to avoid chocolate because I’m as addictive about it as anybody, so I end up having to have a liberally sugared bowl of cereal before setting out – wasted calories. The changing cubicles are intended for normal/small people, and it’s a struggle to cope with donning clothes on clammy skin in a confined space, not to mention trying to keep the items which go on via the feet from dragging on the floor which is awash with dirty, hair-clogged slops and probably athletes foot as well.

Shall I stop whingeing? Okeydoke.

Great Aunt’s Day

To finish on a completely different note, my niece has just had her first child, Duncan, and here he is with fond great aunt, finding the generous scaffold very comfortable to lean against.

-oOo-

My formula for world peace!

I think some of Tina’s comments to my last post are worth airing in a new post (I hope she won’t mind my using them!) - she says:

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"I get so sick of this societal belief that the road to weight loss is the strong arm method (just put your arms out and back away form the table). It is so much more complicated than that and deeper. Whether our internal food-o-meter is the result of poor habits, the result of our vegas nerve failing to give us the full signal, or our metabolism to tell us when our weight is where it should be, speedup our calorie burning and shut the voices in our head that say we need more up.

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"Whichever it is the medical profession has finally found a series of interventions that can provide us with hope. I think the program you watched was negligent in pandering to the strong armers by discounting the band. There are plenty of successful cases and others who chose different surgical interventions who are also successful. Statistically the rate of success on our own is abysmal."

I agree, and I share her indignation. I would also add that it's not just TV programmes that pander to the "we slim people know what's good for you fatties" school of thought - almost every doctor in the land thinks that the answer to it lies only in common sense, (eat less and exercise more) with willpower being conjured up in the same way that burning your finger will cause a reaction in you that will stop you from carbonising yourself.

These doctors are soooo clever. Would somebody double their salaries please. They’ve stumbled upon the solution to the world’s problems. Hold the front page folks, it seems that …. deathly hush in the audience… (drumroll)….my voice is rising to a hysterial crescendo…

ALL YOU NEED IS COMMON SENSE AND WILLPOWER!!!

The solution to lung cancer? Look no further! All you have to do is to STOP SMOKING!

Drug addiction? Easy! JUST SAY NO!!

Alcoholism? You shouldn’t need to ask - just DON’T LIFT THE GLASS TO YOUR LIPS!!

Clear the jails? WHY, TELL PEOPLE TO COUNT TO TEN WHEN THEY’RE CONTEMPLATING A CRIME!

Stop all wars? Ask a doctor – he’ll tell you! CONTROL YOUR TEMPER!!!

Well, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t they tell me this years ago, and I would have stopped worrying about the world, agonising about my childhood and making my parents feel guilty…

As she says, at last we're being offered a tool to help us. And yet the medical profession is already tut-tutting because so many people want it, and it all so simple to them – save money by telling people not to eat in excess and do lots of exercise. But the world of the overweight is not like that, as they should well know: we try > we fail, we try > we fail > we suffer expensive complications > we cost the system more as we get older.

So here’s my suggestion for world peace:

Addictions to food, cigarettes, alcohol and drugs are problems with the brain not the body, invest in solutions to them and you’ll have a happier population which therefore would be better motivated to make money honestly, and be less likely to have sexual problems, turn to artificial alternatives or comfort eating… and people would therefore not lose their tempers and start wars!

I reckon that should earn me a Nobel Peace Prize at the very least.

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-oOo-

A rant about a TV programme on banding

I watched a TV programme this evening on some of the ways the National Health Service is dealing with the problem of obesity in the young in the UK, with particular emphasis on gastric banding and the hospital in Birmingham which is treating them. My post has turned out a bit long - but bear with me please? I feel it's so relevant to us...

Three girls around the age of 20 were interviewed at some length, and it was clear their attitudes revolved around not knowing or not caring about why they were overweight, they were quite happy to admit to their failings, they wanted gastric bands and that was that. One and two were told they didn’t qualify for an NHS band, and were encouraged to eat healthily and do more exercise. № 1 had help from her mother, who got her a personal trainer and helped her plan her meals and disregard the unhealthy eating habits of the young boyfriend, and № 2 tried on her own but was getting married soon and knew she couldn’t lose enough by the big day so couldn’t get motivated. № 3 was given the go ahead for the band, but was told she had to lose a stone – 6 kg – before the op. She told the cameras she was doing the right things, though as her partner was as big as she was it seemed doubtful that she would manage it.

№ 1 lost a couple of stone over the next few months, and was the pride and joy of the dietician treating her, № 2 lost virtually nothing by her wedding day but was weighed several months later and had lost a bit. № 3 had the band fitted. During the op the surgeon commented that he could see from the state of her insides and her liver that she hadn’t followed much of a diet beforehand, and that she would probably have lifestyle adjustment problems in the future. The girl herself said she had “suffered a lot in the op, and that she was now finding that it didn’t always work”. She lost about the same as the other two over the same period, and the voice over pointed out in several different ways that the successes of №’s 1 and 2 hadn’t cost the system very much, as opposed to № 3’s.

The consultant, who fitted 20 gastric bands a week, thought the NHS shouldn’t waste time assessing which few people would be allowed a band, but that as many should be fitted as possible, to avoid the drain on NHS resources later on when the consequences of diabetes and joints wearing out became apparent.

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The programme left me with the usual indignation – yet again the self-righteous point had been made that there’s no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise, yet it was obvious that № 1 wouldn’t be able to keep up the expense of a personal trainer and no doubt her motivation either once the TV cameras had gone home, and the same for № 2. № 3 will lose weight – a bit, a lot, who knows – but mainly because the band will bring her up short.

It may take a whole generation of people with bands to see that the solution lies in the prevention of the problem, not its long-term cure, which does not exist.

Whereas it’s too late both for those young girls and for the likes of us whose minds are set into the groove of food = pleasure = guilt, there’s the hope that in becoming slim, we are motivated, not for ourselves, but for our children. We need to be taught the skills of how to take responsibility for our children’s future, not just their present, by dealing with the psychology of their overeating, their eating for comfort, their guilt, their reluctance to exercise, and so on. I can see a future time when overweight could cease to be an epidemic because parents had learned the hard way, and with the help of school and television the message finally got through to the kids in time before the bad habits set in. One day I hope to see a television documentary that will make this point.

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-oOo-

Less like restriction, more like stranglehold

I had my fourth fill last Wednesday, and now have 7.5ml in my 10ml band. Margaret, who weighed me (still snail's pace, though steady), and asked me how I was getting on, thought I should only have half a ml this time - and I thought oh no, this is all so slow... So when the surgeon gave me the choice of a half or one ml, I jumped at the chance. Was I sure? You betcha. My bowlfull of cornflakes when I got home was sublime: I felt full and satisfied though I hadn't eaten much that day. I imagined triumphant post in blog - it's working!

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Thursday managed sandwich at lunch and salad in the evening (one morsel at a time and couldn't eat the tomato skins - took ages) without feeling too bad, though I went to bed hungry. Friday morning at work my boss offered me a Ryvita, one of the new ones with berries in them that taste ever so slighty sweet. Divine... I ate it slowly, then washed it down with a small cup of coffee... and for the rest of the day I felt awful. I had to rush to the loo three times, where I also tried jumping up and down, without success. Thought I was fine at lunchtime and managed two bites of a sandwich made from soft brown bread and tuna mayonnaise, but I was uncomfortable all afternoon with the same running up and down. (Doesn't being sick make your face go awful and blotchy, not to mention all puffy? It made me feel all the more self-conscious.)

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"Surprise!" says John - "I've got us some fillet steak for dinner". Lovely, my fave. "You've got to chew it properly" says John "I'm going to count your chews". Talk about invasion of privacy. I'm watching the news and he's watching me, going "...five, six... eighteen, nineteen, come on, you've got to get to 25 at least". Three hours and many trips to the loo later I had to admit that all I was going to keep down was water. I remembered Tracey's posts of a couple of months ago, and her despair of being able to keep herself fed at all, and wondered if Margaret had been right, and I should have stuck to half a ml. I didn't even dare give myself any insulin before going to bed.

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Today we visited a friend in Tewkesbury, and we lounged in her conservatory as she gave us raw vegetable sticks and dips for lunch, with cheeses and some sliced ham, and it was as if nothing had happened. No problem at all, though I was glad it all took a couple of hours. Home-again-home-again, hot cross buns as a treat. Oh dear - I had one half with butter on it, and for the next hour - i.e. four or five times - I was going backwards and forwards to the loo. It would have been better to have just sat there and eaten it... So - still blotchy and puffy. Sight for sore eyes... I don't think.

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All this discomfort is miserable, but I suppose it's going to be the only way to find out what I can eat and what I can't. The band is now clearly working with a vengeance, and most of the weight loss recorded in the last entry on my snail's chart is the result of the last three days performance. My fear (as Dawn says in a recent post) is that this learning process should have to be learned in front of guests, or in a restaurant.

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I'll blog more often from now on - the long silences were due to my unsuccessful struggle to overcome the devastating effect of the burglary. I can't write cheerful if I don't feel it, and outpourings of misery make for a boring blog. However, as with most things, you get used to anything if you wait long enough.

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Thank you, thank you for the very kind remarks left in the comments.

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-oOo-

Life goes on

Apologies for the radio silence - too blue to blog. I much appreciate the sympathy, and I'm still trying to get used to the fact that I won't see the family jewellery again and that my niece won't inherit anything.

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I couldn't give up just like that though - after two people told me they had recovered items of sentimental value by offering a reward, I put a fairly prominent ad in the local paper yesterday and today, saying I had "lost" some pieces, described them and offered £100 each for their return, and gave a mobile number, implying that no questions will be asked, but there has been no reply. On Saturday I'll go to an area frequented by pawnbrokers and hand out copies of the ad, hoping the thieves have tried to offload the goods there. A friend in the security business has put out discreet feelers with the same message, but he's heard nothing either. It probably sounds hopeless to you reading this, but I have to try. I keep being told that if you want to be lucky you have to make your own luck, and I'm doing what I can. I dare say I'll move on in the end.

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Bandwise, I feel it is helping me a little more following the third fill I had on 17th March. I now have 6.5ml in the band, and things are getting stuck a lot more often. But so much for the blurb about feeling satisfied after a teacup full of food - double D size bra cup, more like. However, I am aware of more "help", and I'm confident I will have lost more than a kilo next time I go to the hospital in mid April for the fourth fill.

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This is what happens:

I'm hungry, I start my snack/meal with hasty bites, improperly chewed. By the third bite I feel painful restriction, desire to burp, and fork clatters back on the plate. "What's the matter?" says John - and it's taken him all this time to realise that I can't speak! I just wave my arms feebly to shut him up. I wait for the discomfort to go away, sometimes trying to help it along by flapping about like a windmill, or holding my breath, as a blogger has recommended this week. I only allow myself tiny burps (relief!) so they aren't productive, and wait. Sometimes it passes after 10-15 minutes, sometimes I'm forced to give up the struggle and head for the loo. By the time I feel OK again my hunger has returned (it surprises me every time!) but of course the food is cold. In addition, my brain has caught up with my stomach, and because I've effectively slowed down, I rarely want to finish what's on my plate. So presumably that's when the satisfied feeling kicks in. The world's overweight problems would be solved if there was a way to prevent us from taking less than 30 minutes to eat a plateful of food...

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Thing is, I have to go through this palaver for it to work, and sometimes I want to sulk and say snotfair. It's better than the old me, though, so I can't sulk for very long.

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-oOo-