UnFuck My Habitat and into September!

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 174.3 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

Officially end of the month and it looks like an overall loss of 2.10 kgs, which brings me to 33.3 kgs lost since I started. I know I should be pleased with that – the chart below (as long as it works) shows that I am consistently losing. I guess I just want to lose faster maybe?

Friday and Stripes asked me what I wanted to eat. I think I am either self-sabotaging or trying to punish myself/kick off my IBS because not only did I decide to have a MacDonalds meal, I had a strawberry milkshake and a Mcflurry. The stupidity of it blows my mind even now, but I just wanted them. And I know I’m going to suffer – me and lactose are not friends at the best of times, but a milkshake on top of a Mcflurry is just insanity – but I ate it all. Maybe I was hoping for a clear out? I find my brain so confusing – I kinda enjoyed the food and definitely noticed I was eating slower. It was the only food I ate that day (apart from the weed-required Doritos) so I don’t think I went over any calorific goals I might have had. But the damage of having to hit the bathroom – which I know is coming because I took my jab this morning – makes me wonder if I’m just a masochistic twat.

I want to try to unfuck my habitat. I found a subreddit where people encourage you to clean up your living area, post pictures and ideas. I’ve already ordered the sofa but have also ordered a shoe rack to go into the cat-room. The idea is that myself and Stripes can put our shoes away in there, clearing some way in our own rooms and making good use of the space. Gidget has her own shoe rack – we were going to repurpose hers because she said she wasn’t using most of it but then we had a look and she was way more shoes than she realised and is pretty much using the whole thing!

Over the weekend, I want to go through my wicker basket of underwear and pyjamas, get rid of anything ratty and/or old, and Marie Kondo what’s left so it’s easy to see what I have. It should also make it easier for putting away clothes when the washing is done. It shouldn’t be a huge task, and I’ve already decided I can put one of my fleece blankets on top of it to keep it clean/finish off the look.

I need to ask Stripes to take face photos tomorrow, marking the first of the month. I asked Lophy when she came to visit if she could see any difference in me. I guess I was hoping for an over-enthused hell yeah, but she was honest and said she could see it in my face. That’s good – it means it’s working. But I was disappointed. I was hoping someone who doesn’t see me that often would say they could see something more than just a change in my face. I guess that’s difficult because I wear the same clothes, am sitting in bed – how do you see a difference in someone if you can’t see most of them? I need to learn to manage my expectations and also look for what difference I can see – after all, I’m the only person with me 24/7 so I need to become comfortable within myself instead of looking for external validation. Hark at me sounding so mature and balanced!

September then.

⟫ Clean my bedroom, including the floor and under the bed;

⟫ new face photos;

⟫ Mantra work;

⟫ look into seated workouts on YouTube;

⟫ get this report to the police with Gidget;

⟫ start saving for Christmas;

⟫ declutter my clothes rail.

And work on my gratitude – there are so many people who don’t have Ozempic to help them, so many people struggling the way I was struggling and I feel like I’m being ungrateful for what I have achieved and the fact that I can keep going. I have the side effects mainly under control – very little in the way of constipation throughout August – I just need to keep seeing the bigger picture and remind myself once again that’s it a marathon not a sprint.

There’s a reason why I keep writing ‘1 kilo at a time’.

End of the month, heading towards one year...

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 174.8 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

Coming up the end of the month and once again I am feeling a little lost. I don’t know if it’s because I’m coming up to a year being on this ‘plan’. It’s all a bit hazy when I truly started because I was on Trulicity, then off of it just trying to lose weight, then getting serious on it. 25th September is the first weight logged on my spreadsheet, so I guess that’s my anniversary? Either way, I have less than a month left before my year has come up and I feel like I should be achieving big things but that I’m not.

I started at 207.7 kgs and the scales this morning said 174.8 kgs so I should be pleased, right? But instead, I’m just feeling stalled. It’s not a proper stall because I think that has to be ongoing for a month with no movement, but I want to see new numbers. I need to see new numbers because otherwise why am I jabbing myself every flipping week?

I actually had a good week. It was Stripes’ birthday and the three of us went to get tattoos at Painted Fern. As her present, I paid for Stripes to have a tattoo of a amigurumi she made of an armadillo and it looks freaking gorgeous on her upper thigh. Or it will do once the ink sack has been cleaned off and the swelling goes down!

I got a geometric fox from Laura and Gidget got a kuromi keyring from Tanya. We had a blast, but it was the first time I’ve been out in over a month and since COVID so it’s hitting me kinda hard. I’m also a little bit concerned about the tattoo – me and white ink don’t have the best relationship in the world and some of the white in the fox looks a bit ‘off’. I just don’t think my skin likes white ink and is protesting. It’s an absolutely gorgeous fox and I can’t wait for it to be healed, but at the moment it’s painful, swollen and itchy af!

Then we watched TV, had take-out and watched Stripes open her gifts. Since then, I’ve literally done nothing but sleep and read. It’s my writing day and I haven’t done anything but blog posts and a review. I need to read three books at the moment and the deadlines are in September which sounds great but that’s next week!

Finally ordered a sofa and it’s due by Monday. It’s green in fake velvet and is kinda basic but we don’t need anything special. Especially since it’s going to be covered by the blankets and spreads I have, cat fur and probably scratched to shit! I really want to do some proper work on my bedroom, get rid of the clutter, find a home for things and throw out the things that I don’t use. So maybe that’s something to aim for next week.

Gidget is going to put together a time-line of her relationship with JC and we’re going to contact the police. At the moment, he is banned from where she works but that hasn’t been tested yet and we don’t know if/how he’s going to react to that. Just in case he escalates, we want to know what we can do about the situation and also ensure that there is a document trail if we need to go to the police for more assistance. I’m bricking it – I’m never done anything like this. I want to be there to support Gidget but I don’t want to steer her wrong, or make her life harder.

In the meantime, I just need to trust the process. Or processes. I weigh less now than I did at the beginning of August so that has to count as a win. And the fact that I can’t see it is most likely my own head-fucked attitude. Yes, I have Mantra stuff I could work on when I have the energy but isn’t that the bitch? I don’t have any energy at the moment. No energy, no sense of achievement, no creativity – yeah, time to log off and read. I’m not achieving anything sitting here moaning and complaining!

No Weighing and Celebrating 75 lbs off

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ ?? |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

In the first time in I couldn’t tell you how long, I have no idea what I weigh. The last couple of days, I haven’t weighed myself. And I can’t quite figure out why. I either ‘forgot’ when I got up in the morning, or like this morning I didn’t have time. Maybe it’s because I am definitely over COVID and I feel like the numbers are going to begin to bounce back up because I’m able to eat again.

I had my hair done – single long blonde braids. It only took Tanya about 2 hours to do my whole head and I love the concept of it. I don’t like it on me – but then, I never do like my hair when it’s been done. Actually, I can’t think of the last time I just liked my hair. I haven’t wanted to buy any more clothes because I don’t go anywhere, and I felt like not celebrating the achievement was me trying to downplay what I achieved. I think Marmee liked the photo I took to send to show her me with hair (obsessed with the length of my hair even now I’m 54).

Anyway, Stripes sister and father came up to celebrate her birthday with her, and after they took her for lunch, I got to have some time with Lophy. We talked, played with make up and hugged a lot and it was really lovely. She said she could see a difference in my face and reminded me that it’s a marathon, not a sprint when I whined a little. Hopefully, the picture I took of the two of us together will work – if so, it’s here.

I’m tired as all heck after ‘peopling’ with Tanya, but the Ginger from Hinge wasn’t able to come around today because he wasn’t feeling well, so once Lophy and K left, we just chilled out. Tomorrow and Monday should be chill-days because I need to rest up until Tuesday as I can see it being quite a ‘high spoon count’ day. It’s nearly 5 am and I wanted to make the award banners for the 1 million words Word Wars challenge I set up as well as listen to ‘Frog’ by Mary Calmes on audio-book to try to relax.

We’ve pretty much decided that if JC is going to continue to act the way he is, we need to talk to the police. We might not be able to get a TRO or anything like that, but we can ask them to document it in case he escalates. I’m not looking forward to it, but I do think it needs to happen – if only for Gidget’s peace of mind.

I’m all done so going to settle down with Dmi and see if I can get some sleep. I think Gidget should be home by 6 a.m. – I know JC was there again tonight but at the moment, he hasn’t done anything to her and I can only hope and pray that it remains that way.

As for the scales – I took my jab today so maybe weighing in can wait until Monday. Unless I wake up tomorrow and decide to torture myself!

Endo Appt and Head Thoughts

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 173.3 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

Today was my endocrinology appointment (telephone call) and it was short and sweet. Violet doesn’t have my latest A1C results and was less than impressed that I don’t have a date for surgery. As expected, she’s going to do some chasing with the coordinators to find out why I haven’t heard anything, was very pleased with my weight loss and admitted that there was very little she could actually do for me that I wasn’t already achieving alone.

It was kinda bittersweet to be honest. As I’ve said before, this is quite a lonely journey and having someone call on me regularly to check in means a lot – more than I perhaps realised. Again, I’m in a bit of a limbo land with regards to the surgery but to be fair, I don’t think I’m in the right position to know what I want to do about it. The current lot of weight loss is most likely to do with COVID – I haven’t been interested in eating or drinking anything which is obviously going to have an effect on the scales. I’m more than a little afraid of what happens when my ‘normal’ Ozempic appetite returns – will I see the scales bounce back up?

I don’t think that I truly appreciate the weight loss that I have achieved – 75 lbs is pretty darn impressive. I sometimes feel like I don’t celebrate enough when I reach these milestones? Like, my first thought upon realising that I had lost 75 lbs was that 100 lbs still feels a long way away. I didn’t even give myself a second to be like, yeah whoo, it was almost immediately how far away the next mini goal was and how long it had taken me to get to where I am. In some ways, that’s good – to be conscious that I still have a ways to go, that I need to keep doing what I’m doing. But on the other hand, am I going to get burnt out if I don’t at least acknowledge when I’ve done something good? It’s a marathon not a sprint – the scales are going to go up sometimes instead of going down, life is going to throw things in my way. Perhaps I should try to celebrate a little more instead of just head down, on to the next. What do other people do? Do they lose focus if they celebrate? Maybe that’s my internal fear – that if I ever stop to actually consider what’s happening, I’ll lose focus, chicken out, lose the plot! I don’t know!

I was having a WhatsApp conversation with Sandy and admitted something that has been preying on my mind. I wanted to visit when she came down (COVID made that impossible) but I also have to admit that there was a part of me that didn’t want to see her. I can’t remember how much I weighed the last time we saw each other, but there was a part of me that felt Marmee had built up my weight loss so much that – what if when Sandy saw me, she couldn’t see any difference because of how big when I saw her last time? But what happens if she did notice and celebrated my achievements? Would that set me off-kilter? I know in the past that when people have complimented me on my loss, I have lost focus – became almost complacent because people said I looked better that I forgot about the destination I ultimately have in mind. I don’t want that to happen. I want to be seen but I want to be invisible; I want people to notice but I don’t want them to realise that I have lost weight; I want to be celebrated but I don’t want people to celebrate there being less of me. I don’t know – I’ve read a few things on Reddit and the like where people are struggling with similar things. Like, what did people think they looked like before if they are so impressed with the loss? Why does losing weight mean that people treat you better? Why does it feel like you’re carrying the weight of all of these expectations when you tell people you’re trying to lose weight?

I know sometimes Marmee has said stuff – like being a little disappointed when I say how much I have lost in a period of time. She doesn’t mean to be negative but there is an expectation that if you’re using things like Ozempic the weight is going to fly off, which means hearing that someone has lost a couple of pounds doesn’t seem good enough? Not that I’m not good enough (that’s a whole different post), but that somehow my results that week aren’t good enough, that they should be better because otherwise why am I using Ozempic? It makes it harder because I have to manage my own expectations. I think my loss averages out at around 8 – 9 lbs per month which is GOOD. Would I like it to be more? Well of course I would. But I also know that that’s not sustainable – it took years to put this weight on so it’s not just gonna fall off, no matter how much I would want it to.

Maybe it’s time to see if I have any photos of me from a year ago and do a comparison. Wow, just the thought of that sent a cold shiver down my spine – maybe I’m not mentally ready to try that just yet!

75lbs Lost!

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 173.5 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

I don’t have a goal weight in mind – mainly because it’s been a very long time since I thought I could lose such a substantial amount of weight. One of the things they taught us in the weight management group that I was in was that we might never get to a ‘normal’ BMI and that the aim was to get to a weight that was healthy and we could maintain, stop all of the yo-yoing which is hard on the system.

Whenever I’ve plugged my height and weight into a tracker, generally speaking the ‘goal’ weight it suggests is around 75kgs. I don’t think that would be a good weight for me – I think that would be too low, that I would look gaunt maybe? But obviously, there’s a certain amount of fear seeing a number like that – part of which is how long it would take me to get there, how difficult it would be, etc.

Taking Ozempic has made me realise that I might need to decide on a weight that I want to stay at. And yesterday was the first time it actually occurred to me that I had less than 100 kgs to lose to get there. I know to most people, that would still be a horrendous number – to be honest, to me it feels like a horrendous number. But that shouldn’t take away from the achievement. I’ve lost over 75 lbs. This isn’t the first time I’ve managed that, but it definitely is the first time I’ve done it whilst eating normal food. Before this, it’s always been doing a VLCD and hasn’t been sustainable. Falling off the shakes wagon meant starting from scratch and dreading getting into ketosis, handling the headaches, the cravings for food. This is the first time I’ve lost that amount of weight whilst still being able to eat most foods. That’s momentous – that’s something that I would never have achieved without Ozempic.

I have also been thinking about my internal dialogue and I realised that I had assigned the current weight loss to me having COVID – not being able to taste food or enjoy eating at all. However, the last time I had COVID last year, I didn’t lose any weight at all. That should mean that my brain allows me to accept this as a bit of a win, right? Nope – once again, the internal voice is saying that not eating because of Ozempic/COVID is not a win, is not me working with what’s going on, is nothing to do with me – circumstances are making the weight loss possible, not my choices. I’m not sure why I can see that this voice is chatting shit and makes no sense, and yet allow it to affect how I feel about myself.

Maybe when I have some free brain cells and some energy, I can grab those Mantra worksheets and see if something in them will help me figure this all out.

New Weight Territory, Mini Goal and COVID

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 174.2 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

The last time I thought I was in control of my weight was quite a few years ago. I was due for an endocrinology appointment and was almost excited because I had been ‘dieting’ for quite some time and was positive I had lost some weight. I didn’t have scales of my own that went up high enough, but I was sticking to a diet plan and really feeling like I was succeeding.

I remember being utterly crushed when I got on their scales and they showed my weight as 183 kg – I cried on the way home, only possible because a friend at the time had driven us to the appointment. It was also when I decided it was time to seriously consider weight loss surgery as an option because I had simply couldn’t think of any other way to get the weight off.

COVID has had a rather devastating effect on my appetite. Food is just lumps in my mouth with barely any taste, nausea is almost constant, and the cough feels like it is raking my throat to shreds (there was blood in my tissues twice today – not enough to be overly concerned, but it does demonstrate just how bad things are). Today, Stripes and I had soup for dinner, along with a couple of slices of bread and butter, and I had a pineapple fritter for dessert. That was all I ate all day and I barely managed to finish the soup. All this to say, it is no surprise that the scales are moving downwards.

I had a mini goal of getting to 175 kg by the time my latest endocrinology appointment came around (19th August) and it would appear that I have more than made that goal. I wonder if it’s going to be a permanent kind of loss or whether, once COVID has done with me, the numbers will bounce back up. Even during the Weight Management course I had to attend in order to be put forward for weight loss surgery, I didn’t lose weight like this. By the time I spoke to the surgeon, life had kicked me in the teeth a few times and I was up to 190something kgs. To be heading towards 173 kg is making my mind spiral. It kinda helps that my brain is cottage cheese – who has the time to suffer through an existential crisis when you have a constant headache, feel like crap and can barely stand the thought of drinking water, let alone eating something? Maybe it’s good that I have COVID (seriously, I don’t mean that in a stupid way, more of a having COVID means that I don’t have the energy to be thinking of all the other stuff that normally fills my head). But yeah, it’s less about trying to eat less and more about trying to eat something each day.

Speaking to Violet should mean that I find out what my new A1C is as I never did find out from the surgery following my annual check up. I wonder what it is – I wonder if it’s good? I wonder if it’s showing how much difference Ozempic is making or whether it will show that losing the weight hasn’t made much difference to my diabetes? I’m only awake as my eyes are itching so badly that I needed to dose them up so that I can get some sleep. I’m not sure if I’ll use the CPAP tonight – seeing blood in my sputum scared me a little, even though it sounds like it’s a relatively normal side effect of the coughing.

I haven’t been vaping weed the last couple of nights – my order was meant to arrive from Mamedica today but it got waylaid by Royal Mail so should be in tomorrow. Maybe the new strain I am trying – Big Narstie Purple Milk I think it’s called – will help with the sleep issue. That would be so nice because at the moment it doesn’t seem to matter how much sleep I get, I am exhausted. Added to my normal fatigue levels, I am feeling like death warmed up – even walking to the bathroom and back is enough to have me sweating, shaking and feeling like I’m either going to throw up or pass out. High sleep is way better than no sleep.

Today, I will mostly be a reading vegetable

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 175.6 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

Still hovering around in the 175s so I guess I can’t complain too much. COVID or whatever the heck this thing is that has taken control of my body is proving to be – difficult. My nose is like a tap OR it's utterly blocked with no in between, my throat feels like someone scraped it with acid, and my entire body aches. Stripes isn’t doing much better but Gidget seems to have missed the worst of it.

It’s difficult to know what to eat – my sense of taste and smell – are both wacky at present, so things that I normally enjoy eating just taste like bland lumps in my mouth. I’m still eating just one main meal per day, followed by snacks, but I can’t say that I particularly feel like anything tastes nice. The issue is, I don’t think this is going to do my weight loss any good, because eating too little is pretty much as bad as over-eating.

Another night of no sleep – I finally crashed out at 7 am which is ridiculous. This time it was because I couldn’t breathe wearing the CPAP mask because of my blocked nose, the hacking cough kept making me feel like I was going to throw up, and I couldn’t get comfortable. I finally ended up surrounded by pillows, half sitting up with the CPAP mask on, feeling like Darth Vader on a bad day! And of course, it’s my writing day – my brain is utterly mush! I managed to create some banners and schedule some posts for a weekend challenge on 1 million words but I think I’m gonna have to log off and lie down – the desire to act like a reading vegetable is strong and I cannot resist! Maybe I’ll have something positive to say later in the week?

High Thoughts - Prime Effectiveness?

Yes, this is the second post of the night! I don’t know if these would be classed high thoughts – more than likely since it’s nearly 6 am, I haven’t been to sleep yet, and my brain is running like a hamster on a wheel but.

What if I’m making things harder for myself by doing my jab last thing on a Friday night? Like, part of the reason for doing that was to combat the fatigue, but what if it’s partly responsible for me not sleeping? And what if by taking the jab when I do, I’m sleeping through the most effective times? Like – I take the jab and it kicks in and I’m not hungry and not prone to snacking. Not much use of that if it’s the middle of the night and I should be asleep. And then I’ve set myself up for the rest of the week because of when I’ve taken the jab. So my 24 hour cycles are all messed up because I take the jab last thing at night.

What might help – if I’m not talking out of my butt – is if I take my jab on Saturday morning and keep note/track of side effects, food noise, hunger pangs. Obviously I can’t do it now (wish I’d had this idea before I stabbed myself this evening) but if I make a note to myself saying not to do my jab until Saturday morning, I might find that it proves more effective.

It might not – it could simply be that I need to titrate up despite the fact that I’m loathe to move up levels if I don’t have to. But if I can stay on 1mg and keep losing weight, then I can put off titrating up until it’s absolutely necessary. I still have at least 80 – 90 kgs to lose so there’s time to run experiments, but also still a chance to help the Ozempic work for me. What if I’ve been putting a stumbling block in my way this whole time simply because I thought taking the jab at night meant that I wouldn’t have to handle the fatigue, as in it would help me go to sleep if I was exhausted. But maybe that’s not the way my brain – or body – works.

Now I just need to remember this for next week!

COVID strikes again and I've reached another jab night

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 175.4 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

Oh goody, the good stuff just keeps on happening! I shouldn’t complain – the other night I had a bathroom visit that, although not unpleasant, meant that the next morning the scales moved almost 2 kg! I haven’t reached my previous low, but I am pleased to see that the number 175 seems to be consistently appearing.

But now we all seem to have been struck down by COVID. We haven’t tested – does anyone still have tests lying around? – but both Stripes and I have lost a lot of our sense of taste. Gidget is walking around like a wraith and has called off sick from work, which I believe has only happened once in the last year. I ache all over, have lost most of my sense of taste (my fish pie from last night just felt like lumps of substance in my mouth – less than appealing) and to add insult to injury, my Jaffa cakes taste of seriously sour lemons which is all the way wrong as they were strawberry flavoured! In that instance, I think I would have preferred not to taste anything at all!

I don’t think there’s a particular protocol with COVID any more – it seems to be being treated as a serious cold rather than something you should isolate yourself for. Either way, I am less than impressed that we’ve caught it for a second time. I can only imagine we caught it from clients that have visited the club where Gidget works, so not something that could be avoided. Does this count as our third mishap?

We watched Deadpool last night and it was everything we could have hoped it would be! The cameos were first notch – I’m not going to post any spoilers because I know that Stripes had so much of it ruined for her by spoilers online – but Channing Tatum owns my whole damned heart and it made me squee with delight. Add Jennifer Garner and you can only imagine how happy I was!

The enclosure for my old hard drive arrived and I managed to reinstate it (who the hell knew about bitlocker keys?!) with a few struggles along the way. I’m not copying everything over – instead I’m going to use it as a spare hard drive which means the amount of memory I have on my laptop is truly insane!

I’ve written my daily drabble, played with headers and images for the various blogs, and visited various AI image creator sites. Now it’s time to try to eat something and do some reading. I think I have two ARCs to read at present, and I am re-reading the Andrea Speed ‘Infected’ series.

The final joy? Tonight is jab night – I know how to have a good time!

First Week of August

SW ⟫ 207.7 | CW ⟫ 176.7 |

Ozempic: ⟫ 1 mg

LORD, August has been a full on month already and it’s only the 7th!

Okay, let’s see. My laptop was getting very slow so I looked into more RAM. Buying the right thing wasn’t the problem – I just don’t have the confidence to unscrew my laptop and tinker with it’s insides. Just the thought of it makes me feel nauseous. So I looked up local computer guys and found someone. The price was within my budget (kinda) and he came and picked it up on Friday.

Which sounds absolutely fine until I slowly but surely realise just how much my laptop is part of my personality and coping mechanisms. I’m currently using the ‘download’ laptop and the frustration of trying to learn a new keyboard layout, remember passwords for logging into the things, as well as not having all of my normal programmes has utterly fritzed my brain.

I haven’t really been able to write – I did manage five drabbles for the 1 million words challenge but nothing since – which means that I haven’t done book reviews, weight loss blog, medicinal marijuana blog – nothing. And I feel like all of those words are jammed into my brain, fighting to get out with no way to release them.

I finally caved in and downloaded a few of my normal programmes – paint.net and libreoffice – and have tried to do things as normal, but in the back of my head there is just so much history on my laptop that it feels incomplete. And I’m really struggling. Talk about first world problems – woe is me, my laptop has gone away to be cleaned and upgraded and I can’t cope with its’ absence!

I have been playing with various AI image generators and have practically been changing my headers/banners every day for something to do. Each time I think that they’re finished and I’m happy with the result, I become dissatisfied and have to start again. Which again, is ridiculous because there was nothing wrong with the headers and banners I already had.

Food-wise, I don’t know where I am. I have been on the scales but can’t see any progress. I am once again bouncing back and forth between 177 and 178 which actually makes me want to cry. Do I need to titrate up again so quickly? Am I eating something that’s making me retain water? Why aren’t the numbers changing? Maybe it’s because I have my phone call with Violet on the 19th that I’m panicking a bit. In my head, talking to Violet means bringing up the weight loss surgery thing again and I was previously a little confident that I might be able to put a dent into my weight before that became a reality. Now I just don’t know.

I remember talking to Nelly and she said that even though she was having success with Slimming World, she decided to go ahead with the surgery because she wanted to know that she couldn’t turn back – that this time was the last time. And that makes sense to me – using the tools you have at your disposal. But I can’t help but want to do this without the surgery – why would I go through all of that pain and risk if I can lose the weight with Ozempic? Or something similar – I know that Zepbound and Rybelsus are already out there, as well as Mounjaro and there are new semaglutide drugs coming onto the market every day. Many of them are said to have less side effects than Ozempic.

Maybe it’s time I spoke to my Doctor in person rather than a quick phone call. The issue with that is that a lot of the doctors out there don’t have a lot of experience with semaglutides. The people currently using them are basically guinea pigs – doctors are still saying eat less and move more, here take this and it will help you achieve that. Which doesn’t take into account just how different everyone’s body is. The fact that I’ve lost over 70lbs in seven/eight months when I’ve never achieved that before whilst eating says that my body is not normal.

I don’t have my weight loss spreadsheets on this laptop so I can’t look at the charts and numbers, but I know that things have majorly slowed down. And yes, ten pounds a month is fantastic but if things continue the way that they have been, I will be nowhere near losing ten pounds this month. And I don’t want to waste any time – I want to do this now, quickly (and safely) which may indeed mean that I need to up my dosage. I guess I feel like a bit of a failure that even with this ‘wonder drug’ on my side, I’m still failing.

I know it’s not failing to lose this much weight but I have so much more to go – I don’t want to stall out. In the interests of honesty, I am also struggling with weighing. Lately, I have found myself trying to ‘cheat’ the scales – shifting my weight whilst the numbers are flickering, not weighing in until later in the day when I know the numbers will have gone down. I know the only person I’m cheating when I do that is me, but I am finding it hard not to do it. I know this isn’t all about the numbers – it should also be about my A1C number and my general health – but it’s so difficult when everything revolves around the numbers. You tell people your blood pressure is healthy and it’s like, yeah, right, but you’re still morbidly obese according to the numbers and the BMI chart (God, don’t get me started on the BMI chart).

So in the first week of August, I have lost a grand total of 0.2 kg and am still up from my lowest weight which was 175.3 kg near the end of July. I don’t think my eating is that much different and I know it’s not my ‘exercise’ levels (sedentary doesn’t cover it!) but obviously something isn’t working so I need to do some tweaking. I think it’s possibly the weed munchies at the end of the night where if I haven’t gone to sleep, I want crisps and Jaffa cakes. I did think of leaving my crisps until that time but somehow I haven’t managed to follow through.

Stripes has given me the next part of the Mantra exercises and I will have a look at those. Well, as soon as I can stay awake long enough. That’s the other thing – because I’m not sleeping at night, I doze off during the day which means I’m not doing anything constructive. I’m not moving – even in my limited fashion – and I feel lousy. I haven’t kept up with my water intake – basically I’ve just been shit at this whole thing. I could say that it’s because of handling things with Gidget and JC (still ongoing) but that’s an excuse. That stuff isn’t going on 24/7 so it shouldn’t mean I can’t progress. And I promised myself that no matter what else goes on this summer, I was going to focus on myself and keep this train moving.

This weekend, my sister Sandy and her husband and daughter are meant to be coming up to visit Marmee. I haven’t seen them in years – literally years – but I am kinda dreading it because I said we would go round. And they haven’t seen me, so I can’t remember if I was at my highest weight the last time I saw them. If I wasn’t they won’t see any difference in me at all, which I think would crush me just a little. I can feel myself thinking up excuses as to why we can’t go round which is insane because I would really like to see them. If I could just get out of my own way, maybe Sandy would be another form of support rather than someone I’m afraid of letting down. She’s always been as supportive as she can be from a distance, but COVID and life have truly got in the way, as well as my hermit tendencies, which means that no one from my family has really seen me in quite some time. And I’m not sure if they would notice a difference in my weight if they did see me.

I need to try and get some sleep – I don’t think straight without it, and I know that resting the body properly will help me to get my system working properly again, e.g. losing weight. I haven’t counted calories but I seriously don’t think I’m consuming enough calories to not lose weight. I don’t know if I can handle the thought of calorie counting, and I seriously don’t think it would be a good idea for Stripes to have to take part in that for me since she prepares my meals. That would be horrendous for her recovery and she has been doing so well.

There has to be a way for two people struggling with opposing eating disorders to be there for each other and help, not hinder. I’m hoping getting this out means that I can sleep and get back on track. That and I think I’m gonna chase the IT man today and find out when I’m getting my proper laptop back.