Aaarrggh - I've Been Tango'd !

Another 4 lbs down this week which I am delighted with

Xenical really *IS* proving to be quite magical!

Especially after another potentially difficult weekend, staying in Roscommon with a different group of people. However, I'm very pleased to say that I think I successfully managed to side step most of the landmines in my way.
Saturday night was a pot luck supper with huge post of delicious stew and another pot of chilli bubbling away on the stove, torturing me with the heavenly smells wafting from the kitchen...after a quiet word with our hostess, she gladly cooked me a couple of quorn burgers and also a huge mountain of veggies...and as a reward to myself for not succumbing to the stew or chilli, I did allow myself the tiniest portion (an inch square, honestly!) of her home-made chocolate biscuit cake...truly sublime!
And at the BBQ on Sunday I hogged out on salads, and gherkins (!) of all things, and no, I'm not preggers(!!??!), and allowed myself two pieces of chicken from the BBQ, although peeling the perfect & crispy skins off the two chicken pieces was heart-breaking (but my dog surely appreciated and totally benefited from my sacrifice ha ha!)
It was an activity weekend for mad folks who do silly things with their dogs (i.e dryland mushing / dog-scootering / bikejoring) so I felt virtually angelic after cycling hard on both Saturday and Sunday too! I just won't talk about the bottle of vodka I consumed Sat night

But after all that virtuous eating, and healthy activity, a very strange thing happened this morning....my first side effect!! Aaaarrggh.
Now a couple of things this morning could have been the result...so I am going to repeat my breakfast another day soon, in order that I can rule in or rule out certain things.
Having successfully eaten an egg, fried no less(!), last week...I thought I'd treat myself to poached eggs for breakfast.
So perhaps that was my mistake...whilst 1 egg is maybe OK for me, perhaps 2 eggs is pushing my luck?
But, the reason I want to repeat this breakfast just to double check (because I do love poached eggs) is because I had a small issue with my blue pill this morning.
Now I do have a problem with some really simple things, mainly due to brain fog, a well known thyroid symptom. I know most, if not all, people can do something occasionally, and not be able to remember 5 mins later if they've done it or not...but for me, and many other 'thyroid brain foggers' things like that happen *all* the time, you really think you're going mad sometimes!
I took all my other pills before I even put the kettle on this morning, and put the blue pill aside on the table for when I came back to the table to eat my breakfast. at least I think I did...I know that it was most certainly my intention to do that, as that's what I always do.
But this morning, when I sat down with my breakfast, there was no blue pill waiting for me. It was gone from the packet, so I definitely popped it in my hand when I was dishing out my pills this morning.
So, either I did take the blue pill with all the other pills without thinking....or...whilst I was busy in the kitchen poaching eggs one of my dogs snaffled it from the table (don't ask, they are sneaky beggars!). Anyway I popped out another blue pill and took that before I started chowing on the poached eggs.

Which means...I don't know if the side effects, which came on about an hour or so later, were due to having 2 poached eggs or by mistakenly taking 2 blue pills...hence why I want to try poached eggs again and see what happens.

I guess its hard to believe I can eat a chicken kebab from a takeaway with no side effects at all, but seemingly 2 innocuous poached eggs on toast unleash the side effects from hell? But I suppose these pills are in control of us now, and what they say goes, whether it makes sense or not?

Ach, wasn't meant to ramble on for that much...but anyway, there's my update

Water, water everywhere...

...but not in me.

And everywhere I look I'm told that, in addition to my Xenical pills, and virtuous diet, I should be snarfing *at least* 2 litres of water each day!

But I'm really struggling to get the water in to me the last couple of days though...every morning I fill (or more accurately 'top up') a 2 litre water bottle, and fill my pint glasses from that bottle....but, apart from a swig around 10pm to wash down pills....if I haven't stopped drinking water by 8pm then I'm up and down all night to the loo....and I just can't seem to get 2 litres down by 8pm, let alone more

And any (clean & family-friendly!) tips on getting 2 litres down my throat?

Low BP...eek!

Checked my blood pressure not long after I posted earlier, as I was feeling really, really crappy and it came in at a worryingly low 113/55
Will keep an eye on that for the next few days...due to go into my GP for blood tests next Monday, and hopefully I won't have to go in beforehand!

I'm on medication for High Blood Pressure (Hypertension)...namely Omesar Plus...and it would be nice not to have to take them anymore, but I'm not holding out much hope...I think it was just one of those blips.

So Far So Good!

Well I made it through my first week on Xenical with no hint of side effects...and was pleased to see a 5lb loss on the scales this morning.

However, I will be honest, and say I'd like to have seen more come off, if only because I think my record for 'first week' weight loss was a very memorable first week at WW a few years ago, where I lost a whopping 12 lbs, and on my (fairly frequent) previous 'first weeks' on any diet plan I'm usually in the 7-10 lbs range.

But saying all that, I had a difficult weekend in that I was staying with a group of folks, where the annual tradition for this particular trip was to call the local takeaway for a monster delivery on the Friday and Saturday night. I had made the sensible decision to bring my own food to cook in the evenings (gammon steaks, salad & cous cous)...but I guess I started on the vodka too early because when the takeaway menus came out on both evenings, all thoughts of grilling my own gammon steaks went flying out of the window. But despite the vodka consumption I still had enough sense to make the best out of a bad situation, and on both nights chose, what I considered, the safest option of a chicken kebab, with extra salad...which, whilst not necessarily being the best meal on a xenical diet, I fortunately suffered no side effects...on either night, so I guess I got away with it.

So last night, hubby and I finally grilled the gammon steaks...and I was brave enough to try a couple of fried eggs (fried with the one-cal spray)...and that seemed to work out OK too...sure, you can't have gammon without an egg!

And therefore, in fairness, after a weekend of food hell...if anything I should be delighted that the scales showed a loss of any sorts at all...and I really need to straighten my head out!

I feel like I need to go and write lines in punishment for how I feel...

5 lbs off is good
5 lbs off is good
5 lbs off is good
5 lbs off is good
5 lbs off is good
5 lbs off is good....

Those scary first steps...

...into a new life of small blue pills, namely Xenical.

I started on the Xenical on Monday, 22nd February...and weighed in that morning at 305 lbs (yowser!)

I honestly didn't know where to start, or how to proceed.

Someone somewhere on a forum referred to Xenical as those little 'policeman pills' and I think that's an excellent analogy...after I took my first one I was almost too scared to eat anything...such horror stories had I read about the side effects.

But I figured that eating absolutely nothing for the foreseeable future wasn't really practical.

So I bravely prepared my first breakfast....2 x ryvita, 2 x cheese triangles & 2 x pineapple rings (an old staple brekkie from my WW days)...and then I sat back and awaited some sort of response from my body.

Around 11am, I risked an apple with my coffee...and again, adopted a wide-eyed owl stare as I prepared for Armageddon in the bathroom. Over-analysing every minor thing my body did.

I decided to throw all caution to the wind at lunchtime...and had a decadent small tin of baked beans with 2 slices of toast and half a slice of Edam...I moved my calculator and notebook into the kitchen, and so began the mathematics session that now seems to underline every meal...

That afternoon I went to the supermarket...and must have looked like a lost soul as I stared at the fresh meat counter...trying to plan meals for the rest of the week that would satisfy the 5% rule and the 15g rule...and also ensure I didn't inadvertently turn my hard-working husband into an emaciated waif (he's one of those annoying B's who can stuff himself over Christmas, and lose weight whilst doing it, grrr). I refuse to cook two separate meals for us....so I figured the 1/3 and 2/3 system would have to work for now. In other words, whatever I coked in the evening I'd have 1/3 of, and he'd have 2/3rds....so he was eating twice as much as me.

Dinner that night was quorn fillets, with garlic & herbs, cous cous and a green salad - with 0-fat dressing.

Day 2 - and I woke up hungry...which is good (I think?)...as I generally have to force myself to eat breakfast in the mornings....so I decided I'd do a little 'trial & error'....not quite sure how much semi-skimmed milk I could get away with, I tried a small bowl of Alpen (yes I know skimmed milk *would* be better, but having grown up on a dairy farm I just can't bring myself to buy white water, semi-skimmed is as much of a compromise as I can make)

Lunch was half a tin of vegetable soup (yeah, I really should learn to make my own!) with 2 slices of wholemeal toast, and a small bit of flora light.

And Dinner was a really scrummy Cajun chicken dish, with savoury rice and a green salad - dressed with balsamic. The Cajun chicken was packed out with vegetables....and the whole thing was really filling.

Day 3 - and Alpen again....its getting a little boring (already!) but I'm so lethargic in the morning, that if it takes even a small bit of effort I just won't bother. I really could do with some 'grab from the fridge/cupboard' ideas from breakfast....the toaster is too much of a faff first thing in the morning, truly! I'm no good until I've had my first cup of coffee (and cigarette...shhh!) and if I wait that long until I eat then the idea of breakfast at all has gone out of my head. So it needs to be something that I can grab and throw in a bowl or on a plate, with the minimum of preparation...before I've got the coffee poured, and the ashtray ready...

Lunch - baked beans, mixed with sweetcorn, on 2 slices of lightly spread toast.

And dinner...have marinaded some chicken in hoi-sin sauce, and we're in the process of inventing something in the wok...watch this space, ha ha!

Shopping tomorrow...and I still am no clearer than I was when in the shop on Monday regarding what I'm going to be buying...I'm still at the 'trial & error' stage with Xenical and would welcome ideas...meals that stay within the rules, but will also go someway to keep good food in front of my husband.

Thanks for reading so far.

Magic Pills or Snake Oil?

As we all know by now I need to have surgery, and I need to have surgery ASAP. My surgeon won't operate until I have lost a minimum of 100lbs, and thus placed myself in a safer place for a General Anaethstic. I have tried to lose weight the conventional way for the last 12 months, to absolutely no avail. Both my ENT consultant, my ENT surgeon and my dietician have said that if I don't show any positive signs of progress on losing the weight required by my next appointment with them (I see both on 15th march) then they will dump me, and I have to go through the whole referral system again.

I'm 36 yrs old and hubby and I desperately want to start a family...but until I've had this surgery, and thus able to change my current medication, we're simply not allowed. So I really don't want to go through the referral system again...if I can even show them I have lost a stone or most of one by the middle of March, then my surgeon and my dietician will keep me on.

And so I've turned to Xenical...ouch, that's an expensive prescription to fill...fortunately I have joined the Drugs Prescription Scheme here in Ireland so the maximum I pay on all my prescriptions per month is €120...but as I'm currently unemployed and not on benefits, that is still a huge chunk of money to find each month, this had better work!!

My GP suggested Xenical a good while ago...but I was utterly horrified by the potential side-effects, not to mention the costs involved...and so I never got the prescription filled. But this time I have to give it a fair try!

For those who haven't come across Xenical before, its the double-strength, prescription-only version of Alli (as seen on TV)

My Xenical start weight is 305 lbs (yikes!) - wish me luck!

So, so, so...!

So much going on right now...

So much to blog about...

So, please be patient whilst I take a few days to update this place...