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-