Well, I said I’d post my results yesterday but forgot when something more important popped up, but here we are on Sunday morning bright and early. People say that on balance (pun please!), weighing once a week might be a better option than each morning because if you follow the plan you should be pleasantly surprised with a decent reduction in the figure. However, the converse is also true. You may find you’ve *not* lost weight for whatever reason be it constipation, drinking a lot of water before weighing or whatever with the result that you get disheartened and falter. So I think, for myself at least, the better option, for now anyway, is to monitor my weight loss daily and perhaps any loss will motivate me to greater efforts. Still thinking it over.
Anyway, to get back to the point, which was to post this week’s weight, I’m 151.6 kilos. Still grossly obese but moving in the right direction.
Not long ago I was 165 kilos, and tho I *was* slowly reducing, I didn’t really start a serious ‘organised’ diet until I was 160 kilos. As said previously. My immediate target is to drop 10 kilos in order for me to feel confident I reached the target set by the bariatric surgeon and having lost 8.5 kilos over the past 4 – 5 weeks I feel I’m doing really well (relatively anyway). I’ve said before that a weight loss of 1 – 2 kilos per week is unsustainable but, so far, I seem to be coping!
Still, as I sit here this morning, I’m now wondering, whether the surgery actually *is* my best long-term option. I’ll explain. Over the past week, I’ve had two large and very tasty meals. I had a beautiful, if bulky, “Vegetarian Platter” in the Turkish restaurant, with my daughters, and yesterday, a *really* lovely, but huge Omelette (topped with mushrooms, bacon and cheese) yesterday, whilst out with my wife. Both may have reduced the overall weight loss this week, but I’m wondering if those ‘treat meals’ actually helped rather than hindered?
I’ll explain. As I’ve rambled on about for the past few weeks, I’ve been really restricting myself to small meals, mostly shakes, diet soups and salads with occasional pre-cooked and frozen diet dinners. Even tho I’ve stuck almost religiously to the regime and have proven (to myself) I can keep myself to this without too many problems, I can’t deny those extra ‘off diet’ or ‘treat’ meals have been a welcome addition, and knowing they had little overall effect, may have actually helped me to stay on track. By allowing myself small rewards for keeping on the straight and (albeit very) narrow path to a normal weight, I get a reward for ‘being a good boy’! 🙂
The point is that following the surgery, I’d not be able to eat that sort of meal for a long time, maybe a year or so! In fact, since the stomach is reduced to the size of (roughly) a ¼ cup eating normal food in whatever portions is always going to be an issue. This would mean the rewards or occasional treat meals would be firmly off the table (hey, another pun!) So, since I’m coping with this diet well enough, do I need to have the surgery after all?
Good question… which is what I’ve been leading up in those last few paragraphs. So far, my willpower, admittedly bolstered by the Ozempic injections, has managed to cope well, surprisingly well in fact! In the past, I doubt I’d have lasted these few weeks without, at the least, indulging in some unhealthy snacking and more likely a total abandonment of the diet, with all the feelings of guilt and ‘unworthiness’ that go along with it. This being so, why don’t I keep going along the current path instead of diverting to a far more restrictive diet following surgery? Which is why I’m questioning myself!
I have to point out here that in the past I’ve been preparing meals for my entire family and naturally would be tasting etc as I worked. Currently, I’m *not* preparing meals for anyone other than myself which alone makes it far easier to keep to a diet than ever before. It’s incredibly tempting to follow the herd and eat whatever is available, especially when you go out of your way to prepare tasty and nourishing meals for them as I’ve done most of my life! Sitting with a diet shake or diet soup, or even a plate of boiled cabbage isn’t ideal when, for example, the rest of the family is tucking into a wonderfully fragrant beef casserole or a roast leg of pork! So, if the situation changes and I’m once more faced with either having to cook for the family again or being faced with other people tempting me with home-cooked food, the surgery may still be the favoured option in order to totally stop me from succumbing to temptation! You can’t overeat if there’s nowhere for the food to go!
Where do I go from here? The short answer is, I don’t know. There’s no immediate need to make a final decision. In fact, I *can’t* make a decision yet. Apart from still needing to lose another three kilos before I can go back to the surgeon, I have to face my cardiologist and ask if I’m physically fit enough, (heart-wise), to have the operation at all! It may be he’d suggest stress of the sudden major weight loss that accompanies the surgery would be too much for my heart to cope with. I’m not young after all, already have three stents in and seem to have the beginnings of congestive heart failure! So until I see him on the 29th of August, a lot of this is still conjecture and a decision won’t (can’t) be made until after then. In the meantime though, I can project a ‘what-if’ scenario and say that, as things stand, carrying on down the current path might be the better option and keep the invasive surgery in abeyance until, (or if?), I find my willpower falters and start eating (or just strongly craving?) larger meals again on a regular basis rather than the ‘treat meals’ I had this week.
Anyway, here endeth one of the longest posts I’ve made on the subject of my diet! I originally only intended to post my weight… but it seems to have expanded to an inordinate length. Meh… it’s all information for later if I ever look back at it.
The Eclectic Interweb 