Bean counter

I’m on day 2 of the pre-op diet.  It’s tough: 800-900 calories a day – so not quite a starve day, but still relentless as I’ll be doing this for 17 days. Er…. In fact, just typing that has made me realise what a doofus I am – I had intended to do it for 10 days….  Well, dear Reader, now I’m on it, I might as well carry on.  It does make me feel better about the next few sentences.  There will be a couple of days (so far) that I won’t be able to be quite that strict.  Tonight I am meeting my brother and nieces to shop for one (or possibly both) for her birthday.  In an appalling shop which, as I understand it, is a sort of clothes spin off of Victoria’s Secret, called Pink – within Victoria’s Secret.  Sounds like my worst nightmare and I’m certainly not going in without her.  Anyway, we’re going for dinner afterwards – it’s likely to be either sushi - which I’m not mad about but can definitely be restrained as it’s from a conveyor belt - or dim sum (I assume – my brother said dumplings but I’m guessing he means dim sum) which I love but think it will be harder to disguise what I’m eating.  I intend to say I’m not very hungry but cannot count on my stomach not to thunderously rumble its contradiction.

Another more calorific day is Saturday when I have promised P we will have dim sum.  I might be a bit more relaxed at the weekend actually, now I’ve discovered that I’ve miscalculated.  And we’re doing an (urban) walk on Saturday which is good for the steps.

Which reminds me: does anyone know about Fitness Pal?  I want to count my steps on it but I don’t want it to credit my calorie balance – is this possible?  Actually it told me in a stern (virtual) way, that I was not eating enough!  Ha!

I’m approaching the calories by… well, Fitness Pal, obviously, but also buying stuff that’s calorie counted for me (hello M&S diet meals).  I can’t be doing endless sums in my head to work out what I ought to use, what I am using and what I have left.  I’m allowing 200 cals for breakfast (although in the two days so far I’ve had more like 115 max), 300 (max) for lunch and 400 for dinner.  But this morning I’d lost 1lb.  I am guessing this may be temporary with tonight’s meal, but it is still a hopeful sign.

The Hunger Games

So.  I have never been keen on breakfast.  As a child I remember not really liking it – probably because then the breakfast you were given was cereal.  Now, cornflakes stuck together with chocolate and golden syrup are a fine thing, but I don’t really like cereal and I really don’t like milk.  I was also never keen on the idea of food, first thing.  I went to an all-girls’ school where competitive non-eating was a thing.  I remember being crushed when saying that I’d not eaten anything but had a glass of orange juice – only to be told that was “cheating”. 

But for years, we’ve been told that we must eat breakfast, that we have no chance of losing weight if you don’t eat breakfast as it stokes your metabolism.  I don’t really like an English fry-up – although I do love American breakfasts.  Yes, pancakes but also omelettes.  Actually I think I’ve only had omelettes in Canada…. Scones!  We had different flavour scones in Washington State.  French toast.  None of which make for a healthy breakfast nor a quick meal to have at my desk.  I tried porridge (with coconut butter and blueberries) – that was delicious but left me starving before lunchtime.  Marmite on toast is obviously amazing but not do-able in the office. 

It's fair to say that breakfast has been a trial for me, as back as far as I can remember.  But what REALLY ticks me off is that I now wake up starving.  From going from really not fancying food first thing, to making myself eat (to stoke my metabolism), I’m now really hungry first thing.  And of course, now there’s all this thing of 5:2 (a week) and 16:8 (a day) and ooooh fasting is so good for you.  Just as I can no longer do it. 

FYI my standard breakfast is Greek Yoghurt, raspberries and paleo granola (ie no grains). Yoghurt does fill me up but I have 5% fat at the moment and I think this goes against post-op rules – which are largely low fat, low carb.  Low fat yoghurt is not very nice.  I will have to think of some way to disguise the taste of it.  Think my granola will go too as I suspect seeds and nuts – and especially nuts – will be out.  I have yet to try this Skyr yoghurt (Beth: I looked in Waitrose for Icey but they only had Arla which I associate too much with yucky soya.  The hunt continues).

I often go to bed hungry too.  Especially if I’ve had supper at my mum’s, pre-choir.  I’d told her that I wasn’t eating carbs but she seems to think that pasta and couscous are not carbs.  It’s mostly pasta dishes she cooks – which are very nice, especially as she never used to cook, just heated up M&S ready meals – but don’t really fit with the programme.  Literally or metaphorically.

Time’s fool

It’s exactly a month to go before my op.  I have never experienced anything like this – the closest was having a couple of wisdom teeth out under general anaesthetic.  That didn’t go well….  Anyway, that was about 20 years ago and I’m sure the anaesthetic is better now.  And the surgeon is clearly a pro – he’s been doing these ops for, well, about 20 years, co-incidentally. But I am sure I will be very scared, come the day.  However, I am very focused on the ends justifying the means.  As you may or may not know, dear Reader, I log my weight most days on Happy Scale.  It gives you stats based on a week, a month, three months and ever.  Reader: I have lost 0.7lb in three months.  That is heartbreaking.  I think I would be struggling to cope, mentally, if I didn’t have the op to ‘look forward’ to.  I have to believe that this is going to make a difference.

And in fact it all kicks off before 16^thJune.  Most surgeons want you to go on what is essentially a VLCD diet for anything from about a week to about a fortnight in advance of surgery.  This is, apparently, for two reasons: firstly to get you used to the very small quantities you’ll be eating, post-op (by which I mean the small quantities I will be eating) and secondly something about it shrinking the liver as they have to get to the stomach which is behind it (pauses whilst those who are of a similarly squeamish disposition to me, scream and/or faint).

‘My’ surgeon laughed dismissively when I mentioned this, he felt sure my liver would offer no problem that he, with his 20 years of experience, was not more than equal to (he’d had a prod around my stomach – not sure exactly how scientific that was!).  Just don’t have a blow out meal the night before, he advised.  I mentioned this to the HW lady who was a bit taken aback.  She said it was up to the surgeon but she hadn’t come across one who hadn’t wanted some sort of dieting in advance.  Had I gone for the NHS option, I would have had to lose 10% of my body weight to demonstrate my seriousness.  Which as I was there because I couldn’t lose weight, seemed a Herculean task doomed to failure. 

I actually think I will do the VLCD – maybe for a week.  There are various versions of this – one is called the milk diet as you have just (a lot of) milk.  I don’t like milk so am pleased that the HW one is calorie counted – yes, more tricky but probably better for me than drinking endless coffee/cocoa to use the milk up.  It’s 800-900 calories, so absolutely no walk in the park.  It needs A Plan.  I think I will have to abandon all my food beliefs (or possibly prejudices) and buy an M&S calorie counted ready meal for the evening (every evening) – they come in c300-400 cals.  I’m not mad on ready meals as a rule – they’re quite often tasteless and they tend to be quite high carb and low fat (the opposite of what I try to achieve).  I’ve yet to scope breakfasts and lunches properly but I think soups for lunch (in June.  I know.) and probably yoghurt and fruit for breakfast.  I guess c200 for breakfast and the same for lunch.  I have downloaded My Fitness Pal (I’ll need to calorie count post-op too) and it looks like I can have the individual pots of Total 2% with compote for 120 cals which would leave me some cals for a peach or cherries (both of which I love and will be in season).  And generally from looking at forums, there seems to be a firm following for a high protein (but, I think, low fat) yoghurt called Skyr so will look into those too.  I’ve not had artificial sweetener for so long that it just tastes vile to me now so I’d like to avoid that but fear it might not be possible.  Any good ideas?  I’d be most grateful.

Contagion

With one month and two days to go (or 5 weeks last Saturday), I expected to feel more nervous.  And I am – a bit.  I dare say that when it’s just ahead of me, I’ll be petrified.  But I am so READY to be different.  I am so tired of being me.  

Three times in the last few weeks, I’ve sat next to someone on the tube who winces as I sit down.  Now, I’m not encroaching on their side of the seat.  I am always clean and although inherently quite scruffy, my clothes are modest and nondescript.  I don’t have a huge bag/umbrella/dog to take up ‘their’ space.  And yet, it’s clear from the disgust on the faces of these women (and has all been women), that they think fat is catching.

I wish it were – not just to malevolently give it to them so they can develop some empathy (although YES) – but if it was a germ or communicable disease, it is more likely that there would be a ‘cure’.  I could pop a pill and leave this unpleasant episode behind me – no blame, no need to turn my life upside down – I’d just be well (slim) again.  Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Of course, it’s probably not helped that from time to time, there are articles in the press, extrapolating from data that surely can’t definitively prove this, that if you have fat friends, you are more likely to be fat.  My two best friends are both very slim – so I can hardly have led them astray.  I wish that their slimness would rub off on me – why should it only be one way?!  E has eviably clear skin and thick, wavy hair.  R has enormous green eyes.  Am I likely to pass on my fine hair, small nondescript eyes and dodgy skin to them?  Or might my hair thicken, skin clear and eyes grow? I think the articles are trying to suggest, in the most sensational terms, that competitiveness helps keep you slim.  If you go out to dinner with a fat friend, you’re more likely to make poor choices.  It’s such an absurd argument that it’s insulting, no matter what your dress size.  

But when someone reacts like that, it’s hard to keep it in mind that it’s a worthless , stupid prejudice.  For me, at any rate, it whittles away another layer of my already ridiculously thin skin.  It makes me want to go out less and less.  I think, if I didn’t have to go to work, I would barely leave the flat.  I feel anxious any time I do.  The less there is of you, the more esteem people hold you in.  It’s a sad fact.

Wearing the trousers

This op will be no piece of cake.  No-one goes into this, thinking it will be easy.  Or if they do, they are a fool.  But there are layers and layers of issues that seem to be rearing their ugly heads.  The latest is an exchange with my unempathetic and brusque boss.  I have just found out that I will have to wear surgical stockings for 10 days to a fortnight after the op.  I am due back in work on the 9^th day post op.  It will be the middle of June.  I’m assuming it will be hot – although frankly, who knows.  I wear mostly midi/a-line skirts to work, with thin, knitted knitwear (rather than blouses which never really work over my comedy bosom).  I’m going to have to buy trousers for this 1-5 day period – something I resent on the whole cost-per-wear thing.  And since I look even more like humpty dumpty in trousers.  I wear jeans – a lot.  But they’re different somehow.  I am not even sure if I have sufficient (4) tunics of the blouse variety which will be required to cover my stomach and bum as best as is possible.  It’s a whole shopping trip.  A whole distress-purchase, feeling crappy about myself stressful event.

I let my boss know that I had to wear the stockings and that I’d have to wear trousers  but would make every effort not to be scruffy.  In retrospect, dear Reader, this was stupid.  She is a friend – well, perhaps less than I thought she was once she came to work here – but she’s not the caring, compassionate type.  She is as abrasive as sandpaper and extremely open with her scorn, which can be very funny but is less amusing when you need a bit of moral support.  She is an excellent problem solver – I kind of thought she’d come up with a brilliant wheeze for working around this (say, for instance, saying I could work from home).  Instead she told me briskly that there is no reason not to be smart, pointing out that a colleague of ours always wears trousers.  Yes.  Yes, she does.  She wears them with heels and neat little blouses – because she is very slim.  It’s a whole world away from my own situation.  The boss’s considered opinion is that I should start wearing trousers now, to get used to the idea.  Sigh.