Might as well be the moon

See the picture of Aconcagua on the right? It's no longer a mountain in Argentina, it's the moon.

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I was encouraged by having left the foothills behind and starting to climb the mountain proper, but somehow I keep missing my step and sliding back, with the scree clattering down around me, my hands scratched and my mouth full of dust.

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I'm busily leaving comments on other blogs as if to say "I'm still here even if I haven't written a post", but the truth is I'm finding it such an uphill struggle at the moment that I'm only posting now because I recognise that if I embarked on blogging as a therapy to help myself, then I have to at least turn up for the sessions.

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I know that the feeling of hanging on by my fingernails will pass, that it's just a question of patience in getting to the right adjustment of the band and listening to my body, of helping it along with 'wise choices'. Perhaps I've seen too many films, and come to believe that transformations happen in about an hour and half, or an hour and fifty minutes maximum.

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What I needed was a lobotomy, not a gastric band. Tight restriction achieves NOTHING, because while your body is prepared to cooperate with "don't eat or you'll throw it back up", it's merely a declaration of war to your brain, which joins the battle against you. "Go on" it whispers in your ear - "there's still plenty you can eat...think how lovely it would be to actually feel full".

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Tight restriction leaves you feeling too hungry, and your willpower - which always was a cowardly cur and got you into this mess in the first place - flees the scene and leaves you unprotected. Diabetics are trained to fight hard against confectionery temptations, but too much crunchy cereal (forget the milk, treat them as as if they were sweetish crisps...) has the same effect, not to mention having sweet biscuits around in the office.

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Most fruit and vegetables, which you enjoy and are low calorie, are now a problem because you're too restricted, so to add insult to injury, you now have constipation to deal with in addition to the rest of the undignified process...

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So out you come with your hidden weapon: exercise, lots of hateful, time-consuming activity of the I-could-be-doing-something-much-more-interesting-that-doesn't-hurt variety. Body then hits back with cramps, hypos, plus terrible stiffness in the back and hips every morning, and WEIGHT GAIN.

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So I plod on, just putting one foot in front of the other and not looking up further than my shoes, knowing that somewhere ahead in the distant future, is the top of the mountain.

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-oOo-