{"id":27,"date":"2017-03-13T03:12:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T03:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/?page_id=27"},"modified":"2017-03-13T03:12:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T03:12:47","slug":"about-this-blog","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/about-this-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"About This Blog…"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, I’d started lots of blogs, but none of them ever went anywhere – after about one or two posts, I’d think… “Who’s going to be interested in what I think about anything, anyway!” – and I’d just sort-of… drift away from them. Then in 2014 I had some not terribly pleasant medical problems, and at 134-point-something kilos, I had to lose weight… fast! All the doctors and specialists I’d been seeing for this medical problem of mine had told me that at 134-point-something kilos, I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own – I was going to need some sort of weight-reduction surgery – a real problem, as I’m permanently on Warfarin! One so-called Obesity surgeon wanted to staple off three quarters of my stomach, which would then be removed – permanently! It’s called a “sleeve” operation, or something, and he kept telling me, in a soothing voice, that I shouldn’t feel bad<\/em> about my weight – it wasn’t<\/em> my fault! I couldn’t help it… and I<\/em><\/span> sat there looking at him and thinking to myself “Yes, but it is<\/em><\/span> my fault! I don’t eat because I’m hungry, or because I don’t feel “full” after a meal – I eat because I’m bored… and – quite frankly – I just don’t really care!”. I came home from that encounter in tears – remove two thirds of my stomach? Permanently<\/em>? As much as I wanted to lose weight, and had<\/em> to lose weight, I just couldn’t do that. I couldn’t permanently mutilate myself like that. There had to be another way! Maybe a band around my stomach – yeah, I’d look into that! Once again, I was shocked at what my investigations revealed, but it was while watching a video that I’d received from one of the top specialists in the field that I realised that – no, this wasn’t for me, either! I remembered that many, many years ago, one Obesity specialist had wanted to put me onto Optifast, a “meal replacement” method that a lot of doctors put their extremely overweight patients on to kick-start their weight loss before putting them onto a controlled diet. I ‘d always poo-pooed this idea – what was the use of replacing meals with all this (expensive!<\/em>) guff, when as soon as you went back to normal meals, you’d put all the weight straight back on again! Of course, no one told me about ketosis, or how it worked, did they, and as a callow youth (in those days – that’s how long ago it was!<\/em>) of course, I<\/em><\/span> was clever, and I<\/em><\/span> knew everything, didn’t I!<\/p>\n

Now that I’m old and grey, I decided to have another look at this Optifast stuff, and this<\/em> time thought to ask all the pertinent questions. You’re not supposed to stay on the\u00a0Optifast diet that I made up for myself – you’re not supposed to stay on any<\/em> Optifast regimen, really, unless you’re being supervised by “a qualified medical practitioner” – by which I chose\u00a0to believe that they meant\u00a0“a doctor” – so I told our family GP what I was going to do, what I was going to be eating, my goal weight, etc., etc. and she said that she’d keep an eye on me. Good o! \ud83d\ude42 So I started out on my own<\/em> very carefully thought out and calorie-counted Optifast diet, from the plethora of information\u00a0and sample meal guides that I’d found on their web page: Breakfast – two Uncle Toby’s VitaBrits, 200 grams extra bran, 1\/2 a sliced banana, and 200 ml of milk. Lunch – one Optifast bar (they come in chocolate, berry, and cappuccino!<\/em>) Dinner at night – one Optifast soup (chicken, tomato, or vegetable – made much more enjoyable with a pinch of semi-dried basil flakes, or semi-dried chili flakes – both on the Optifast “Free” list!<\/em>) with a diet jelly for dessert (you’d be amazed at some of the fantastic new diet jelly flavours they have now!<\/em>) and three prunes (for extra fibre!<\/em>)<\/p>\n

I mentioned before that I’d become so obese because I simply didn’t care – which is quite true! So, what made me care, all of a sudden? It was the specialist I was seeing for this medical problem of mine – he’d tell me I had to lose weight, I’d prevaricate and say things like “I’ll get a personal trainer”, and I’ll think about weight reduction surgery” – and he used to get quite exasperated with me. One day, while I was busy telling him what I was going to do, he lost his patience with me completely, and he yelled<\/em> at me! Yes, yelled<\/em>! Well, he raised his voice more than somewhat, anyway… He said “I don’t care<\/em> if you get a personal trainer! I don’t care<\/em><\/span>\u00a0if you decide to have weight reduction surgery! I don’t care about any<\/em> of those things! What I<\/em><\/span> care about is that you<\/em><\/span> care!” Wow!\u00a0I sat there and stared at him dumbfounded. No doctor had ever yelled at me like that before in my life, and I thought “er.. maybe I should<\/em> start caring then…” (what a novel idea! Me give a damn about how fat I was?! Wow! Cool!<\/em>) That did it for me – if he<\/em> wanted me to lose weight, then I would<\/em> lose weight – and I’d do it myself<\/em>! I’d show all those ruddy smug\u00a0doctors that I could<\/em> do it on my own, without their wretched surgery! I asked him how much he thought I ought to weigh, and after a short pause,\u00a0he said “Around 70 kilos”. Right! I was going to get myself down to 65 kilos – to give myself some wriggle-room when I went on to Maintenance.<\/p>\n

I started that Optifast diet on August 18th 2014, at 134-point-something kilos, and reached my preliminary goal weight of 65 kilos around September 2015. It took me just over a year to lose more than half my body weight, on the diet I described above. Not too bad for someone who couldn’t possibly do it on their own, without weight-loss surgery, eh?! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So I started this blog – not for those of you out there reading it, but for myself<\/em> – to document and diarise my journey towards\u00a0my goal weight, and what happened afterwards. Somewhere along the way, it sort-of grew, and became more of a daily journal of the day’s events…<\/p>\n

Welcome to My Word!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, I’d started lots of blogs, but none of them ever went anywhere – after about one or two posts, I’d think… “Who’s going to be interested in what I think about anything, anyway!” – and I’d just sort-of… drift away from them. Then in 2014 I had some not terribly pleasant medical problems, Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-27","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltapestries.com\/myword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}