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Weeble's Wobbles

weeble

Wobbles
A little bit of background copied from my introductory thread. I'm a 50 year old single parent of two girls, now 19 and 20, and very much hoped this part of my life would be about me. I have battled my weight all my life and in a pattern I am sure many of you will recognise have yo yoed up and down.

In September 2007, when I weighed 27 stone 3lb, I had a gastric balloon fitted (privately) and was very ill immediately afterwards and as a result lost a lot of weight very quickly. I felt so motivated that despite the effect of the balloon seeming to wear off very quickly I was determined and over 12 months I lost 12 stone.

I then lost my inspiration and struggled for a year to keep the weight off – going up and down and up and down. By summer 2009, I was 20 stone again and I had a fall and broke my foot. At the same time I went back to work after a period of unemployment. I stopped doing any exercise and that combined with being behind a desk all day again led to me just putting it all back on again over a period of a year.

In December 2009, when I weighed 23.5 stone, Dr Ammori agreed to list me for a gastric band. Between then and the time that I got the appointment for the operation, June 2010, I put on a further 3 stone.

I started the pre op in May – which was about 500 cals a day - and in the three weeks I lost 19lb and then in the two weeks immediately after the band - the liquid weeks - I lost a further 13lb. In the next six weeks the rate of loss slowed down to 2lb a week and I was struggling to eat 1000 calories a day. Now in all the years I have dieting (35) I have never lost less than an average of 3lb a week and in the early days of dieting I often lose an average of 4 –5lb. In fact in the twelve months where I lost 12 stone – I lost an average of 4lb a week for the full year.

The hospital dietician said I should be getting around 700 calories a day – focusing on protein first. I had one fill of 2ml and had some restriction at first. Due to illness and cancelled appts I didn’t get any more appts for fills until December last year and I was full of flu then and was unable to go. But more to the point I had given up in July and had slowly put all the weight I had lost back on again bar a few pounds and I couldn’t see point in going.

I felt such a failure – like I wasted the money the NHS spent on the operation and I am embarrassed to go back, not least because Mr Ammori tried very hard to persuade me to have the bypass and I was so convinced that because I did well with the balloon I would do well with the band.

I plucked up the courage to contact the hospital and got booked in for a fill. I went along last Tuesday only to spend two hours and have two different doctors - one very experienced - try to fill the band. In the end they said it was blocked and there was nothing they could do.

Between this and my appointment with the consultant I just lived on chocolate, lost any hope that I could diet successfully. I was so ill - couldn't breathe because of Asthma, couldn't stop coughing and generally found it very hard to get to work every day.
 
Hi weeble, you've had such a hard time of things that I couldn't just read without leaving you a hug from one chronically ill person to another x

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner
 
I went back to Salford Royal to see the consultant two weeks later - although I actually saw his registrar.

First of all though I saw the dietician. He apologised for the number of cancelled appointments I had (five) and said he would have expected to have seen me at least five times since my operation. In fact I had only seen him once and that was last July.

He then told me that if the port needed replacing it would be a simple operation. However, he couldn't tell me how long it would be before it could be done.

I then saw the registrar and he read the notes and asked me a few questions and then said do you want me to have a go. I was really taken aback as it was the last thing I expected.

So I climbed on the bed and ten minutes later had another 2 mls in the band. I was so shocked - and believe me - he was very very pleased with himself.

So 4mls in my band. And I found out I have an Allergan band. So here we go. The next stage of a long and difficult journey - I really hope I have some restriction this time.

My head was in a really strange place because I really wasn't expecting to have anything done and to come away with a fill put me in a state of shock.

However, it did put me back on the straight and narrow and this along with finding this forum gave me the motivation to start again. So a fresh start on March 11th just over nine months after my operation.
 
Gosh Weeble - you have really been through the mill!

I hope the fill will give you the restriction you need, its good to see you with your focus back.

We are logging on each day to the banders thread with our meals and any excercise - so feel free to join us and be motivated.


Take care hun x





Love Kat x
 
I have been giving some thought to why I sabotage myself every time I get close to winning the weight battle.

I am no closer to understanding that but I have worked out a few things that I need to master if I am to be successful.

1. When I fall off the wagon - I need to forgive myself and get straight back on. What happens now is probably the same as many people - I think oh I've blown it - I may as well go for broke.

2. I need to not focus on the numbers so much - it's lifetime journey - not a race to a finishing point. I am very guilty of being ruled by the numbers - a good weight loss and I am happy and motivated and a low weight loss or stay the same leaves me wondering why I bother.

3. This is it forever - I can never go back to old behaviour if I want to maintain a healthier lifestyle. I know that somewhere in my head I think that if I can just do this for a while to get the weight off I can go back to binging on chocolate and crisps and I need to change that mentality.

Now I have a band I need to try and work with it. Everyone at the hospital said I should have a bypass because of my eating habits and whilst I totally understood what they meant, I really didn't want to go through such major surgery. I am sure you can understand that for the last nine months I have begun to think I have made a mistake.

However, my reasons for choosing the band were valid and I still stand by them. It's just I haven't been working the band - and now I have to try to do so.
 
Aww weeble, I am sorry you are having such a hard time, I hope now you have had a fill you can get back on track again.

Good luck xx
 
What a hard time you've had Weeble. The good thing is that you've had wonderful success before and will do again, I'm sure. I'm so glad your fill was sucessful in the end:)
I'm a serial saboteur myself and am the same age as you. I used to be able to lose weight quickly ( but never keep going for very long and am an expert at putting it all bacvk on again) but now that I'm menopausal ( I'm 50 too) I've noticed it's really hard to shift an ounce. I thought it was an old wives tale that women of my age find it harder to loose weight but it so ain't.
Good luck on your journey- keep your spirits up.
 
I wasn't really a fat child but I probably started to get plump around 7/8. The first time I remember being conscious about weight was when I was 8. I was visiting a friend and we were having a bath together and I remember her saying to me - why do you have all those rolls round your tummy. As I say I wasn't fat but my skin was never taut and my tummy had tiny rolls of fat on it whereas hers was flat and tight.

My next memory was of my mother, who always battled her weight, taking me to a slimming club at age 13. I can't remember what I weighed but I was quite short and was probably a half a stone overweight. She wanted company at the slimming club and I was desperate to make her happy. The club was awful - they called everyone who put on weight 'piggies' and I seem to remember a pig mask for the worst offender. It was the start of my dieting and losing and bingeing and gaining.

Looking back at photos (the few there are), I can see that I had a bit of puppy fat but at the time I felt huge. At 16, I was 4 ft 6in and eight and a half stone. People always called me fat at school and my 'best' friend used to say things like - I can't imagine you being thin, you have such broad shoulders.

At 18, I was about 12 stone and had soared to 5 ft 3 in :))) but I felt about 20 stone. It was difficult to finder larger clothes in those days - and I was in a size 18 at a time most shops went to a size 14 - and the sizes were definitely smaller. By the time I was 21 I was 21 stone and for the first time I probably was as big as I felt. I sometimes wonder if I ate until I looked as big as I felt.

I was always a fussy eater and had very limited range of food I would eat. My mother had been mentally ill all my life and as a result we lived a very odd life. My father was a teacher and he also tutored in the evening so until he retired when I was thirteen we had no meals prepared for us. I used to wait until he came home at 11pm and ask for toast. My mother was also a teacher and she ran the 'tuck' shop at school and would keep all the supplies in our front room. My brothers and I used to raid the stock - but whereas they would take one or two things - I would keep going back, eating bar after bar of chocolate and packet after packet of crisps. The other difference was that my brothers were physically active - swimming, playing football and water polo - whereas I was the one who stayed at home to look after my mother and so began a life where exercise was an effort and lying on the sofa was habit.

I've not had a happy life - I suppose the damage done by a mentally ill mother is hard for anyone to recover from. I don't feel I have ever been loved - and I haven't loved myself that much. Food has been my comfort, my safety and my drug. Everytime I take it away I struggle to cope with how unhappy I get.

I've been single since I was 32 and I'm 50 now and I cannot imagine that I will ever be in a relationship again and I feel very sad about that. I have focused my life on my two girls and I am proud of them - but it's time for them to go - and I'm scared about being alone for the rest of my life. I have no life at the moment and I know if I carry on yoyo-ing back up to 27 stone or higher - I won't have much time left.

So I'm struggling to diet and at the same time struggling to make some sense of how to make a life that is worth living.

Sorry to be so morbid but I am trying to use this diary to be very honest with myself in the hope that I might learn something.
 
I set myself a series of aims and I thought I would record them here.

1. To get to 24 stone - which I did yesterday. This is lowest weight I got to last August after the band was fitted.

2. To get to 50lb lost - 4lb to go.

3. To get to 23 stone 7lb - this is the weight I was when I first saw Mr Ammori in December 2009.

4. To get to 22 stone - this is the weight I was when I last went on holiday in 2001.

5. To lose 100lb.

6. To get to 20 stone - this is the weight I was when I started the job I am doing now in 2009.

6. To get to 18 stone - this is the weight when all the clothes I bought in 2008 will start to fit me again.

7. To get to 16 stone 7lb - this is the lowest weight I have ever been stable at since I had children.

8. To get to 150lb lost.

9. To get to 15 stone - this will be my lowest weight since 1989.
 
I have always been an all or nothing person - and this is something I really need to try and get over.

When I am not dieting, I probably eat 6,000-10,000 calories. I never really face up to how I eat - I just eat without really tasting and without really stopping. When I started binge eating in my teens, I would gather all the food I was going to eat and take it up to bed. This is a ritual that has never left me. There is some real comfort for me in creating a treasure trove of food and retreating to my bed to eat in in peace and quiet.

When I am eating like that - packet after packet of crisps and family size bag after family size bag of chocolate - I cannot conceive of being able to stop. I feel that I won't last a day without the comfort of all that food and I genuinely don't feel that I can do it.

When I am dieting - and in the zone - eating around 1100 calories a day - I feel like I can do it forever and I can't conceive of ever going back to the old way of eating. Yet I know, it only takes one set back - whether an emotional stress or just a too big and indulgent meal and I will start to think - oh eat at bit more - one more day wont matter - and one more day becomes one more week and one more month.

I had the band to try and stop this pattern. However, I think the only thing that might have stopped it was a bypass or a DS. I was too worried about the long term side effects of either to go ahead - yet I feel a little daft now considering the long term side effects of being 27 stone!
 
What an arduous lifes journey you've had. I hope it gets nicer for you with each day.
Don't give up hope on finding a new partner. I am 57 and I met my current and hopefully final partner two years ago. Remember the old saying that there is somebody for everybody.
Take care and good luck with your new fill.
I will be reading all your posts.
Lynne x
 
An update on my goals.

I set myself a series of aims and I thought I would record them here.

1. To get to 24 stone - which I did yesterday. This is lowest weight I got to last August after the band was fitted. DONE

2. To get to 50lb lost - 4lb to go. DONE

3. To get to 23 stone 7lb - this is the weight I was when I first saw Mr Ammori in December 2009. DONE :)

4. To get to 22 stone - this is the weight I was when I last went on holiday in 2001.

5. To lose 100lb.

6. To get to 20 stone - this is the weight I was when I started the job I am doing now in 2009.

6. To get to 18 stone - this is the weight when all the clothes I bought in 2008 will start to fit me again.

7. To get to 16 stone 7lb - this is the lowest weight I have ever been stable at since I had children.

8. To get to 150lb lost.

9. To get to 15 stone - this will be my lowest weight since 1989.
 
Fantastic to see those goals being ticked off! I have a little list similar in my journal (paper not on here x) and it's a fab feeling to see you are actually doing this!!
Your fresh start has been sensational so far and I hope that the problems with reflux you have been having can be resolved very soon xxx Well done x
 
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