Day 23 - specialist info

Today has been enormously stressful at work. There is a solitary piece of strawberry rock on our snack table - I want it so badly it almost hurts. I know it's just a reaction to stress but that doesn't make it any easier. I picked up the jar and looked at it. Then I put it down but it's still playing on my mind.

So, not least to distract myself, I thought I'd report back on some very interesting information I got yesterday. I see a weight loss specialist (NHS). He is an adorable mad professor and we always have interesting chats and he's really frank and bullsh*t free. I hadn't seen him since I started LL but he knew all about it and said it's probably the best of those VLCDs. But he said his main concern was that he said it depressed the person's metabolism so that it became very easy to put all the weight back on once you finished the diet (he said it was proof that there is no god!). I told him about Management and he agreed that it would help but he said it would take 9 months for someone's metabolism to recover. I thought this was very interesting given that LL say that your metabolism only decreases in proportion to your reduced body mass. And I have to say I believe my specialist as he doesn't have anything to sell. I have a low metabolism anyway - the age old excuse used by so many is actually true of me (or as lovely Dr C said "Miss P, it's cards on the table, you may not want to hear this but you have been grossly disadvantaged by your genes and there's nothing you can do about it"). I said I'd have to make sure my portions were small (and, I was thinking, GI friendly) for at least the 9 months. I asked about drugs to raise my metabolic rate but there are none - or at least no safe ones that the NHS would prescribe. He said the only thing you can do to raise your metabolism is exercise. I said once I'm not paying for LL I might be able to afford a gym (he said he'd seen patients who had had spectacular success from using a personal trainer - but they were all men. I said that that simply showed that if there was a god, he was definitely male!). But actually I can't afford a gym whilst I'm on management so I'm fretting about this already. I have a way to go yet but this clearly will be an issue for me (I am SO not running).

After my non-WI WI on Monday they weighed me on a similar looking set of scales. From that, in a week and a bit, I've lost 1lb. I hope to god it's wrong as that would just be utterly choking. I'm going to have an official WI with LLC on Friday - but again, if it's not the same scales it still may not be precise. But it will be another baseline ready for forwards.

My specialist said that he'd be happy if I lost more slowly than the norm on LL (because of the effect on my metabolism). I told him I wanted it off as quickly as possible. I hope I'm going to be the happy one at my next appointment in January!