One week to go!!

Im so excited! One week today i will be a bandit!!

My pre-op diet is going really well, im having 3 slim fast, 3/4 weight watcher yoghurts and 1 or 2 skinny coffee's a day and lots of water. Wasnt sure i would be able to manage having slim fast, i tried lighterlife and cambridge diet that many times and could heave now thinking about them, that vile vitaminy taste! :( yuk! :( :( so many bad memories of them, i thought i was scarred for life! But im pleased to say that slimfast tastes and smells nothing like them. I have weighed myself this morning and i have already lost 4 lbs! so hopefully by the time i go for my op next wednesday i will have a good loss and my liver will be the size of a peanut!!

Come on NHS, what are you playing at??!!

I just have to get something off my chest. I am a member of the UK gastric band forum (an excellent forum for anyone who has not heard of it). The number of people, me included who have tried to get gastric bands through the NHS but hit brick walls is ridiculous!!

I just cant believe how difficult they make it for people to have the op on the NHS!! Every week you read in the papers what a drain obesity is putting on the NHS resources right now and that it will be a bigger problem for them in the future. Surely if Doctors can see on their records that weight has been an issue for a number of years and all diets and other options have been tried and exhausted, they should put people through the op process much more willingly and quicker?!! From what i have read, the average wait on the NHS route is 18mths to 2 years if you are lucky and you have to jump through hoops for that and face being rejected and having to appeal.

You just wonder what is wrong with these decision makers at the top that seem to make it so hard for us and be so reluctant, when we are so willing to sort out our weight problem, therefore reducing our risks of obesity related illnesses, therefore less potential for being a drain on the NHS in the future!! Oooh, i could explode i really could!! It does make you wonder why we work so hard and pay all this money in national insurance contributions on our wages when we cant call on the NHS when we so desperately need them. Sorry for my rant, it just makes me so mad and its so unfair.

Pre-op Diet commences!

So this is it, the build up to my op! Lots of mixed feelings over the last day or two, the realisation that this really is going to happen. I am excited but at the same time very nervous and if i think about it too much i could be physically sick!

The idea of the pre-op diet is to shrink the liver in preparation for the operation, giving the surgeon easier access to the stomach if the liver is smaller. Dependent on which surgeon and hospital you go to, there seems to be a difference in the pre-op diets that people are put on. I am on a milk and yoghurt diet, although slimfast shakes can be drank instead of milk, so that is what i am having - 3 slimfast, 3 weightwatcher yoghurts and a milky coffee! I started yesterday so today is day 2. Of course the other advantage of this pre-op diet is that you lose weight prior to the op, which can only be a good thing! 7lbs to a stone is the average so here's hoping!!

Decision Time

I had thought on and off over the last 2 years about a gastric band but i always kidded myself that 'im not that big' or 'my BMI would not be high enough' . I always believed that eventually i would be able to 'get a grip' and sort out my weight issues, but it was never to be. The more weight i put on, the harder the mountain to climb so in the end i gave up.

I finally made my decision to go for a gastric band on my birthday, 47 years old and here i was still not wanting to buy clothes 'until i lose some weight' not wanting to go out with friends 'until i lose some weight' and i made the decision there and then that i was not prepared to let any more time go by, or waste any more years and reach another birthday and still feel so unhappy with myself.

So that was it, i did lots of research on the internet and realised there was people much younger than me and with lower BMI's than me having gastric bands and them saying "best thing i ever did", "wish i'd done this years ago". The more i read the more i knew that this was the answer for me, that my battle would be over, i could finally achieve a 'normal' weight and walk into any high street shop and see an outfit i like knowing they would have my size in it.

I made an appointment and went for my consultation and that is it, the date is set for the 7th October.

The Diets

So like i said, i have tried just about every method of losing weight that you can imagine. I have spent the last 20 years yo-yoing and putting on more and more weight, trying along the way - weight watchers (too many times to remember), slimming world (about 8 times), Rosemary Connely (once), cambridge diet (3 times), lighterlife (like you, my most successful, losing 3 stone but putting it all backt on within about 6 weeks!), a range of pills from the doctors - tenuate, xenical, reductil (all many times), hypnotherapy (3 times) - I have spent a fortune on a personal trainer for about 3 months and gave up, i have paid expensive memberships at gyms and only been a handful of times and given up. When i think about it, i know it seems very expensive to have a gastric band (average £7,000), but when i think about how much money i have wasted over the last 20 years!, it doesnt bare thinking about. All i know now is that this is it this time, the rollercoaster ride is over and now i am on the journey to a new lighter, healthier and happier future. Its scary, but its going to be so worth it!

Where it all started to go wrong

I suppose i always felt like i was over-weight, even as a child, but looking back i now know i never was but i somehow got that idea in my head. I am one of six kids, i was number 4, looking back at photos as kids growing up, i didnt look in the slightest bit different weight-wise to the rest of the family but yet i was always made to feel like i was. Dont know why this was, i think my mother always passed little comments, she probably didnt realise what she was doing, after all she had six kids in six years and struggled to cope and suffered a minor breakdown and depression, i think i always got the brunt of her frustrations and unhappyness. I remember there were knicknames given to each sibling by one of my brothers, i can remember some of them, but funny enough i cant remember my own! (i think i have blanked it out because i think it was fatty or fatso) On the whole though, i look back and think i had a great, fun childhood, never a dull moment in a big family! (or is that me trying to blank things out again?) I left school in 1979 aged 16 - 5ft 7" and weighing 11stone 2pds - not exactly over weight by any guidelines. I then went on to lose a bit of weight away from the confines of school and stabilised at 10stone 3 pds for the next few years.

I remember never feeling like i fitted in anywhere, could never quite find where i belonged and never knew where i wanted to be. I remember my 21st birthday being completely overshadowed by my sisters big white wedding which was planned for 4 days later. I was so jealous, she looked so lovely, slim, beautiful getting married to a man who adored her - why couldnt i be like her?

In my desperation to find something for me, i got involved with an older man who i thought would look after me and give me the attention and love that i was clearly craving. We starting seeing each other and within a few months i was pregnant - was it deliberate? yes. I was happy to be having a baby, i would have someone to look after and love who would love me and need me. As soon as my beautiful daughter was born i was back to 10 stone without even trying, in fact i hovered between 9stone 10 and 10stone 2 for the next 2 years or so. My baby's dad was not quite so enthusiastic about anything that was going on around him, he felt he had been trapped (which he was, although we still lived in separate houses) his input was minimum but i thought if i waited he would eventually come round to the idea of having a new family in his life. Quite why i wanted him in my life i have no idea, he didnt offer me stability or love or much support of any kind, but none the less i was not going to give up until i won him over. Eventually he did agree that maybe we should give it a go, and we bought a house together, a lovely 3 bed semi in a sought after area, huge garden, lovely neighbours. I thought this is it, i have finally got what i wanted, i finally felt like i belonged somewhere and to top it all i became pregnant with my 2nd daughter, my life was perfect! Then the weight started piling on, 4 stone throughout my pregnancy, but i didnt care, in fact after my baby was born losing weight was the last thing on my mind, insignificant things like that didnt matter to me (or so i thought) Along the way, even thought on the outside my life looked perfect and idyllic, on the inside was a different story. I had found out the man i was living with was an alcoholic and addicted to tranquilisers, i was devestated (he was very clever and deceitful in the way he had covered this up). None the less, i still wanted my ideal life and he had managed to convince me he had given up alcohol and tranquilisers and we decided to get married (we got married on our own, without my family because he 'didnt want any fuss') I went along with it but i was so unhappy inside, happy with my babies but so unhappy with the inadequate, selfish, ignorant man that was now my husband. I pretended, i did a great job at pretending to the outside world that i had it all, but slowly dying inside through lack of love and affection and company from a loving partner, who it turns out had lied all along and was secretly still drinking and taking tranquilisers, it was like living with a zombie, i was living the life of a single parent although we were still together. This was still the 80's and there was still so much stigma attached to being a single parent and i did not want that for my kids and i wanted all my children to be true siblings, from the same dad and with that in mind i decided i wanted another child and as we were not really having a proper kind of relationship any more, i set out to conceive my son and luckily it happened immediately from that one occasion that i planned. I was the happiest i could be, i was massively over-weight and pregnant but the scan told me it was a boy, i knew my life was complete. I had my 3 children that i adored, about 18stone now, but i didnt see that, i just saw my lovely children and it didnt matter. I avoided mirrors, i avoided going out, we didnt have any friends as a couple anyway, he saw to that. I spent the next few years raising my children, getting the best i could out of life for them, private schools, horse-riding lessons, dance lessons, piano lessons, lovely birthday parties, family holidays abroad. I stuck it out for as long as i could untill i could take it no more and finally decided i could no longer live in the same house as such a selfish man. He had taken, taken, taken from being surrounded by a lovely family, but gave nothing back in return, just empty promises of getting help to get off alcohol and tranqulisers. I tried everything to help him, i went to see doctors, arranged clinic appointments privately, arranged for the clinic to send a doctor to our home instead because he said he would do it that way, i tried and exhausted every avenue to get help for him but not once did i see him make any effort or interest in wanting to sort the problem out. I lost count of the number of chances i gave him, lets sort it out or we are over but he never took me seriously so in the end i had to make the decision. I dont regret it, not for a second, no matter how bad things get (and they have) but i have never regretted the day we split up for good. (He is still an alcohol and drinks to this day)

I have a good relationship with my siblings, although due my ex-husband (things i would rather not go into at the moment) i feel that my relationship with my sister has become virtually none existent. This makes me incredibly sad, as we were such good friends for so many years and our children grew up together when they were younger. I dont know if this situation can ever improve, i would love it if it could, but for now i just need to sort out me.

Just reading back now, this is turning into a book not a blog!

I just feel that everything i have wrote so far is relevant and in some way explains how i got so overweight in the first place.

I have been through a bad relationship ending in divorce, bringing up my children on my own, i have lost everything along the way ending up bankrupt, i lost my dad very unexpectedly through not very nice circumstances, i have watched my mums health and mind deteriorating through the very cruel disease Alzheimers.

I am an emotional eater, i eat if im sad, happy, want to celebrate, commiserate, drown my sorrows, in fact i dont need an excuse, i just eat. My eating is out of control, or was. I now want to take control of my life and my weight and after years of trying every diet you can imagine, i have decided on the gastric band which i know will give me back my life.

A little bit about me

Well, i live in the Midlands in the UK. I am a single parent of 3 fantastic children, who i am very proud of for who they are and all that they have achieved.

I have decided to do this blog mainly because i think it will help me and be a kind of therapy in itself. The rollercoaster i have been on of being over-weight, has been for the last 20 years, yo-yo dieting, emotional turmoil, low self-esteem, lacking confidence, disliking myself and what i see in the mirror, making bad choices and decisions due to lack of confidence, comfort eating and so the rollercoaster continues and its impossible to get off. That is untill now. I have decided to take the drastic route of a gastric band, I havent come to this decision lightly and it is certainly not the 'easy' option, but it is the last resort and i am now very happy that i have made the decision and can finally see a happier healthier future.

Follow my blog and i will tell my story of the diets i have done and failed and the impact that has had on me. I will update along the way on my gastric band journey, the build up before and the recovery after.

Hope my blogs help in some way, with making decisions about what is right for you, it may not be the same decision as mine, but i am sure you will be able to relate in some way.