Transition to Normal Food⟫ Day 9
How to explain where I am at the moment?
Well, my dietician appointment was postponed as the dietician couldn’t get into the hospital due to snow. I can’t even pretend that I wasn’t pleased about it – I cheered once I’d got off the phone – because I simply wasn’t ready. I’m all in my head about the rate of weight loss, what I’m eating, comparing myself to other people. I know that I have lost nearly 20 lbs since the surgery, but all that I see posted on Reddit and other places is people losing upwards of 35 lbs in the first month after surgery and it makes me feel like a failure.
I’m still constantly sipping protein water (apart for the 30 minutes after each meal) and have found that mixing it with diet lemonade makes it go down a lot faster, as well as drinking more. I’ve done an Asda shop and ordered masses of sparkling water in the hope that it will encourage me to drink more and ordered myself a faux Stanley cup so that I can keep going with that.
I had a small amount of Stripe’s char sui (oh man, I have missed eating that) and it was absolutely gorgeous to eat. I wondered if I would struggle eating pork but it was fine. I’ve also had a protein rice pudding but I’m not sure I want to repeat that. I don’t know if it’s because it was rice but it felt like it got ‘stuck’ in my windpipe and was an uncomfortable experience. I still need to learn the cues that my body gives me that I am full because sometimes I wonder if I am pushing through when I should just stop?
I tried Skyr yoghurt as it is meant to be high in protein but I didn’t get on with it. I felt nauseous and got sweaty (ugh) so I think I’m going to stick with Onken and Fage. I’ve been doing okay in the poop department – no constipation and no diarrhoea either, which makes a nice change from how things were for most of 2024.
I was talking to Stripes about how sometimes I wish I hadn’t had the surgery because I felt like I had more control when I was doing Ozempic. I struggle to remind myself that it has only just been five weeks since I had the surgery so things are still all over the place. You constantly read about the weight falling off of people once they’ve had the surgery but I certainly don’t feel like that’s the case. Again, it makes me feel like a bit of a failure, like I’m over-eating. I would imagine most people would think that I must be doing something wrong otherwise I would be losing weight. I log all of my food in MyFitnessPal and there hasn’t been a day when I’ve gone over 800 calories, so I don’t understand why the scales feel like they are creeping upwards instead of going down.
I was hoping to talk to the dietician about that in the meeting on Monday 6th, but it being postponed until 20th means that I still feel like I’m flying blind. I might email them and ask if I’m okay to start exercising – I want to begin using my resistance bands. I was going to wait until six weeks had passed but maybe they’ll say that I can start using them now if I feel up to it? I know a lot of people go back to work following the surgery in less than a fortnight, so surely the resistance bands is the equivalent of that? I don’t know how those people do it though – there is no way in hell I would have been able to work so quickly after having the op.
I was chatting to Jay and she asked me if I had been out since the surgery and I had to admit that, no, I hadn’t. She asked me how often I used to go out before the surgery and I said that I went to medical appointments or to get tattoos but otherwise I hated going out. I hate being the wheelchair and feeling like people are either staring at me or find me invisible. I also hated how it felt having Stripes pushing me around – the optics of this slender young woman having to push around her super morbidly obese mother just makes me feel sick.
Jay told me that I need to ignore other people and need to start living again. I know she’s right, that I was in essence hibernating at home and avoiding life. But it’s difficult, not least because of the expense of Ubers and going out. She’s challenged me to go to a cafe and I asked if the one at the hospital counted! She said yes but of course that was before the appointment was postponed.
I think the idea of getting a motability car is solidifying in my mind. Book_grim’s Uber dropped her off at the top of the road the other night when she came back from work because of the concerns about ice at the bottom of our hill. I know if it’s been snowing I probably wouldn’t want to go out and risk driving in those conditions, but it would be nice to have the option to jump in our own car to go places. I can’t do it until April because my PIP needs to be for at least a year before I can get a motability car and I need time to save for the potential advance payment. We’ve looked at both Jeep Avengers and MG HS electric cars because the advance payment is between £499 and £999 and they seem to be the best match for what we want to use it for. Apparently you can have a charger installed at your house as part of the arrangement, and if that isn’t possible then you get contributions or a card that will pay for you to charge at various places, so that could work out well.
I’ve gone down with yet another cold, although I’m a little concerned that this one might be flu. I feel weak, shaky and have a constant headache, and whatever this is seems to be hitting me harder than it has Book_grim. I do wonder if I’m catching all of these germs when she comes home from work, which she can’t help since she works in a customer-facing role, but it can be frustrating to constantly be going down with things.
I want to go out – I think. I want a chance to wear the hoodie the girls bought me for Christmas. I asked for a Calvin and Hobbes hoodie in a size 4x and when I tried it on at Christmas it was almost dress length. I want to be able to wear it out of the house, along with the giant chocolate puffer coat that I bought. I guess I want to show my gifts off but at the same time, I want to stay safe and warm in my little hidie hole. I don’t know – my head is a messed up place.
I have been watching 1000 lb Sisters and struggling with feeling like I’m acting like Tammy. It’s the earlier seasons so she is constantly saying that she will lose the weight she needs to in order to get the weight loss surgery, all the time fighting against the things she needs to do to get to that stage. I’ve made it past the surgery bit but worry that I am messing up in order ways. Stripes thinks that that is the voice of my mother in my head, telling me that I’m going to fail. Perhaps I need to do a bit more of the Mantra work to see if I can learn to be more compassionate with myself? I definitely need to get back into the therapy habit and will speak to my therapist as soon as possible.
I crashed out around 10.30 pm last night and woke up at around 4.30 am which is why I’m awake so early. I think I’m going to take my gabapentin and paracetamol and see if I can get back to work. There doesn’t seem to be more snow which is good as Book_grim has work this evening. Hopefully that means I can not worry about her (the other night I ended up staying awake until after 5 am as I wanted to make sure she got home safely) and actually get as much sleep as my body seems to need.
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