This time last week I was sitting in the waiting area to go into my surgery talking to two nurses about mundane things while frantically praying in my head for everything to go well.  That prayer was definitely answered and then some.

As of yesterday I have lost 12.3kg.  I can’t even begin to comprehend that amount.  Sure, when I put my jeans on last night there was room to move but its not like they’re new jeans.  Sometimes I find that I can move more freely, but then when I notice I always do a double check and I can’t remember what it was like before.

Three weeks into this adventure and I’ve already lost ten percent of my body weight.  I can’t remember a single diet where I’ve had that sort of success; especially in such a very short span of time.  It hit me yesterday that if I keep losing at this rate I will have lost twenty kilograms before returning to work.  That’s massive! (No pun intended!)  They’ll all think I’ve been to fat camp or something.

In another 4.3kg I’ll be back to the weight I was when I was married in 2005.  That’s five years of weight gain lost in under two months.  It’s unbelievable.

In my head I know that the weight loss is going to have to start to slow down soon.  My body will get over the shock of the surgery and start to adjust to the limited calories.  The selfish part of me hopes that this doesn’t happen for another twenty kilograms though.  If I keep up the exercise and watch what I put into my mouth I should be able to squeeze every drop from this weight loss and maximize the amount of loss over time.

I’ve had a few conversations with people that have struggled with weight loss throughout there lives about taking the surgery route.  They all tend to say the same thing, “I wouldn’t have the discipline to do it”.  I don’t know why they think they can’t do it.  I am the last person on the planet to talking about self-discipline.  I have none.  I’m a natural born quitter.  At the first sign of my desires being denied I throw the towel in.  The only difference this time is that my fear of dying on the operating table strongly outweighed my desire to break the plan.  That doesn’t mean that I didn’t struggle or break it.  I out of fourteen days I only managed to eat to the Optifast plan for ten of those.  Admittedly I didn’t go nuts when I broke the plan, but I still broke it.

There were many nights when I was in tears because I just wanted to eat what I wanted.  It was like going through withdrawals.  I was in the same mental state as someone trying to give up heroin.  They only difference was that everyday I still had to consume the thing that I was addicted to.  It was hard going.  It’s still hard going.

I have another six days on nothing but fluids and not a moment goes by that I don’t think about breaking away from the fluids and eating something normal.  Last night I stole half a teaspoon of melted cheese of the Turkish Pides that people were eating at my table.  I chewed and sucked the life out of it, but I still did it knowing that it could have a major impact on my healing process and send me back to hospital.  The only thing that keeps me on fluids at the moment is the thought of having to go back to hospital for an extended stay.  It’s not self-discipline keeping me in line; it’s fear.

It’s especially difficult because I feel fine.  Apart from the four incisions on my stomach you wouldn’t know I’d been in for surgery.  I feel like I could sit down and eat a full meal.  If I had a broken leg I could at least look down at the cast and know that I couldn’t walk a marathon.  But with this I need to be constantly reminding myself that my stomach is swollen and trying to heal and I need to be gentle on it.

People keep telling me that they’re proud of my achievements, which is lovely, but I don’t feel like there’s anything to be proud of.  I’ve had major surgery to deal with something that other people can do on their own.  I’m not eating like this because I want to; I’m eating like this because if I don’t I’ll end up back in hospital.  If I had my way I’d be hunting down a Sausage and Egg McMuffin and Hash Brown for breakfast.  I’d be currently planning the biggest meal for Christmas – a veritable eating smorgasbord.

The only reason I had the surgery is because the desire to have a family of my own outweighed my desire to keep that 80% of my stomach.  I’m also scared of dying a painful death due to diabetes or some other obesity related illness.  The chances of getting cancer are amplified if you’re overweight.  It’s all purely selfish.  If you constantly attend specialists that can’t see past your weight to help you then of course you’re going to do whatever you can to get rid of that weight.  For me I couldn’t get motivated to do it unless I had something like surgery hanging over my head.  I found my carrot and stick and it just happened to come in the form of an operation.  I’m not proud of that, but that’s what it took and ultimately the end game is what I have to be about.