This week has been incredibly hard for so many reasons. It started out well enough but come the weekend things started going downhill. On Saturday morning we noticed our 4 and a half year old Golden Retriever Ollie, (pictured below) was limping slightly.  He has a habit of doing zoomies around the place, jumping on and off furniture and so we put it down to a sprain of some type and tried to curtail his crazy moments.

Sunday evening he was still limping and when my partner took him for his usual evening walk he had to stop a few times and lay down.  Ollie that is, not my partner. Although the way his back has been lately I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been him who needed that rest while walking.  Upon his return I noticed that his breathing sounded like someone who had just run a marathon…..all uphill. After a period of rest it settled down. That night he couldn’t jump onto our bed at bedtime as he usually does, so I suggested to my partner that we get him to the vet first thing on Tuesday morning. (the next day, Monday, was a public holiday here). 

Come Monday morning at 6am he went out into the backyard as usual for toileting and then just collapsed on the ground. We rushed him to the nearest 24 hour emergency vet who thankfully was only 5 minutes down the road.  By this stage he couldn’t walk, he could only sit up and again his breathing was laboured. They admitted Ollie for tests and to look for signs of a tick. Being a Golden Retriever means he had a thick coat and even though my partner had searched his body on Sunday evening he couldn’t find anything. It was so hard walking away and leaving Ollie but we knew he was in good hands. They clipped him and shaved him in order to get a clearer look at his skin and discovered a small area that looked like a tick had been there and since dropped off.  By this stage Ollie was not able to drink water properly, he kept gagging on it as his gag reflex was not good. So they gave him a dose of tick anti serum, a tick bath and when it was discovered he had an area in his lungs that could have been an infection due to him inhaling some water previously they also put him on IV antibiotics. We both visited him on the Tuesday and it was heartbreaking to see how weak he was. Not able to stand at all unless there was a towel under his middle held up by a staff member, not able to walk and even not being able to sit up. He’d just lay there on the floor, trying to stand but not being able to. Like I said, heartbreaking.  

The house just wasn’t the same without Ollie there and when my partner was at work it was very quiet and lonely. (Our cats spend the day sleeping so not really company as such like Ollie normally was.). Wednesday morning was when things started coming good. He was able to walk for short distances and was tolerating water and a small amount of food. As the day progressed his walking improved enormously, and so we were told that he could be discharged.  At 6pm we collected him from the vet hospital and he was even more improved than what he had been when I saw him earlier that day. He came home to rest on his soft bed and snuggle up to his new teddy bear that I bought him especially for the occasion. He looks so strange without all his golden fur and his gorgeous plumed tail but I know that will all grow back again. I wonder if they make wigs for dogs? (joking!). His poor tail just looks like a skinny bit of rope.

For the next few weeks the focus is on letting him rest as much as possible, no walks and keeping a close eye on him. The bill was a hefty one and luckily my partner had some savings in his ‘retirement’ account. However we were blessed by an angel as it happens. Years ago, around 2004 or so, I belonged to a forum for Golden Retriever lovers. It was not a large group so we all became close friends………well as close as you can get via the internet.  I was fortunate enough to meet some of those people in August/September 2007 when I traveled to the USA to attend an event called Goldstock. Sort of like Woodstock but for Golden Retriever owners/lovers with money raised going to rescue groups. One particular woman didn’t attend and unfortunately I didn’t get to meet up with her as she lives in Florida and I was only visiting California and New York.  Nora is a ex US Navy surgeon and we are good friends on Facebook and many of the old Golden Retriever forum group are also on Facebook so we keep in touch that way.  Last night Nora messaged me as she had been following my Facebook posts and updates about Ollie since he was admitted to the vet hospital. She asked for my PayPal details because she said she wanted to help out a bit with the vet bill. She wouldn’t be dissuaded against that, so I gave her the details thinking that she might be sending fifty dollars or something like that.

Logged into PayPal this morning to discover that she had paid the whole amount of Ollie’s bill into my account. Every single cent!! She would not accept a refund of her money saying that she could afford it and wanted that money to go back into Paul’s retirement fund again. When I asked what I could possibly do to thank her she asked me if I could buy some double coated chocolate Tim Tams because she can’t get them where she is and has heard so much about them.  So I will be going to Woolworths and buying up big on different types of Tim Tams that we have here plus a few more Aussie treats and a souvenir or 2.  I just couldn’t believe her kindness. We were also blessed by the number of people who were praying for Ollie and wishing him well and sending messages and leaving lovely comments every time I posted an update about him. You hear a lot about the bad things that happen on social media but there’s so much good to be found as well.

So what’s all of this got to do with my weight loss you wonder perhaps? Well I’ll tell you right now, that the ‘old’ me, when super stressed and anxious like I was this week, would have looked for comfort in junk food. Chocolate, potato chips, ice cream, bread……….you name it I would have scoffed it down. But I didn’t. I had to go to the supermarket yesterday to get some chicken and brown rice to cook up for Ollie to have to eat and walked past a display cabinet filled with creamy cakes, cheesecakes and other delicious looking calorie laden morsels. I saw hot cross buns all piled up on a table and if there’s something I like as much as chocolate it’s a hot cross bun with loads of butter on  it. It would have been so easy to buy them and scoff a couple in one sitting as soon as I got back home. Definite comfort food.   In fact yesterday I probably did more walking than I have for a long time. I had a trip to the chemist, a trip to the supermarket before I visited Ollie in the morning, a trip to the op shop to buy Ollie some new teddy bears, my visit to Ollie and then after that another trip to the supermarket to buy that food for Ollie to eat. When I did finally arrive home I gulped down my first shake (by this stage it was 12.30am and while I’d had 2 bottles of water while out, I’d not had my morning shake yet), and then got stuck into vacuuming and mopping of the house. There was a lot of walking involved in all of that. This is something that I simply could not have done pre diet. For a start I wouldn’t have been able to visit Ollie on Tuesday and Wednesday while my partner was at work, and I also wouldn’t have been able to do the chemist run, the supermarket trips times two and the visit to the op shop for that bear. Poor Paul would have been stuck with it all on top of a full day of work.  Mind you, my legs and feet are aching today as a result of the extra walking I did yesterday.

The scales reflected all of that added activity as this morning I lost another 1.8 kilos since last week. I’m only 4 kilos off my 100kg milestone.  So close!!!

Sometime tomorrow afternoon/evening my son arrives home after discharging from the Australian Army.  After just over 4 and a half years he will be back at home with us. The drive from Adelaide is a long one so he’ll spend the night with his dad in Sydney and then leave early tomorrow morning for Brisbane. He’s also going to be on a weight loss program so I’ll have him to motivate me and hopefully I might help with motivating him. I won’t be going to boot camp with him though. He can have that on his own.

So I am so glad that this week is over, that Ollie recovered from his tick poisoning and I’m so grateful to ‘know’ some truly beautiful people through social media, as well as dear friends who we have met in person. And I’m grateful that now, because I have lost so much weight, I can do things that I couldn’t do 14 and a half months ago.

Thank you as always for reading.

Another good week for me as far as sticking to my diet goes. I have a FB friend who is doing Weight Watchers and she posts pictures of all her WW’s meals that she has and I do have to admit to wishing that I could enjoy some of what she is allowed to have on the points system they have. Hamburgers, pasta, potato, fruit etc, as long as she sticks to her points she can have it. While I haven’t been on Weight Watchers since they brought in the points system I have been on diets through Weight Watchers and attended the weekly meetings. I first did Weight Watchers as a 17 year old back in the days when you had to include liver in your diet each week. I think I tried cooking liver twice before conceding defeat and vowing to never let another morsel of liver through my lips ever again. I did lose weight though. But like all my diets I got bored with it and resumed my bad eating habits and naturally the weight piled back on again.

Since then I’ve probably joined Weight Watchers about 3 more times over the decades, my last attempt with them was back in 2009/2010. I’d pay what was a fairly hefty weekly fee and sit through rather boring meetings. I’d buy their Weight Watchers snacks and end up eating far more than what was recommended.  In the end I gave up on Weight Watchers, it was just me forking out a lot of money for meetings that I ended up skipping 90 percent of the time, plus forking out for their snacks and trying, unsuccessfully, to stick to their diet plan. 

While I can see that being able to eat fairly normally is great, and certainly if you are strong enough to only eat within the points you are allocated, the program definitely works, but the weekly cost nowadays seems quite a lot and there are some of us, and I put myself as a example, who find it difficult to curb our appetites and only eat the allowed quantities without going overboard.  That’s why I have chosen my Optifast products and the intensive level. Okay, I don’t have the option of bread, fruit, potatoes/sweet potatoes etc, but for me that makes it easier. I know I have to have my 3 Optifast products,  my minimum 2 litres of water a day, 5mls of oil and my allowed veges and any extras that are allowed on Optifast and I’m able to manage with those restrictions. I know I can’t remain on the 3 products a day program indefinitely though and that’s where my dietician appointments are helping me as she gives me ‘homework’ to do based on creating a healthy eating plan and planning meals that are relatively low in calories.  I only see her every 3 months now as I am managing well on my own as far as Optifast goes, and she’s available via email as well. Luckily I have been able to access another 5 free visits for this year by using a care plan organised through my local doctor.

An interesting topic was brought up on the Facebook support group this week. A member whose mother was also on Optifast said that her mother, who was in her mid 50’s, was concerned about her weight loss making wrinkles more visible in her face. I have to admit that after losing as much weight as I have that when I look into a hand held mirror I can see more lines than what were there before.  But when I look back to my fat moon face pre Optifast and then look at my most recent photo, I know what I prefer. The fat cells may have plumped out my face and hidden lines/wrinkles, but I would rather have a few more lines than go back to how I was. This photo shows the pre Optifast face and my last progress photo. Everyone who commented on that persons post agreed that they’d rather have the lines/wrinkles than have all those fat cells back again and the double/triple chins associated with being so overweight.

Unfortunately my upper arms are, to me, horrible looking, due to the amount of skin I have hanging on them. More than batwings, they are like huge sails of excess skin. And I know that by the time I get to 80kg there’s going to be more.  After all I have been obese for the majority of my life and at my age the skin has lost a lot of its elasticity.  Still, I can live without wearing sleeveless dresses.  My stomach also has that overhang, the apron of skin, and again ,that’s something that won’t go away.  At present I don’t suffer any skin irritation, even in summer, only some areas of discoloured skin where it has rubbed over the years. Maybe if there are any issues further down the track I might be able to access free surgery and have that excess skin removed, or maybe I’ll just stick to wearing supportive, gut holding underpants. Let’s face it, me in undies such as a g string or bikini undies would not be a pretty sight. And after all, I’m not exactly aspiring to become a Victoria’s Secret model. I can just imagine me sashaying down the catwalk, my batwing arms swinging, my abdominal apron of skin hanging down over a pair of lacy undies.  The only stampede I’d cause would be for the exit doors. As for inflaming a mans desires like a picture of Miranda Kerr in skimpy Victoria’s Secret lingerie, well, there’d be groans and sighs alright, but not of desire, rather they’d be groans of “Ahhh, my eyes, my eyes!!!”  I can live with some restrictions as to what clothes I feel comfortable wearing, the main thing is that I will be able to wear clothing in sizes that I can buy without resorting to specialty stores online, and paying a fortune for those clothes. 

My weight loss this week was 900 grams. Maybe if I’d dusted off the scales a bit more, cleaned out my ears, or dug the belly button fluff out of my navel I might have made it an even 1kg, but I was happy with that loss. I’m only 5.8 kilos off reaching my next milestone, celebrating 100 kilograms lost. My fingers are crossed that will be reached sometime in March.

On my Monitor Your Weight app (pictured below), I’m excited at how much progress I’ve now made and how much closer I am to my 80kg goal weight.  My BMI has come down 40 points (or whatever they call the units of measurement they use) from when I first started.  My average weekly loss of 1.51 kilograms is pretty good to.

That’s about it for me for this week. Time for my ‘lunch’. I do enjoy my shakes, although listening to my partner crunching away on his potato chips and seeing him enjoying ham and cheese on a freshly baked bread roll is making me salivate. Time to drown out those crunches with my blender I think.

As always, thank you for reading.

61 weeks or 427 days or 614880 minutes or 36892800 seconds. That’s how long it’s been since I started on Optifast and had my first shake.  ( I let Google do the maths, I’m not that smart.)

A lot of people seem to struggle with being able to stick to a diet, and then beat themselves up about it, feeling guilty and often just thinking ‘to heck with it all’ and wanting to give up.  I’ve found some tips that help with motivation and thought I would share them here.  I found them on this page: Tips to Stick to Your Diet

• Don’t even try to change your eating until you have learned important skills, such as how to motivate yourself every day, how to get yourself to use good eating habits, how to withstand hunger and craving, and how to get yourself back on track immediately when you make a mistake.
• Motivate yourself every day by reading a long list of reasons that you want to lose weight every morning. Pull out this list at vulnerable times of the day, as well.
• Eat everything sitting down, slowly, and enjoy every bite–whether or not you feel like it. It’s much more difficult to allow yourself to eat off plan, eat mindlessly, or binge if you are doing this.
• Stay accountable. Report (whether or not you have used good eating habits and followed your eating plan) to another person–daily–through email, texting, or voice messages. Stay accountable to yourself by weighing yourself regularly, weekly is a good idea. Daily weighing can mess with your head as weight can fluctuate from one day to the next.
• Change your mindset about food and eating. Recognize that you can eat whatever you want whenever you want OR you can be thinner. You can’t have it both ways.
• Teach yourself the difference between hunger (that empty feeling in your stomach when you haven’t eaten for a few hours) and craving or the desire to eat (which you will feel in your mouth or throat). Ultimately, you want to just label what you’re feeling (hunger, craving, tiredness, boredom, or a negative emotion) and tolerate it without eating. In the short-run, have a list of powerful distractions to turn your attention away from food.
• Tell yourself that every time matters. It’s not necessarily the calories, it’s the HABIT. Every time you eat something you weren’t supposed to, you strengthen your giving in muscle, which makes it more likely that the next time you’ll give in and the time after that and the time after that. Every time you stick to your plan when you’re tempted to eat something else, you strengthen your resistance muscle, which makes it more likely that the next time you’ll resist, and the time after that and the time after that.

I thought that a lot of those tips made sense and I do use quite a few of them myself.  Being accountable is one that has helped me to stay on track as long as I have. Not only am I accountable to myself, but I have people who read my blog, people who read my posts on the Facebook support group I belong to, friends on my Facebook page who send me messages asking how I am going, my partner who is always my main supporter, my GP who I see every 11 weeks and my dietician. I am convinced that having all of those people that I ‘report’ to, helps me stay motivated and continue on the path to becoming healthier and happier. I think back to the ‘old me’ who was at home all the time, who struggled getting in and out of bed, who struggled getting out of a chair that was too low, who struggled just doing basic things like showering etc. Now those days are behind me, I actually look forward to going out and doing errands and at the end of the month I’m going to see Jess, my hairdresser who has been coming to the house to do my hair, at her salon. I’m just getting a wash and cut but  it will be my first visit to a hairdressing salon in years. I now don’t worry about the chairs with arms on them because now I actually fit in them.

I lost 1.1 kilograms this week, bringing my total now to 93.3kg. It would be nice to reach the magic 100kg mark for my birthday on March 8th but even if I don’t I’ll continue to be happy with my progress so far.  I would just LOVE to get to my goal of 80kg sometime this year, that would really be something to aim for and celebrate. More motivation for me. In the meantime I’m rejoicing in my loss so far and seeing how far my BMI has come down since starting.

As always, thanks for reading my ramblings!

60 weeks now on Optifast. Almost 14 months of shakes, bars and lots and lots and lots of water. No wonder I’m almost wearing a path to the dunny. Enough lettuce has been consumed (along with other salad veges) to sink a ship.  But the rewards are certainly there for me.

Last week I saw my doctor for my check up and blood test and she was just over the moon when I told her I’d lost 91.5 kilograms. (which is what I’d lost at that stage.) She said things like ‘remarkable’ and ‘dedicated’, all with a huge smile on her face. When she checked my blood pressure she was able to get the cuff around my upper arm. Still a larger size cuff mind you, but pre Optifast even that size wouldn’t go anywhere near around the tree trunk thickness of my upper arm. The only way I could have my blood pressure done was by putting the cuff around the middle part of my lower arm.  She told me that I was a wonderful example of what determination could achieve and how proud she was. I was tickled pink to be told that.  She also told me that considering how overweight I had been I was actually in pretty good health, in that I had no cardiac conditions (luckily had not had any heart attacks due to my weight) and that my joints were pretty good (no hip or knee issues like some), and none of the other medical ailments that often befall those who are morbidly obese and not in the first flush of youth. So I thank my lucky stars and the good Lord above, for sparing me things like diabetes or anything else that I just mentioned. I’m sure though, had I continued to eat the way I had, that my luck would have eventually run out.

She went on to tell me about a patient she had who was in her early 60s and weighed about 215 kilograms. She was chair-bound. She could barely walk at all, even with a walker, couldn’t get up in time to make it to the toilet, so her poor husband (who was not a well man either with his own health issues), had the job of cleaning her, bathing her, washing her clothes and tending to her needs. She had pressure sores from just sitting in one place all the time and numerous other ailments. She’d been advised to lose weight, but every diet she tried (Optifast being one of them) she failed to adhere to, so her weight has continued to soar over the years. Her husband enables her by buying the foods she craves, and of course salads and lean meats don’t feature on her list.  I was shocked, because I know full well, that had I continued on my merry way of eating junk food, tea/coffee with 3 heaped teaspoons of sugar, bread galore and ice cream etc, that I would have been in that same place. I was already heading that way because of how difficult I found it to shower without puffing and panting, and barely able to walk around the house without support.  And of course I’d get cranky if my supply of junk food was running low. Our shopping list would always include chocolate, potato chips and ice cream.  When my son was living at home before enlisting in the Army, I’d ask him to buy my junk food if we were running low and he was going shopping for his own food items.

So whenever I hear of cases like that lady I give thanks to the fact I had that health scare which gave me that push to actually pull my finger out and do something about my weight.  I wish I could speak to that lady the doctor was talking about, to let her know that her life could be changed for the better if she could only put her mind to it.  I guess though, it has to come from within, that sometimes, no matter how knowledgeable you are about the risks of being so overweight, you just push it all to the back of your mind and carry on eating and drinking the wrong foods because maybe you think ‘It won’t happen to me.’  I know I did.

So last weekend we were all set to have my son home on leave from the Army and he actually made it as far as his friends house in Sydney, a trip of some 15 odd hours from Adelaide. No sooner had he put his head on the pillow that same night then his phone rang and he was told that due to the bushfires their leave was cancelled and he’d have to return to Adelaide by midday the following day. (this was at 11.30pm at night.) So he had to look up flights back and ask his friend to drop him at the airport at 6am the next day.  Once he was back on base he phoned to let us know of how things had panned out, and that he didn’t know when he’d be back home, his car and belongings were still at his friends house.  Thankfully, because he’s in the process of being discharged, he was told that he could return to leave. So another flight back to Sydney, night at his mates, and then the drive to Brisbane.  He spent 3 days here which was great as we hadn’t seen him in about 6 months.  He said that I was looking really good and he could see a big difference in my size and said I was doing well.  He rarely says things like that, so I was really touched and pleased.

Unfortunately now he’s on his way back to Adelaide again as he has appointments to attend as part of the discharge process, plus has to be there when the moving company pack up his bigger items ready to transport here. Fingers crossed he should be home for good by the end of January.  We had a good old chat while he was here, about dieting and how hard it was to not snack on the wrong foods. He is someone who has to watch what he eats as like me, he tends to snack on junk, and once he’s back home he’ll be on a healthy eating regime and going back to attending boot camp a few times a week. (which he did pre Army). 

But enough rambling…………. another good week for me as far as sticking to the program goes. Even with my partner still enjoying what was left of the goodies we had for Christmas.  Thankfully they have now all been consumed and all that’s left is the usual stuff which is still tempting though.  My weigh in today showed a loss of 700 grams, okay, not a huge amount, but still a loss after all.  13.6 kilograms lost in 12 weeks is pretty good for me after so long on this diet. And touch wood, no plateaus yet which is good.  Though I daresay they will happen. 

I’m so loving that my clothes, even the ones given to me that are smaller sizes, are now starting to feel loose. My stomach and legs seem to be losing the most. Unfortunately I’m going to be stuck with flabby upper arms, but that’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things and I’m trying to not dwell on that too much.  I am so looking forward to being under a size 20, which to some, might seem nothing to be looking forward to, but in my case it’s going to be something to celebrate.

Thanks again for reading!

I can’t believe Christmas is less than a month away.  We still haven’t bought any Christmas gifts yet, the budget has been tight the past few weeks. I am looking forward to Christmas though, having my daughter and son in law here for lunch on the day, and I’m looking forward to my ‘day off’ Optifast.  Toast with butter and jam for breakfast, my much anticipated coconut cookies with a cuppa at morning tea and a roast for lunch with potatoes, pumpkin, corn and gravy.  My mouth is salivating with the thought of it.  Till then though, it’s strictly sticking to the plan, no cheats of any kind. Now that I’m seeing the results of my weight loss in the fact that I can do so much more it’s the extra incentive to keep going.

The weight loss has slowed down somewhat, some weeks I lose 2 kilos, other times between 1 and 2 kilos and a few times where I’ve only lost a few hundred grams. I guess I shouldn’t say ‘only’ because all those little losses add up to one big loss over time.

This week was a pretty good week with a loss of 1.5kg.  Bringing my total loss to 84.6kg.  70.7 kilos of that loss is so far this year which is darned good.  I would love to lose another 5.4 kilos between now and Christmas. What a great present that would be, to have reached a loss of 90 kilograms!! All I can do is try and stick to the program and I’m determined to do that.

I found some old photos yesterday, ones taken in 1988 when I was a spring chicken of 30 years young. I probably weighed around 75kg or so then. I look back on them now wistfully.  Had I realised then that 30 years later I’d be weighing over 200kg then I think I would have taken more care with my diet. Nothing I can do about it now though.

That’s it for this week. Short and sweet this time around.