Glass half (a stone) full

Last WI before the op (on Saturday).  I lost 2lbs this week.  Not to be too glass-half-empty on this, I was a little disappointed.  Only because my body has got used to this (really very rigorous) diet too quickly: my losses have slowed to 1lb every other day, with a STS in the middle – except today has been my first day of not losing (or even STS) but putting on (only 1lb but…).  I know, hand on heart that I’m sticking to fewer than 900 cals a day.  And I’m making sure I do plenty of walking over the course of the day (except on Sunday when I did some ‘light housework’ which apparently burnt 800 cals!  Who knew!  And I was being conservative calling it ‘light’ as I was, erm, glowing like a pig).  I had an ultra low cal meal last night, but used a lot of soy sauce so it’s possible that’s the reason – my engagement ring felt tight this morning.  Or it could be that I had a bar of chocolate last night – I only did this because I had the calories to ‘spend’.  I was delighted and really enjoyed it – I didn’t see it as cheating and it was all the more wonderful for that.  I hope it wasn’t that innocent (yes, innocent!) pleasure.

But I’ve still lost about half a stone overall in the fortnight – and given that my average has been 0.5lb a month, for, ooooh, years, this is an enormous improvement.  And post-op I will only be able to have fluids for two weeks and then a further three weeks gradually moving from puree to mush to less-mushy mush.  I think the calorie consumption post op is working up to 1000 cals – although I can’t be sure, but I did a quick google and it seems that the first couple of months is 300-600cals (My Fitness Pal is not going to like that – it has a fit on 800-900 cals) and then settling in to c1000 cals.  Every time you have the band tightened, you have to just have fluids for the first two days so I guess that will cause a lowering in calories – and hopefully a parallel lowering of weight.

I think my anxiety about the slowing losses is that I need this to work.  I have been feeling optimistic about losing weight – and the prospect of it coming off even more readily post-op.  I try to be cautious about feeling this way – after all, I’ve tried so many times and so many ways and failed.  And I have to learn to cope with gains without spiralling off the rails (to mix my metaphors) and self-fulfilling my own prophesy.  Today I’ve had a couple of Percy Pigs (I swear they have crack in them) and a biscuit.  I’ve counted it in my 900 cals, but I know it’s less than ideal.   I had to force myself to put them in my MFP – otherwise I would have ignored it and had more.  So well done me, but more improvement needed.  And strategies to deal with scaley disappointments.