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! :)

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.