Gym and swim, but still not trim

A very big thank you first for the lovely comments on the two posts about my Mollie Project - I wasn't sure you were going to find it all that interesting, but wanted to record something which has meant a great deal to me over the past 4 years.

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I've been to the gym three times a week in the past fortnight, a couple of times with the trainer - and I can appreciate now why it's important that he tells me how far to push myself.

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I got over-confident on one of the occasions when I was on my own, and overdid it on the treadmill, which left me too exhausted to do some of the other machines. I realise that with a weed such as I, it's essential that I work all the muscles equally and build up gradually. He showed me on my record how much I'd improved in just a fortnight, and I must admit to feeling sneakily pleased.

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Last Sunday we went swimming in the afternoon - excellent timing, as people evidently have better things to do on Sundays. I was able to get a cordoned off lane to myself, and with my minimum-effort style version of the breast stroke, managed 40 lengths. No, don't even start to feel impressed, this took me a whole hour, and I stank of chlorine for 24 hours afterwards. The swimming itself was reasonably pleasant as the water was calm, but - oh the boredom!

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I'm swimming once a week, sometimes twice - and when a friend swims with me it's easier, even though we're not the sort of swimmers who feel compelled to chat about everything under the sun as they go along, at half the speed of even yours truly.

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Overheard last Sunday in the pool: Woman A: "I've got a wasps' nest in my garden - that's the third this summer. Really expensive to have them removed professionally..." Woman B: "Why don't you buy some of that powder you can put on the nest? Save yourself some money"... Woman A: "Ooh no, don't want to do that - you might not kill them all and then they'll sting you and give you apoplectic shock..."

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Yesterday there was a guy doing widths at the deep end - long hair, singing rock songs at full bore... But on the whole there's little to keep you amused as you plough up and down.

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Well?? I hear you ask - well?? how much did you lose then??

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Put the bunting away and sit down - I lost one miserable, bloody, cotton-picking pound, plus my temper. It wasn't just my pride that was hurt, but also one of my toes when I stubbed it against the bathroom scales. I bet it didn't even feel it either.

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Restriction is hardly there - why, when I'm on 9ml? I've only got 1ml left, and then what? I'm visiting Taunton next Wednesday, when I shall definitely need a fill. I've started to feel hungry more often and need a bit more help.

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-oOo-

Mollie's Story - Second of two posts

Over the next few years, while other sad things were happening in my life – coming to terms with the illness and death of my father two years earlier, the illness and death of my mother, redundancy, the struggle to find work, family disputes, and physical/ psychological problems due to my weight creeping up – Mollie always kept me going.

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I hunted around for background information while slowly working my way through the book, translating it into Spanish. Ramón patiently vetted my work – making “suggestions for alternatives” as he tactfully and euphemistically called it, which also meant helping me re-learn and strengthen the aspects of the language where I was weak. Thank goodness for e-mail.

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Thank goodness too for employment legislation, which gave me a small nest-egg when I was made redundant in October 2007. A saver by nature, these funds were nevertheless used for the two best things I ever did: more recently the lapband which has changed my life, and in April 2008 a trip to Patagonia in Argentina, specifically to see the places where Mollie had lived.

It was a marvellous experience - I met two of my three penfriends, Luis and Ramón and their families (Marcelo was in Nepal and unable to get away), saw both estancias where Mollie had lived, the old houses still (just about) standing, and met a lot of wonderful people.

This picture shows the first farmhouse where Mollie and her parents lived towards the end of World War I, Talcahuala. The tilt has nothing to do with the picture - the horizon is perfectly straight! There would have been a verandah originally running along the right side of the house. (Ignore the curious wall half constructed two feet away from the house on the right - very puzzling...)

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These houses were in fact British, and exported to Argentina flat-packed for erection and use by British landowners. The walls are corrugated tin outside, and wood inside - steaming hot in summer, ice-cold in winter, and the tin cracked like a pistol shot every time it expanded or contracted with the heat or cold.

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Her second home, Huanuluán, is visible in the picture shown in my post dated Friday 7th August, under the guanaco.

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One of the very good people I met was Raúl, a poet, writer, and the editor of a Patagonian literary magazine, in Viedma, provincial capital of Río Negro, who asked me to write an article for his magazine about Mollie, her background, and my role in the translation. Once the copyright issues were sorted out, it was hoped that it might be possible to publish the translation one day, since the book was considered to be a valuable social record of the time.

My dream is to publish a quality edition in Spanish with explanatory footnotes, prologue and epilogue by me, an introduction by Ramón explaining the background to the British presence in Patagonia, and as many pictures as I can get away with. The original English book has wonderful pen and ink drawings, and if I could get the permission of the copyright owner, it would be wonderful to include them as well.

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I had exchanged a few friendly e-mails with Carlos, a writer and presenter of a radio programme on Radio Nativa, in Viedma, and in February this year he asked me if he could tell the story on his daily programme. I was thrilled to bits about this, and even more so when the following week he dedicated another half hour to interviewing Ramón about his role in the story. It generated some interest locally, and he was able to send me the audio files by e-mail so I could listen to the programmes. (Blogger Dawn of Scrummybits and her husband kindly tried to record the programme on the internet for me, but the technology at the radio station, we learned later, wasn’t up to it and the connection kept dropping.) Carlos later summarised the story in a local Sunday paper.

(Double-click to enlarge. Note - caption under picture of Huanuluán sign is incorrect)

I recently finished the translation – it felt so flat no longer to come home and switch on my computer, check my e-mails and blog, and have my friend Mollie to turn to. My study is at the other end of the house from the kitchen, so after banding last December it was very helpful for my ‘rehabilitation’ to be further away from food and headfirst into a project which prevented me from thinking about whether I was hungry or not.

Recession has hit Argentina as everywhere else; it is also a world where who you know is critical to getting anything done. I had many opportunities to reflect that it could take a long time to realise my dream, if ever. However I hadn’t really appreciated to what extent Carlos liked the project. He moves in the same literary circles as Raúl and Ramón, and it has been humbling to follow their attempts to help. They have written many e-mails to their contacts, although there has been no response as yet, and they warn me not to expect it. Carlos has now come up with the idea, which he is coordinating with them, of us giving a series of lectures in chosen towns throughout northern Patagonia, to raise the profile of the story, and see if there might be any organisation out there who might take it on.

Marcelo - the one penfriend I haven't met - is visiting Argentina from Nepal and tells me he is hoping to still be around on my visit, and I may at last meet him. It would be wonderful if I could post in my blog a photo of all those mentioned in white bold print in these two posts, for they have been essential to the development of the project thus far.

Over a 24-hour period last week I realised that I really wanted to do this, and that I had enough holiday left from my hospital admin job for a 3-week visit. I checked with my friends as to dates in November (it has to be within the April-November cultural year), and to our mutual surprise – it’s so easy on the internet – I just sat at my desk with mouse working busily, and bought a ticket for Thursday 29th October, returning Saturday 22nd November. They all seem happy with my rather hasty decision, the timing seems to suit them all, John is supportive as always, and who needs food to live anyway?

Apprehensive is hardly the word – I have a PowerPoint presentation to prepare, and the prospect of talking to several audiences in Spanish. Have I mentioned before that as a child I had a pronounced stutter, probably the result of the bullying at the boarding school I was sent to when I was 5? (Strange to relate, I lost most of it following my divorce when I went through a very angry and man-hating phase!! Let psychiatrists work that one out…) Living in England I’ve often come across people with speech impediments, but I never observed it anywhere in Argentina and was the only person in my world who stuttered. Although I’ve sort of grown out of 80% of it, lack of confidence tends to made it reappear.

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So, what do we overweight people feel compelled to do when we need to summon all the confidence we can get? Yup, the Great Push is on. John wonders what difference a few kilos will make, and I reply that it won’t matter to the people listening to me, but it will to ME. I need to feel I’m doing the best I possibly can, so that it will give me the confidence I need to do this. I who detest the words “diet” and “target” am having to call a temporary ceasefire on their use till after I return from Argentina.

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My last monthly weigh-in for this blog shows 97kg, I’m now 95kg, and I’m going to do my level best to get down to 84kg, so that it will be a total of 30kg lost since pre-op weight last November. And I’ve got 65 days in which to do it…

Sorry, can’t hang about writing to you, I’ve got a gym and a swimming pool to go to. Aaargh!

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-oOo-

Return to most recent post

Mollie’s Story – First of Two posts

In my last post I commented that I had recently received such a shot in the arm to incentivise me that I’d virtually lost my appetite altogether. To explain it further I need to tell you the background story, but for those of you who feel lukewarm about wading through my stories to get at what you want to know, let me cut to the chase and tell you that it’s because I’m visiting Argentina in November. If you’re curious as to why this should rob me of my appetite, then read on. It’s in two parts, and I’ll post the second part in another couple of days.

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In 2005 when browsing on eBay I found a book called The Sand, the Wind and the Sierras – Days in Patagonia, by Mollie Robertson. The romantic title suggested it was a children’s story, and to an extent that’s what it is, but actually it’s also much more. In her book Mollie remembers 8 years of an enchanted childhood between 1916 and 1923, during which she lived on two British-owned sheep farms in the province of Río Negro, in northern Patagonia, Argentina, where she grew to love the land around her and the animals with which she came into contact.

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She had dozens of pet animals, and they were of many different types – she even shared her bed with a foal on one occasion. There were few children of her age around, and the animals became her best friends. She understood their language, and communicated with them on a level not normally given to humans. Her father managed the farms, while her mother chaffed at the limitations the primitive life of those days placed upon her. They travelled back to England in 1923, and she never returned to South America.

Those years had a profound effect on her, and in the 1960’s, when she was in her fifties, with encouragement from her husband, she wrote down the story. She never published anything else, which is surprising, because she was a gifted and lyrical writer, and I can guarantee you would laugh and cry with her all the way through the book. It is out of print, but easily obtainable on the internet.

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I was interested enough to try to find out more about her and her family, but the internet didn’t reveal much, even though I had the advantage of being able to browse quite comfortably through the sites in the Spanish language. I stumbled across a chat room in Patagonia for locals of the village nearest to one of the farms, and I left a message there asking if anyone had heard of her family.

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Six months later in 2006, when I had forgotten about it, I had a reply from Marcelo, an Argentine living in Nepal who had lived in the village many years before. He put me I touch with Luis, a man of native Patagonian descent who was very proud of his heritage and a mine of information on local lore. They became my penfriends, and I started to learn about a part of my own country on which I was completely ignorant. I proceeded to buy second-hand books about the subject from the internet, and became familiar with genealogy websites.

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It was Marcelo who first suggested that I have a go at translating a chapter from the book into Spanish, and I found it stimulating and enjoyable – and hard work. If you speak another language but don’t converse in it on a regular basis, it’s up to your own efforts to keep fluent. I always alternated my reading for pleasure between English and Spanish, watched as many Spanish-speaking films as I could, and when my parents were alive and living in Spain I used my time with them to be out and about speaking as much as possible. But literary translation is a challenge because you have to translate the style as well as the language. I loved it.

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When he was on a visit to Argentina in 2007, Marcelo went to a book fair in Buenos Aires and met Ramón, writer, poet and historian who lived in northern Patagonia and had written a book about a British company that owned vast tracts of land in Patagonia, and used them to make massive profits from sheep-farming. Mollie Robertson’s golden memories were of years spent on two of their farms, so Marcelo knew I would be interested in the book. I was able to add Ramón to my list of penfriends shortly afterwards, and when he offered to have a look at my translation I gratefully jumped at the chance. He tells me now it was not going to set the literary world on fire, but he saw enough promise in it to encourage me to carry on, and fortunately didn’t tell me of his initial reaction.

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-oOo-

(to be continued)

Go to Part 2

Return to most recent post

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Catching up

To update you on my monthly fills and the band generally, I’ve had two visits to Taunton since I’ve been posting about my overweight history, but only one fill. In June I had been feeling very good restriction for the first two weeks after the fill, but tapering off after that, then the same pattern once again after the July fill, when they topped me up to 9 ml. They suggested that the following visit in August I had a chat with the dietician.

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She confirmed I was more or less on the mark in the way I feed myself (I’m afraid we lot are too far from perfect) and the staff didn’t give me a fill. They said I should start trying to see the band as the tool for feeling satisfied rather than feeling restricted, and that’s what I’m now trying to do. It’s harder, but less uncomfortable, and even more important that I don’t give in to the temptations at the office of muffins left over from meetings, or chocolate given us by our stationer, or the odd Danish pastry from the canteen at mid morning. The only way I can make it work is to drag out the eating process for as long as possible.

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Following a plateau longer than normal, I decided I would do something completely out of character – and joined the gym to try and speed up the weight loss. For someone like me who has never done anything like this before it is hard to overcome shyness and self-consciousness, even though I note that all sizes seem to go there and no one pays much attention. Walking into it for the first time was touch and go, I just wanted to turn tail and run… But the trainers have clearly dealt with idiots like me before, and mine was patient and reassuring, so I’m going again tomorrow. I felt no stiffness the following day, and realise I can do a lot more than just 5 minutes each on three different machines. The fact that they have TV’s fixed to them is quite an incentive; otherwise boredom would be a serious factor.

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I continue to swim every week, and though it’s pleasant when the roads are clearer of cars during school holidays, I shall be delighted when the little darlings are safely tucked up in their classrooms once again, and leave the swimming pool to those who don’t need to splash and shriek or jump on top of other swimmers to enjoy themselves.

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In for a penny in for a pound, I thought yesterday as I walked from the staff car park to my office, and I climbed the three flights of stairs to my desk… and again later in the day when I needed to go on an errand… and ditto today. My colleagues are between amused and open-mouthed as I crawl to my desk hanging on to the wall, unable to speak for 10 minutes. But hey, it kicked me out of the plateau, so I’ll try to carry on.

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This week I’ve had a terrific shot in the arm to incentivise me, which has just about robbed me of my appetite – but I think I’ll expand on it next time. My posts are probably too long anyway.

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(Don’t you find it intensely annoying to have to compose your post by typing in the silly little box, which isn’t even wysiwyg? I often use Word and then transfer, but would so much prefer to type into a format which is identical to how it will finally look. I wonder when Blogspot will wake up to this, and introduce some decent technology.)

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-oOo-

De-brief on the last 8 posts...

A big thank you for your comments

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The last 8 posts have been difficult because I’ve had to dig deep within myself to explain – more to myself than to you – why I have so often failed at what seems to be relatively simple: to pull back after indulging in excess.

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Though brought up as an Anglican, my background has Catholic and Presbyterian elements in it, and as a child I unconsciously absorbed the concept of guilt linked to excess of any kind, and particularly to physical enjoyment in all its forms – including swearing. The advocacy of moderation at all times was always served up with a frown, as if ignoring these precepts would shower disapproval on one’s head from adults, and everlasting damnation from the Almighty. I was on the whole a bit in awe of adults and authority generally, and anxious to please. Although I would love to portray myself as a feisty little Just William or Dennis-the-Menace, sadly I was far from being rebellious.

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The three churches would therefore have clucked approvingly as I grew up studying hard, avoiding drugs and youthful sex, never swearing or lying to my parents (though as a teenager I did smoke behind the woodpile on farm holidays, with my cousins…), being polite to my elders, and so on – not necessarily because I was God-fearing, more a case of mother-fearing. You didn’t get away with disobeying Mum, and her anger was definitely to be avoided at all costs. I’m afraid something had to give once I was away from her sphere of influence.

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I take full responsibility for my descent into gluttony, make no mistake about that. However as we who struggle endlessly with the problem know only too well, it is not merely a question of over-eating just because the food is there, but of the anxiety caused by underlying psychological factors, combined with an increasingly sedentary existence.

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At the centre of our beings is the desperate need for love and approval, and if the object of that love shows their displeasure towards us, it rocks our lives and – certainly in my case – triggers a series of reactions which are never really overcome. In trying to please my husband I was unconsciously setting myself up to fail in an endless Groundhog-Day process, forever pleading for approval when starving, and hating myself later for bingeing. Once he disappeared from the picture, the pattern of punishment and reward was set. Other people’s comments and disapproval just worsened the situation, and comforting foods helped to make it bearable for a while. If I had been encouraged to enjoy exercise for its own sake it might have helped, though I shall never know this.

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Looking at all the old pictures I can now honestly say – hey it wasn’t that bad… and having read and thought about your comments I can see that I should have been more assertive at the time, not just with my ex-husband, but with others too, and presumably I didn’t because I lacked self-confidence. This is the story of people like us, isn’t it?

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Thank you and thank you again for taking the trouble to make me feel better by commenting on my entries. I’ve copied and pasted each person’s comments, one page each, printed them off and then looked at them together – I’ve concluded that I’d love to meet each and every one of you, and I think if we did meet up we’d all be talking ten to the dozen all at the same time and you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself think!

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Helen (USA). You’ve made me ask myself – ‘yeah, why did I put up with it?’ – and your comments speak of difficult experiences of your own throughout your life. I can imagine sitting with you in Oklahoma, letting you do all the digging and weeding as we talk… Another nice surprise reaction from you, Tina and Dawn has been your comments on my rugby photos. There all in a box somewhere – it would be fun to recover them sometime and show a few more, if they’re of interest.

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Tina (USA). The malnutrition between 5-8 years old at boarding school was caused I’m told by the owners of the school having had a lot of money stolen from them, so they cut down on expenses, including our food. We were all under-nourished, I heard many years later, and my mother was one of the first to complain – I suppose the other parents hadn’t dared. You ask how I got from South America to the UK – though I think a subsequent entry has probably answered that – having been brought up bilingual I just wanted to study in English. Canada was a first choice, but I decided on the UK in the end because I had so many relations here. Yes, I feel guilty about not having yet supplied ‘before’ and ‘during’ pictures, and John keeps offering to do the latter. I really must set it up (while I try to lose a few more kilos!!)

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Nola (Australia). So supportive, thanks very much. Your frank descriptions of your PB’s/barfs/spews have been so funny that they’ve made me now shrug my shoulders when it happens to me, rather than to be filled with disgust. I still chuckle remembering the chaos of the dogs tied to the table as you fled to get rid of your lime spider, and their galloping anxiously after you…

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Sylvia (USA). Your caring comments are so cheering – it’s truly wonderful to find that I’ve said something which has struck a chord with others, and I hope that some time in the future you will share the pictures and times of your youth.

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Diz (USA). It’s lovely that you’re near the end of your journey and still find time so say such encouraging things to the likes of us who are still a long way from the summit. I hope I too will feel confident enough one day to post a video on my blog!

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Dawn (UK). You’re right about being constantly in denial and forever seeking to conceal ourselves… the greatest give-away to me is when overweight people wear a lot of black – it speaks so clearly about how they feel inside.

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Simone (UK). Chance is a wonderful thing – I was just clicking on ‘next blog’ one day and up popped yours. I imagine you must trawl the internet very assiduously to come up with such stunning photos which so exactly match your taste and moods, and there’s a quality of joyousness about your text which is irresistible. You ask if I’m in a support group – well, only in a very unofficial way. At Taunton where I had the op and attend every 4 weeks for fills and weigh-ins there are always at least half a dozen or more patients waiting to go through the various stages, and we all talk non-stop about our own cases and quiz each other on aspects we need to compare. I’ve made one very good friend this way who’s very supportive and also reads this blog. The blogging is excellent group therapy too – and both serve to make me realise that everything that happens to me is totally normal and predictable.

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Cara (Australia). The bikini shot was three years or so before I met and married my husband and he’d started to comment, by which time I had put on about 8 kg – at that size that’s quite a difference. I remember that ‘slim summer’ of the bikini so well, in Spain, when I felt slim, attractive and happy. However I assure you I’m not whining ‘oh if only’, I’m looking ahead and thinking ‘one day I’ll have another summer like that, only this time it’ll be even better because I’ll know what I went through to get there’.

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Tracey (Australia). I love your suggestion of putting this in a scrapbook, and I’m seriously considering it.

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Thank you too to Sarah, Roo, Laurie Tossey and Zanna for your great and supportive remarks, all really appreciated, and to Ramón a good friend from Argentina, for his very kind words.

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Thank you too to all the anonymous readers who regularly ‘drop by’ and see what I have to say. If you think I’d be interested in your blog, why not leave me a comment – I'll always click on the name to see what your blog is like.

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Next time I’ll knuckle down to writing about how the band is working – I’m delighted to say there are no PB/barf/spew stories! However there will be one involving exercise which if you’ve been reading regularly and know what I’m like you simply will not believe!! (No, not that, this is a self-respecting blog…)

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-oOo-

Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 8, Final

Crunch Time

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My father developed Parkinsons in around 2002 and eventually his heart stopped beating in 2004, five years ago last week, at the age of 84.

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Picture № 34 of my father, taken in the early 1940’s.

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His career had been in the ceramics and glazes industry, and he loved pottery and china. At other people’s dinner parties he would put my mother on edge by lifting up a delicate porcelain dinner plate to the light to see if he could see his hand through it, then holding it to his ear, ping it on the rim between thumb and middle finger to see what the quality of the sound was like…while the hostess smiled nervously. He was a good and kind man who loved jokes, and was a supportive father always. Here he is performing the porcelain ritual with my best china, this time with Mum looking anxious behind him!

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Picture № 35, Dad, Christmas 2001

My Mum carried on, on her own in Spain at her request, till a fall in early 2006 made it clear that she could no longer live alone. My sister helped her sell up and she moved to England to live with me, while we built her an annexe where the garage had been. Sadly she wasn’t destined to enjoy it for very long as she died from previously unsuspected ovarian cancer in early 2007, a fortnight after we learned she had it.

Picture № 36 of my mother when she was nineteen. In preparing it for this blog I realised that she was the same age as myself when Picture № 6 was taken in 1973. I wonder what she would have said to her earlier self…

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She was a strong character, a headmistress for most of her working life. I attended her school from 13 onwards, and far from being treated with favouritism, she ensured that nobody would think so. I did reasonably well without being outstanding (how could I, when I did everything I could to get out of sport…) so we were both happy. Of a more thorny temperament than my father, she was our moral compass, and we understood each other very well. I grieve that I was not able to enjoy her opinionated views and wagging index finger for very long before she was taken from me.

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Picture № 37 taken in Barcelona, around 1992

Family disagreements followed, and at work there were changes taking place which I knew would in time affect me. In October 2007 I and several others were made redundant – in my case after 19 years with the company. It felt like being banished. I loved the agricultural trade and had grown very fond of several of my colleagues; anyone who has faced redundancy will know what I mean when I say that it’s not merely a question of ‘keeping in touch’. The working colleagues who also became friends were still part of the business, and in addition to their feeling slightly awkward about it, I no longer wanted to hear about their daily adventures anyway. It’s not just the job you lose, but most of the relationships you enjoyed there too.

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One good thing came of it though – I decided to use some of the money to travel back to Argentina for a visit after a 14 year absence. For the past couple of years I had been translating an English book into Spanish in my spare time, the memoirs of a young English girl who had a golden childhood on sheep farms in Patagonia at the end of World War I and up to 1923, and here was my opportunity to visit the places where she had lived, a part of the country I knew very little about.

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Picture № 38 Río Colorado, north eastern Patagonia

Picture No. 39, a guanaco keeping an eye on me

Picture No. 40, Estancia Huanuluán, north western Patagonia, near the foothills of the Andes

I had a busy and very enjoyable month, but returned to what I had before I left – unemployment.

It was a sort of mid-life crisis, a limbo. I didn’t know what I wanted or where to go. I was too old in some ways, yet too young to give up on myself. The return to Argentina had made me wonder what it would be like to live there again after 35 years in Europe, and yet I didn’t think I had the courage to leave the network of friends and support in Britain. The previous four years had taken their toll and my spirits were very low – even John could do nothing to pull me out of it. And here I was filling out job applications back to back, complete with aspirational statements in 200 words or less…

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I wonder what the job market is like in the countries where you live – if you’re female and 55? Here it means that it could take you a long time to find a job, however good your skills are. Prospective (male) employers may tell you earnestly that there’s no age discrimination in the workplace, but I saw it around me when I was on the other side of the fence, and watched my male manager colleagues interviewing for admin vacancies and choosing young, attractive girls every single time. It took me ten months to find a job, and it was made possible because a friend recommended me as a possible temp, and I stayed on.

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One particularly hideous day when I was at an all-time low I forced myself to think about my health: I now weighed 18 stone (252 lbs/114 kg) used very large quantities of insulin to keep my blood sugar under control, my ankles – their former slimness my secret pride and joy – were permanently puffy and swollen, I had constant backache if I stood or walked for longer than a couple of minutes, air temperatures higher than 24ºC (75ºF) made me feel so hot and uncomfortable that I just wanted to lie down in a cold bath.

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Picture №s 41/42 - Maldives, July 2007

On a very special visit to the Maldives in 2007, John’s treat, I could appreciate that I was in a living postcard, that I was surrounded by such beauty as I had never seen before, with not even any unpleasant wildlife to threaten our quality of life, wonderful food, and so on, and yet the 36-40 ºC temperatures and 85% humidity made me forget about photographing such a paradise, indulge in the only exercise I liked, which was swimming in turquoise lagoons, and all I wanted was to get back into our darkened, dry and air-conditioned room. The 11 hour flights with a budget airline were purgatory, as (for the first time) I found the seats terribly tight and needed a special extension to my seatbelt.

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The main health issue was that I was becoming increasingly immobile. I had started to plan my life so that I didn’t have to go out if it involved walking, I had to park very close to where I was going, I couldn’t possibly talk or listen to anyone unless I was sitting down – and so on, I’m sure you recognise all these signs. I felt very strongly that I wouldn’t live to old age. I was eating myself into a standstill.

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Picture № 43, March 2008 (9 months before banding)

So that brings you up to date. In October I read about a British TV personality who had been banded very successfully, and I looked up about it on the internet. With growing hope I absorbed every morsel of information I could find, particularly from the blogs (Melanie Matters was particularly helpful I remember). In the past the stumbling block would have been the cost, but I still had half my redundancy money. I talked to John about it and was astonished that he supported such expenditure, and then I talked to my doctor and was astonished that she supported it too… A few phone calls later it was all arranged for the week before Christmas last year, and I was on my way.

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For the first time ever I had real hope that one day I would feel normal again.

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-oOo-

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I got John to take the “before” pictures which make me squirm just to think about. I’ll show them in a future post only when there are updated ones which show a noticeable difference! Perhaps when I’ve lost 25 kg, probably the half way mark, though I’m not setting targets. That is 9 kg away.

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The lapbanding operation and the slow but steady progress since then have all been recorded in this blog, and are no different to the other blogs (thankfully). The modest success so far has amazed me, for there has been very little willpower involved. It gave me the courage to attempt to face the story of how I got to this point.

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If you want the weight loss badly enough and you’ve gone to the expense of a private gastric banding operation, you’ll be willing to stick to the few basic rules. In my own case the blogging has worked well for me: to record the bad times and the good, and as a form of group therapy to exchange information and goodwill with others in the same situation.

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So there you are – Around My World in Eight Posts. In the next post I’ll pick up on the very positive and kind comments I’ve received.

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-oOo-

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