Chubby Chops – a life in pictures. Part 1

Perhaps this is more for me than for you. Sometimes it helps to sort out where it all started. If you feel a yawn coming on you can just look at the pictures…
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<< Picture № 1: 1956, aged 2 ½

Probably the one time in one’s life when it’s OK to have a double chin! I (um) grew into my ears later on….

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(I've just noticed when uploading the post that this picture has a lot of similarities with the 2009 blog profile picture over on the right - look at the fringe and double chin!! Hey, the gap is only 53 years...)
Picture № 2: 1957, aged 4 >>.

I don’t remember this picture being taken, and yet I can tell you the dress was blue and white and – er – clearly not my best one. Summers are hot in Argentina, and so was my grandmother’s patio. Cruel haircut!

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This was my last summer before I followed my older sister to boarding school for three years. It was 200 km SW of Buenos Aires along a dirt road that was a permanent, rut-filled, sticky mud bath and took my parents several stressful hours each way to make their permitted monthly “Parents Day” visit, and was managed by a British couple who understood very little about running a school for children under 11. There were 36 of us in the school, and only two classrooms, so the forms were separated by being put at different tables. Consequently I learned little, and only understood this many years later when I struggled in vain to keep up with my contemporaries at new schools, and finally recovered at 13 when I repeated a year. Bullying was unchecked, and in my first year I was 5 years old and knew little about defending myself. One particularly sharp memory is of being chased up a tree by some boys, and being held prisoner there for a very long time (a couple of hours perhaps) during which I shook with terror and tried not to whimper. My sister left at the end of that year to return to Buenos Aires and go to a senior school. I had to toughen up quickly after that...

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However the main problem with the school was the food – or the lack of it. They didn’t believe in mollycoddling us, and clearly thought they were feeding us enough to live on but nothing extra. Food brought by families on Parents Day sometimes got shared out later, sometimes not. I used to dream about mash potato dripping with butter – great mountains of it, which I would try to climb…

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<< Picture № 3: 1960, aged 7
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Two years into my time there and this picture was taken for an ID card to enable me to travel to Uruguay for a winter holiday. I was overjoyed to be out with my father having my fingerprints taken, and couldn’t stop grinning. My weight was right down from three years earlier, the skin drawn tight over my cheekbones, and I remember I used to lose a lot of hair. The untidy and severe looking alice band I wore was to stay in place for many years…

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During the winter and summer holidays (1 and 3 months respectively) I’d return to Buenos Aires deliriously happy to be home, and Mum would comment that I looked peaky, and would feed me up and deny me nothing. It wasn’t until three years had gone by that a doctor told her that my ailments were caused by malnutrition, and that I should be removed from the school straight away.

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Picture № 4: 1963, aged 10, at my new school back in Buenos Aires
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A set-up shot, where I’m supposed to be pointing at Argentina, but actually I’ve got my finger on Brazil….

The stoking up after the malnourished years has taken its toll: three heaped spoonfuls of sugar in hot drinks, many repeat helpings of mash potato later, and I’m fast turning into a little butter ball with a proper double chin. The good old alice band brings out the chubby face even further.

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<< Picture № 5: 1967, aged 14, wearing the school uniform of my secondary school

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The four intervening years were a constant battle to be as slim as my school friends, (it’s so important not to stand out when you’re that age, isn’t it?) and I was a bit on the chunky side and painfully self-conscious, hence the look into the middle distance. I was under the impression that long hair would make me look slimmer, so I was forever pulling it forward to cover my face, as you can see.

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I'll carry on next time.

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(To be continued)

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-oOo-

Go to Part 2                                      Return to most recent post

LasagnaGate...

Reading Tina's entry today about her adventures with a lasagna yesterday has reminded me of mine last Thursday, the day after my fifth fill.

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We were going to the theatre in Clevedon with friends, and decided to have dinner in a pub on the sea front first. By ordering lasagna I thought that by sticking to minced beef I would ensure that I wouldn't have a problem .

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The only three careful mouthfulls I had weren't careful enough, and I trotted downstairs to the ladies (where they had run out of toilet paper...) three times before we had to leave to get to the theatre. My friends were full of sympathy, but I felt physically and psycologically awful, as if I were a secret bulimic.

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The little local theatre we headed for wasn't letting us into the auditorium till 10 minutes before the show, so we all queued patiently in a long, winding, orderly and very British trail stretching outside and across the street, all chatting amicably about how lucky we were with the weather because queueing in the rain would not have been very nice...

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And suddenly I knew that I absolutely had to get to the toilet again. I muttered this very quietly to John and asked him if he could lead me inside and find out where it was. My knight had (fortunately) left his white charger at home, but he might as well have unsheathed his sword and snapped back the visor of his helmet, because to my unspeakable embarrassment he forged a path through the tightly queuing throng as if he needed to part the waters of the Red Sea (have you ever tried to break into a British queue?) calling at the top of his voice as he dragged me behind him "EXCUSE ME, WE MUST GET THROUGH, MY GIRLFRIEND IS FEELING VERY ILL AND SHE MUST GET TO THE TOILET STRAIGHT AWAY" - not once, but over and over, as politely horrified people stumbled back in haste and looked at me to check for leprosy. Even in my efforts not to throw up in front of them I tried to grin weakly, rolling my eyes, and say "OK John, I think they get the picture".

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A year ago and earlier I think the embarrassment would have been the stronger feeling - I would have been mortified, despite the kindness which inspired the gesture. But you know what? Take a bow, blogger friends, because having read about your experiences over the last six months I understood this was normal, part of the price I have to pay to get to where I want to be. So what the hell. An abortive dinner and five PB's later, I enjoyed the show, and the following morning I had lost 1.5lbs.

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Tonight at home the spaghetti bolognaise I prepared for dinner has had the same effect. So OK, I get the message. Pasta is the problem and I'll avoid it from now on.

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So to all the non-bandits who think I've got something infectious when they see me looking bilious: leave me alone. I paid a lot of money to feel this uncomfortable.

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-oOo-

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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