Pre-op diet

So we're two days into my pre-op diet and I'm not going to lie... it's harder than I figured it would be. I think mostly because (TMI forthcoming) I just got my period and all I want to do is eat fast food and chocolate. Instead I've been trying to kill the cravings by eating veges and frozen raspberries. The frozen raspberries are good to suck on and get a bit of a sweet fix, they're not exactly chocolate but it's working.

Basically my days have been going like this so far:

get up
mix strawberry protein shake to take into school
sip during class
go hang out in my office and try to do some work
mix protein soup up
go home and make veges
nap
have a protein shake and veges
sleep

I'm actually shocked at how tired I am. My legs feel heavy and sore, and I've noticed I'm already starting to get grouchy at people. I'm only two days in and everyones telling me it's going to get easier - and I'm hoping they're right. I've got work tomorrow but I might call in sick, I don't know if I can deal with eight hours of customers yelling at me and standing on my feet. To be honest... tonight I may have snapped and eaten some of the soup meat in some vege soup my mom made. I'm a bit annoyed at myself but.. it's only two days and I just have to get over it.

Yeah, it's going to be fine.

Baked Ricotta

So in the spirit of trying to be as ready for surgery as possible (I start pre-op in exactly a week) I've been testing out recipes for things that have lots of protein that I can eat after surgery. Yesterday I went on a mission out to the mediteranian store in town to go and pick up some ricotta and made baked ricotta. Now I don't usually like cheese so I was pretty skeptical that it was going to be any good - but then that's what I thought about protein shakes too and it turns out that they are awesome. So with that in mind I made two types of baked ricotta, a sweet version and a savoury version. And it turns out it was sooo good. Like seriously delicious. It didn't taste cheesy, it just tasted like whatevr I put in it. I'm actually like a bit excited about getting to eat it for the mushy food stage now, who would have thought I'd ever be excited about mushy food?

Savoury Baked Ricotta:
300 grams of ricotta
1 teaspoon of garlic
1 egg
A dash of milk
Rosemary
Mixed Herbs
Thyme

Sweet Baked Ricotta:
300grams of ricotta
1 egg
A dash of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/4 cup sugar (use equal for a healthier version)

Pre-heat your oven to 180c. Mix all the ingredients together in a blender (I did it by hand but it takes much longer to get it smooth this way so if you want to do it fast use a blender) until smooth. Pour into pre-greased muffin tins (I used big muffin tins to make three of each) and bake for about 40 minutes or until golden brown. Take out and let cool slightly before you eat. Enjoy!

The good thing about making it in muffin tins instead of a ceramic dish like my recipe suggested is it makes it into simple, easy 100gram portions for you so you don't have to think about serving sizes so much.

Busy busy busy

So the count down has 'begun'. Of course in reality I've been counting down since I first got my surgery date, I started counting down from 15 weeks. But it's getting really close now, exactly four weeks away, and less than thirty days. I'm starting to get scared for real now - I keep thinking in my head about all the things that could go wrong, just your usual panic I suppose. I've never been to the hospital before (hate them!) so it's going to be a bit scary to have such major surgery my first time. But then again I have a big group of friends who're all going to be visiting me the whole time, so maybe it wont be so bad.

Luckily (or unluckily) for me though, I don't really have that much time to worry about being scared because I just have way too much stuff to do before then. I wrote a to-do list and I have about twenty-seven things that need to be done before I start my pre-op diet in fourteen days. I want to get everything out of the way before then so I can just focus on not cheating etc and not have to try and concentrate on schoolwork, but man do I have a lot to do. I've got about four assignments due in the next two weeks, including a thirty minute presentation for one class, as well as doing weekly reports on the on-going nucleur review confrenece.

Whoever said that being a student was supposed to be fun?

What is VSG for me?

Tonight I'm feeling really down. I don't know why, I honestly think it's a lot of little things that I'm just building up in my head. I know that surgery isn't going to change everything in my life and make things all magically better, but I feel like if I can get this one thing under control then I'll feel better about things. I don't think any of my friends or family really understands how I feel about this. I know they understand I want it, I know they understand that I don't want to wait to have it - but no one really gets why. And when they doubt I can do it, it makes me doubt that I can do it.

All my life I've been fat. Growing up I was ugly as well as fat (I can say this because well, hell it's true), but it was always the fat that bothered me. Now that I'm a little older, I'm a lot less ugly, but I'm still fat. I'm not sure if thin, 'normal' sized people realise what it's like to walk around in a body that doesn't fit. That's what it feels like to me. I'm stuck inside a body that just doesn't fit. When I look in the mirror I see the girl that I think I should be, the girl that's trapped inside all of this excess skin and fat and fabric. But then I look again, and I see what I really look like.

Everywhere I go I'm self concious about my body. I walk as fast as I can, hoping people wont look at me, hoping people aren't laughing at me. Whenever I hear someone laugh, I assume it's at me. It's incredibly narcissistic to think this way, I'm sure they have their own problems and probably haven't even noticed me. But the niggling voice in my head says that they have, and that they're laughing at me.

I just want to get to a point where I feel like I can walk across university without having that horrible feeling that people are staring. I want to know that boys don't instantly discount me because of my weight. In all honesty I'd rather that boys dont want to date me because of my personality than my looks. But it always seems to be my weight. I'm really, really tired of being the funny, fat girl. Being the girl with the good personality. Feeling like every day I have to do my hair and make up and agonise over what to wear - only to leave the house still feeling like crap and feeling self concious every day.

The funny thing is, I never used to feel like this. Until the day I picked up a wls pamphlet at the doctor's (I was there with a chest infection), I thought I was perfectly happy with the way I looked. It turned out I wasn't actually perfectly happy with the way I looked, I'd just buried these feelings because I thought there was nothing I could do about it. I'd just accepted that despite the fact that I kill myself at the gym 5 times a week and watch what I eat, I'd always be the fat girl. And with vsg I feel like someone's finally handed me a life raft.

That's what this feels like, a life saver. And on the one hand it's about finally being able to be seen for who I am and not what I weigh. But on the other hand it's about finally being able to feel invisible. Blessedly invisible and 'normal,' just another face in the crowd. For me I think that's one of the biggest things.

My mum asked me if I didn't want to wait till the end of the year instead of my current surgery date (June 10th!), and I just started crying. She told me she understood how it felt to be overweight and I just shook my head at her. I couldn't express what it was like to hear her say that. She struggled with losing ten kilos (20 poundsish), which she did, easily. I know that I need to lose at least 50 kilos (100 poundsish). More than that - she's had a chance to live her life. I've spent my life on the periphery, scared to put myself out there in situations where I'm the center of attention in case someone made fun of me for being fat. My fat makes me vulnerable, and I hate it so much.

So what is vsg for me? Vsg is an answer, a tool that's finally going to help me do the one thing I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember. And I'm terrified that it wont work, or that I'll screw it up and not lose the weight. I want to be one of the people on the boards helping other people lose weight like Tiffy, but I'm really terrified I'm going to end up on the failed weight loss boards, even more desperate than I am now.