The first day is meant to be the hardest right?

I started the week of Optifast today. For breakfast I had a "chocolate" bar thingy at about 8am. By 11am my tummy was rumbling loudly :) Usually my breakfast of toast and a hot chocolate will last me until 1-2pm and I just eat lunch because I feel like I should. Not because I'm hungry. I'm making sure I'm drinking lots and lots of water and I think I'm nearly up to 2 litres which is what the brochures recommend. I'm sloshing around in here! :) I also chewed a bubblegum flavoured sugar free gum before I ate lunch to get that sugary feeling without the sugar.

At lunch I stocked up on lettuce, capsicum, cucumber, carrots, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar at the supermarket and made quite a yummy salad for lunch. The first Optifast shake - vanilla flavoured - went down quickly. Not because it was tasty but the complete opposite. I figured if I dwelt on it too much I'd gross myself out. It had an interesting texture which reminded me of baby sick and had an off-putting taste. I'm guessing it's the protein or fibre that they pack into those things. So it's about 3pm now and the afternoon munchies are setting in. I'm still guzzling the water hoping it will help and I've got a pack of sugar free chews on standby in case I need to fulfill the sugary cravings.

Tonight we're going out to a restaurant to meet some friends. I'm not sure why I agreed to that knowing full well I'd be on my first day of meal replacements but I thought 'No problem! I can handle just having Optifast and water for dinner'. Luckily the main reason for meeting at that particular restaurant is not the food. That should make it slightly easier on me. I'll be having an Optifast Chicken soup before I go out and might also snack on some more salad to help fill me up.

Wish me luck! :)

My dirty little secrets

My partner is being supportive. Even if he doesn't feel I need to do this. My immediate family has been very positive also. I haven't told anyone else. I'm too worried about what people will think. Will they think I'm copping out and taking an easy option? I'm not convinced that surgery is the easiest option :) We haven't told my partner's family yet. We spend time with them once a week for a family meal so I'm going to have to explain my new and strange eating habits.

I haven't told anyone at work what I'm having surgery for. More surprisingly, no one has asked! I know they are all dying to find out but most have been more worried that I'm sick or have something wrong with me than asking what the operation is for. I have told them I'm having an operation. Obviously I have to explain my absence from work.

None of my friends know yet. I've been planning social events in the lead up and having to arrange around the week of meal replacements and the week of sick leave without telling them I'm having a lap band put in.

I'm not sure when I'll tell them. I'm not even sure why I feel so strange about telling people. I think it's because I don't want the extra pressure. If I'm struggling with the band and not losing weight as fast as I'd hoped I don't want people thinking that I'm a failure because people with stomach bands should lose weight easily. I also don't want them to judge me. I don't want them to be thinking 'well, why didn't she just go on a diet and excercise more?'. They don't know that I've been on a million diets. Lost weight and then just put it all back on again when I start eating "normally" again.

I love food. That is going to be the hardest thing about this process. That's why I got into this mess in the first place. I love the taste, the texture, the presentation. It's going to be really tough to change that way of thinking. I'm hoping that the band will help me do that. It will help me by not allowing me to eat as much. It will physically stop me eating too much. And this, I hope, will help me realise that food isn't everything. That it's just fuel and there are a lot more interesting things to do with your life than eating.

The plan

So my weight is 141.2 kilos. I weighed that much when I went to the surgeon for the first time back in September 2008 and weighed exactly the same when I went back in January to schedule the surgery. My BMI is 48 which shocked me. I know I'm fat but when I look at myself I don't see 140 kilos fat.

I start the Optifast regime from this Wednesday. Which means I have 3 optifast meal replacements a day with as much miso and salad veggies as I want for a week leading up to surgery. Doesn't sound too bad in theory but we'll see how I go. Dinner is the big problem for me. I can live with a small breakfast and non-existent lunch but dinner is where I usually go to town. Oh. And no alcohol. For a week. Eeek! :)

During the next week I've tried to move all social events but I've still got a birthday party that I can't excuse myself from and another night out. So I'm going to be sitting around other people eating yummy stuff like cake while I nibble on my salad and sip my shake. Should be an interesting experiment.

Hello World

So. I decided to start blogging. Sounds like an easy decision to make but I've been sitting at my computer procrastinating for the last 2 hours about writing my first post.

I'm overweight. I've been overweight for most of my life. I've always struggled with it but the last few years I just let go. I met a wonderful man and we enjoyed ourselves. A little too much. So here I am, 33 and weighing in at a horrifying 140kgs. I was shocked when I saw those numbers on my doctor's scales. How did that happen? I hadn't weighed myself in a couple of years and the last time I had (at the gym - it was compulsory) the number had been about 20 kilos less.

It was obvious I'd put on weight though. My already big girl's clothes had started to get a bit tighter. I'd started to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. Avoided being in photos. If I was in a photo I didn't want to look at it so as to avoid seeing my double chins. I no longer feel sexy. My partner loves me just the way I am but I'm sick of myself. Sick of worrying about being able to fit in restaurant, theatre or airplane seats. Sick of buying "plus size" clothes. Sick of swollen ankles. Sick of so many things.

So I decided to do something about it. I decided to do something drastic. I pretty much need to lose about half of me! Around 70 kilos. Although I'd be happy with 50-60. I went along to an information seminar about gastric banding. I thought about it for a couple of months (more procrastination) and decided to go ahead with it. The last couple of months I've had meetings with a surgeon, specialist, psychiatrist and dietitian and I'm all booked in for surgery on 4th March 09.

My aim of this blog is to share my thoughts about this process.