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-

Burglary

Somebody up there was listening when I claimed that greed was a deadly sin I didn't have. I was sorely tested yesterday. When I returned home from work John met me with the bad news that while he was in the house - either inside the house playing card games on his computer with the door shut, or outside gardening - his wallet had been stolen from his jacket pocket where it was draped over one of the dining-room chairs (near the front door).

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At first we thought it had simply dropped out of his pocket, and the first half hour was spent looking in likely places. But then I had cause to walk about 10m to the other end of the house and I realised it was serious - all drawers had been opened and some contents were strewn around, and my jewellery box was upside down and almost empty: worthless trinkets had been left behind.

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How they got away with it with John around is a total mystery, but it was probably for the best that they did. He's the sort of person who would have confronted them, and at 81 with a heart condition, despite the fact that he used to box in the army when he was young, I wouldn't have reckoned his chances were very high at getting them to return stolen goods - in fact it's more likely that they would have responded with violence. He just shrugs his shoulders and says it would still have been worth it... (what is it with you men for goodness sake?)

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They took every last piece of jewellery I possess, except what I was wearing. There was my mother's jewellery, including a little gold ring with her initials given to her by her father which she had worn as a child, and after being worn by my sister for a while, was worn by me until my fingers became as fat as the rest of me - it used to make me smile that the initials were "GAS". Also her engagement ring, in the family for at least 100 years that we know of, and I was very proud of being the custodian of these beautiful items which would be eventually passed down to the only grandaughter, my niece. There was the pink topaz my father gave me on my seventeenth birthday, the stone for which I had chosen myself (the biggest I could see - greed again...), the peridot I inherited from Granny, and a whole series of pretty stone rings, earrings and pendants which I had bought on eBay some years ago when I was better off. Nothing flashy you understand, just stones of different colours to match whatever outfit I might be wearing - I was secretly proud of my taste, and adored wearing them. One of the rewards I promised myself after having the lapband fitted was that I would one day return to my "friends" and wear them all again.

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I'm taken by surprise as I remember them in turn today while doing other jobs, and grieve for each and every one, apologising to the spirits of my parents for being so hopeless at looking after them. At the same time I acknowledge that at the time I was buying them on eBay I was clearly displaying that which I have claimed not to recognise - greed. I just didn't expect the lesson to be so hard.

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-oOo-

The Seven Deadly Sins – random thoughts (Part 2)

Envy, Wrath, Pride and Lust…

Envy
A bit of it is fine, as long as it doesn’t take you over. I reserve my strong envy for people with strong dieting willpower, who are enthusiastic about putting up with physical discomfort so as to become fit, and for those who have used their intelligence to do worthwhile things with their lives. I’m so glad I grew out of envying people who were better off than I was, had prettier dolls and bedrooms, and lots of new clothes (and the latest Beatles records!)

There’s also the harmless envy of other living creatures that makes your imagination work – of the cat that gets away with sleeping by a fireside all day and whose looks alone usually ensure its survival among humans; the bird that can hover on a thermal as it captures the view below; the exhuberance of a dolphin that can streak through the water, diving in and out; the dog whose affections are so black and white and uncomplicated; the horse that can travel at speed, not with the intention of catching a meal or escaping pursuit, but just for the sheer exhilaration of it.


Wrath
Anger yes, temper no. I stuttered a lot as a child – I still do sometimes - and learned that you can’t lose your temper in an articulate manner when you know there’s a word coming up ahead you’re going to get stuck on. In addition, my older sister unintentionally forced me to abandon temper as a way of getting what I wanted or letting off steam - she usually managed to make me feel very small if I lost my temper, by use of the method I now know is a classic one used by children – spite: to respond to criticism by counter-criticising twice as hard. It was very bad for self-esteem.

But now I’ve discovered that I have the capacity to feel a great depth of anger towards people who have hurt me badly and refuse to discuss it rationally. To digress briefly from pathos to bathos, perhaps I’ve learned this from watching the ideal world of TV soaps where these things are resolved! However, whereas in soaps characters are forced to talk through whatever it is, my own (relatively recently acquired) coping mechanism is a strong determination to avoid people, situations and jobs that make me angry or unhappy. I ought to add a footnote here that I have not had children, but would like to believe that they would have been an important exception to this attitude.

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Pride
The most difficult to discuss. Dignity is immensely important to me, as I would discover every time I had my heart broken. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself because I needed to feel that I was better than the person who was hurting me. And yet when I was made redundant in 2007 after 19 years with the same company, it affected me in a way that left no room for dignity, and I felt cast out of a trade I genuinely loved, which was the agricultural industry.

When you’re overweight it’s a wobbly knife edge you walk on if you tend towards self-consciousness, and if in addition you want to keep your dignity as well. You end up being forced into using your sense of humour as a way of getting there before anybody else does. British comedienne Jo Brand uses this method to great effect.

On the other hand one of my pet hates is when people are unable through pride or simply lack of guts to look at you in the eye, and apologise with meaning, or don’t know the significance of the word ‘humility’. Add to the list those who feel themselves to be superior because of position, money, status, qualifications, and so on. Sexism, racism, elitism and bigotry all come from misplaced pride, and I frequently seethe with inward rage when I see them in action.


Last but not least: Lust
There are many adjectives with which I could describe what this one is for me, most of them positive, but deadly ain’t one of ‘em. I would like to think that it’s meant as a deadly sin only when it provokes crime or elicits behaviour which harms another person. It’s one of those physical pleasures which help us get through life. I'd like to explore the general topic of how overweight people view physical pleasure generally in a future post.

-oOo-

I think I’m guilty as charged on all the deadly sins except perhaps greed. However there are a host of other unofficial deadly sins, aren’t there? Let’s see… here I scribbled a list of other ones (intolerance, making war, etc) but these early Christian thinkers had it worked out, because they can all be ascribed to one of the above.

Except lying. Where do you put it? With all of them perhaps. Thinking in the context of this blog, don’t say – as I could not – that you haven’t lied so that people don’t know how much you’ve been eating, or what treat you’ve hidden somewhere, or that you’re too proud to admit defeat, or because the truth would make your anger collapse like a pack of cards, or to hide the slothful fact that you simply can’t be bothered…

Nuff said I think.

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-oOo-

The Seven Deadly Sins – random thoughts (Part 1)

Gluttony, Greed & Sloth

Gluttony
Well, it’s brought us to this blog, hasn’t it? The desire for physical pleasure which is most easily satisfied, the conjuring up of comfortable and comforting childhood when there were no responsibilities and your feeling unhappy was of great concern to grown-ups, who usually solved the problem by giving you something nice to eat. Then you got older and you discovered that you were expected to keep yourself happy, and that being miserable was no longer pitiful, but actually annoying to others – so you used the same methods, and gave yourself something nice to eat.

Gluttony is the logical outcome: the feeling of anxiety if we’re not full to bursting. This anxiety is the hardest of all the feelings to overcome when you’re overweight.


Greed
Yes, we’d all love to be multimillionaires and are convinced that it would “sort out” every single problem we’ve ever had or could have. In our heart of hearts we know that it wouldn’t really, but wouldn’t it be nice just to… sort of… well… find out for ourselves???

Greed is also what slim people see as the behaviour and motivation of overweight people (“You’re just plain greedy”). Not so. If it were we would be greedy at every level – money, attention, affection, satisfying every whim. It’s back to that anxiety again, the anxiety about feeling hungry and the threat of being excluded from the pleasure of eating.


Sloth
Oh dear, big black cross against my name here. Horrible word dating from an era when most people had few resources, and if you wanted to enjoy a decent standard of living you had to work very hard for it. Being lazy was therefore a Bad Thing, because it meant that it would inevitably result in your sponging off someone else who had worked hard. However I believe they meant it to be physical laziness – sitting around. Modern life is very conducive to not having to race about, on the whole, and now we see nothing wrong in having time to sit and reflect, and to sit and study in later life is positively encouraged. But sloth has got me -weightwise - to where I am today.

I do feel a nagging irritation towards some people who are mentally idle, and can’t be bothered to think something through, read a book or feel curiosity about the world outside their immediate circle. They’re generally very inspired about improving their physical fitness but make no effort to be better at their jobs, or learn anything new, not to mention what life is like in the rest of the world.

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To be continued...

-oOo-

Restriction yet no restraint, control yet no self-control

On the occasions when I listen to my inner voice - for which I need a hearing-aid most of the time, it must be admitted - I start a meal too fast, the discomfort and threat of PB appear, I slow right down and eat very slowly, and soon I feel full and able to leave some of it. John takes the plate away and I reach after if whimpering... but my brain has caught up with my stomach, and with minimal willpower I am able to accept that I don't want any more to eat.

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That's on good days. Even on medium days, the fact that I deliberately don't buy wrong foods serves to help my wavering willpower. But most of the time it's a fight I rarely win, and the most I achieve is that my weight stays level. Some days I'm actually sick ... "how brave you are, to put up with all that discomfort" they say. No it's not. It's humilliating because I know I'm not listening. The band is saying "I'm here to help you, slow down, you stupid cow", but my brain is slipping back into the old mode and saying "See? You deserved that, it's a punishment because you're plain greedy and you'll never change."

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My next fill is Wednesday 18th March. I hope it will be a step on the road to restraint and self-control, and to liking myself a little more.

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-oOo-

Protect me from my friends!

Have I mentioned that I work in a hospital? I enjoy my job as administrator, and my kind and friendly colleagues (professors, consultants, doctors, research fellows, nurses, cleaners and admin people like myself) are supportive of my bariatric surgery and keen to help. So I get advice on what to eat and what not, I'm encouraged to use the stairs instead of the lift, when there's food from a buffet left over it's swept away before I can get near it, chocolate biscuits given as presents are handed out generally far away from the office where I sit, and I'm gently chided if I look longingly at the chocolates which are regularly given to us. Even my boss has gone out to buy snack foods for meetings so that I won't be subjected to unnecessary temptations - I was very touched by this. "Lets all have a bacon butty" is a phrase I remember (just) - with affection.

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I've had every encouragement to go to the gym, and it's been explained to me in a wealth of detail the difference between yoga, pilates and step aerobics, jogging with an MP3 and without one, and after reminiscing with them about a halcyon period when I did aerobics 20 years ago, why I must be the only person in Bristol never to have felt an adrenalin rush after an excruciating session of aerobics and that in fact my feeling bloody awful must have been my imagination. All this is backed up by sound clinical knowledge, there's absolutely no escape. I consider myself fortunate that my department is urology and therefore where weight loss is concerned, there aren't too many dire warnings they can give me about how overweight affects that part of the body. Aside from incontinence of course. Sigh.

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When a recent TV channel asked us if we wanted to take part as a department in a diet & exercise driven let's-see-who-can-lose-the-most-weight-in-the-shortest-time, expectant looks were cast in my direction to see if me-and-my-lapband would lead the way. (We wouldn't. My bandy friend would not have been summoned to help if I had not been the most self-conscious person on the planet. TV cameras? I'd sooner bungee jump down an active volcano).

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I'm by nature communicative. Quite capable of keeping secrets when required, but on the whole fairly willing to share things about myself (healthwise) if I can see I'm not going to send someone into a coma by saying more than one sentence. This is mainly because I hate telling lies. Some of the bandsisters in Taunton have kept their op a secret, and I thoroughly respect that - but I didn't, once the deed was done. Just as well - John was close to calling in the paparazzi 24 hours afterwards. However the trouble with this approach is that people look you up and down when they see you thereafter, and the disappointment is inevitably etched on their faces. They've seen too many TV programmes where the 6 month gap in the middle is edited out, and too many Hello magazines with celebrity before and after snaps. I find myself gabbling in a most undignified manner words to the effect that 'it's early days', 'I need another fill', 'half a pound a week isn't very noticeable', and feebly on and on.

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So as if my journey wasn't difficult enough, I also feel I'm in some sort of goldfish bowl both at work and socially - and for a self-conscious person it's quite uncomfortable.

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So this had better work...

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-oOo-

Second fill - NOW you're talkin'!

I had my second fill on Wednesday - from 4ml in a 10ml band I've now gone up to 5.5ml. I was pleased - nay amazed - that they recorded a 2kg loss since last time, a month ago. As usual I had been keeping away from the scales out of fear rather than 'doing the right thing', so that was a boost.

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For the first time I was able to enjoy the friendly banter in the waiting room, and the exchange of information. My only 'group therapy' so far has been the blogs I read - and they're brilliant. But it was nice to get instant answers to questions, and to learn that it was not at all unusual that 2 months into all this I've felt very little restriction, and certainly no feeling of fullness after eating.

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There was one lady there who was banded 8 months ago and has only lost three quarters of a kg in that time, despite being on 9ml. She lives in London and drives all the way to Taunton for her fills and consultations - brave or what. She's very fed up about it and says there's a suggestion that her band might be leaking, so next time they'll be checking to see how much is actually in there. (I thought they withdrew all contents before filling again to check the volume, but the doctor explained that they only do this if they suspect there's something wrong, and that in any case they can't empty it altogether because it would create a vacuum effect and cause problems when re-filled - so they can have a fairly accurate idea, but not 100%. Interesting)

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Since then I've been amazed by the difference. I can feel it almost straight away, and have had to be very careful not to feel tight, sick, etc. This morning at work I started on a home-made brown bread tuna mayo sandwich and after three bites had to rush to the loo. Both horrible and embarrassing, but wotta lesson. However, I don't feel 'full' after a teacup full of food...

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I had salad last night without any problems, and this makes me fear that it's bread that will be the problem. Tragic.....

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-oOo-