Come in Sweet Spot Number 2!

Have you ever climbed a hill and thought that you could see the top because you were straining your eyes so hard that you imagined it – and then realised that there was more than one mountain top, and that you just had to keep going?

It’s been dawning on me that when you have a lapband there isn’t a sweet spot – there are two.

It turns out that it’s not just a question of reaching your optimum fill level, when small quantities of food satisfy you and enable you to lose weight steadily.  That’s SS1 - Sweet Spot № 1.

Then there’s the mental sweet spot, that nirvana when you’ve reached this perfect restriction - SS1 - and you have been able to achieve the fine balance of being able to eat vegetables and high protein (tasty) foods comfortably and feel good enough about yourself that you can resist the high calorie sliders and perhaps even manage a bit of exercise as well.  That’s SS2 - Sweet Spot № 2.

SS1 is between your own judgment and your doctor's, SS2 is down to you.

My definition of what makes the lapband work as a successful tool to lose weight – SS1 + SS2 =

The right restriction

which allows small but sufficient

quantities of protein and fibre through the band

to give a feeling of early satisfaction and to keep healthy,

in balance with

the will of the bandit

to avoid undermining its effect

by resisting high calorie sliders.

The degree of success

and the speed with which it is achieved

can be improved by exercise.

I think… cautiously… that I’m at SS1, but SS2 eludes me most of the time because due to other external factors my will comes and goes.  In the two years since I was banded I’ve lost 50lb odd – 3.5 stone, 23 kg, I haven’t binged, or piled weight back on again – and that for me is a modest achievement in itself. 

But I long to be within the normal range, to feel happy in jeans, to wear pretty dresses unselfconsciously, and that longing must translate itself into working towards SS2, or I shall never achieve that which I have joked about in the past – to be heavy or old, but not both.

-oOo-

Photo Finish:

From Lonicera's non-digital archive

Flowers and butterflies
(late addition:  apparently they're moths... thanks Tina!)

-oOo-