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-