LSD thoughts

Well, I've been off the dreaded Liver Shrinking Diet for 3 days now, which is awesome! Getting ready to get started with the next phase of my nutrition plan - the Nutripoints system. I'm sooooo not psyched about this. It doesn't work well with what I like to eat (which I know is not healthy things, but still) and involves a lot of cooking, which I rarely do. I'm not happy with my nutritionist, because she doesn't seem terribly willing to be flexible and help me figure out a way to make it work for me. Her two comments were, "Maybe you're not ready for the surgery yet" and "Well, this is the program we do here so this is it". It's not a program that I can do post-op, so I'm feeling pretty negative about it and trying to get past that for right now.

But back to the ever-exciting LSD. Since it was a new idea to have patients do it this far out from surgery to "jump start weight loss and get them motivated", I've been collecting my thoughts. Not that anyone has asked. But I may share them anyway.

Positives:

• I lost 16 pounds in 2 weeks.
• I didn't die. Which is to say that I learned that I can live through it - and that, while I was cranky, I could have fun even when it wasn't centered around food.

Negatives:

• I was very cranky and irritable the entire two weeks, although not really hungry.
• It was inconvenient - I couldn't go out to eat with friends, had to be sure I had my special foods with me wherever I went.
• This far out from surgery I'm not sure I'm comfortable telling everyone, and it makes it hard not to. I didn't really want to just tell half-truths - "It's part of a new diet program I'm doing" or make up stores - "I'm not feeling well", but I did both some. I did end up telling some people that I wasn't ready to tell (co-workers).
• I didn't get to have my surgery at the end of it, and went a little wild food-wise the day after it was over.
• It was hard to be motivated to do it, since jump-starting my weight loss did not seem like a good enough reason to me to be put through this. It did not make me feel motivated. I can understand having to do it to shrink the liver for surgery, but this didn't make much sense to me which made it much more difficult.
• I felt like I was secretly being tested to see if I could do it.
• My nutritionist, who put me on the program, didn't have a complete understanding of what the diet was supposed to be, so for the first week I had to eat that nasty sandwich every night.

So, overall, despite the fact that my jeans are a little bit looser, this was a very negative, discouraging experience for me. And people telling me that other people had harder diets (I don't believe it for a minute - NO ONE else I have ever heard of has to do this for four weeks. And people who have to do all liquids usually only do it for a day or two) or that this was a good thing to get me prepared for surgery only made me more irritated. I'm having a really hard time with the whole thing right now and questioning everything. It's hard planning for something which is so far away. My surgeon's support group meets once a month and I've been to two already and will go to one more before my surgery. Then there's one the day after I have my surgery (I'll still be in the hospital, so won't go) It's hard seeing everyone else losing so much weight when I'm so far out and not really being able to relate to much of what they're saying. On my online message board I see people come in new and have their surgery quickly while I don't get to do that.

So, I'm sorry - I feel like a lot of my posts about this are negative. I've been trying to make all these changes - exercising 5 days a week, giving up diet soda, giving up FOOD for two weeks, now this Nutripoints thing - most of which have been very, very hard and I'm just not feeling better because of it. It's been about 6 weeks since I first started exercising and 4 since I gave up soda and I have yet to feel better. In fact, I feel worse. I'm very much an instant gratification junkie and this is hard. I'm going to try and post positive things next time :)

Woooo-Hooooo!!! (LSD day 8)

So, as it turns out, I don't HAVE to eat that stinkin' sandwich every night! I just have to eat something low fat with less than 300 calories. WOW. I'm the most excited girl that you have ever met at this moment. I wish I could have the last week of choking down that nasty thing back, but hey - then I probably wouldn't enjoy this moment quite so much. Who would have though I could get so excited over choosing my own 300 calories?

In other news, I weighed myself today for the first time since I started this whole LSD excitement, and I'm down 11 pounds. So with those two things I finally feel like I'm going to make it through this. It's a good thing, too, because I was pretty close to becoming a complete basket case.

LSD day 6

Well, I am sticking to the Liver Shrinking Diet but can't say that I'm enjoying it. It is INCREDIBLY hard to not eat all that good food out there...especially when you have to sit and watch others eat. It was a rough week, but this weekend was especially hard because I wasn't as busy. I was also with my family and traveling, which made it even more difficult to stick to. But I did.

The pre-op diet was what I was dreading the most about the whole thing and now to have to do it twice is really taking a toll on me. I'm cranky and cry easily. My poor kids this week....watch out!

I'm considering letting myself order DVR if I can lose 3o pounds before surgery (which is a realistic goal, with 4 of those 10 weeks being on the LSD!) It's only something like $12 a month, but I'm really not sure that I can afford even that. Maybe I can look through my statements and find a recurring payment that I'm making that I'm unaware of that I can cancel...that sort of thing happens to me all the time :) But I would LOVE to be able to watch the shows I want, when I want. Most shows I like come on after I want to be in bed, so I stay up too late watching them. So we'll see. 8 more days to go....

LSD day 2

So it's day two of the Liver Shrinking Diet and it's had definite ups and downs. Yesterday was no problem - even went out to CiCis with 2 girls from the OH board and watched them eat pizza and was fine. Today was different. Most of the day at school I felt AWFUL - tired, nauseous, dizzy, headache, congested, you name it. (Ok, so maybe the congestion was from the pollen and not the LSD - you wouldn't believe the pollen around here) At one point I had to just tell my kids to go do math tubs because I was too nauseous and dizzy to even talk to them. Even walking in from recess one of the girls I teach with said I looked like I was about to fall over.

I had some drama with paying the fees from a traffic ticket so I had to go down to the court to pay it today, which meant that I didn't have time to exercise before I met with Sue (my "life coach"). This worked out very well, because it meant I got to go home and take a nap. I felt sooooooooooo much better after my nap and was able to get my second shake in on the way to see Sue. She wants me to find things that make me happy to look forward to each day now that I can't use food for that purpose. She said that don't have to be 10 on the happiness scale, just anything that I can look forward to. (I asked if I could use taking a nap! She actually said yes, but the nap sounded more like a necessity so we should chose something else as well) I haven't thought of anything yet - not that it has to be the same thing every day.

So after I left Sue I went to the gym to swim and ended up doing a water aerobics class which was fun. I may try and do it again sometime. I'm not having much luck getting this nasty sandwich and green beans down for dinner, though. I'm not hungry at all - right now I'm having more trouble getting in what I'm supposed to eat rather than wanting more.

Oh, and I have tried two new things - strawberry yogurt and baby carrots. Both were completely disgusting. They both made me gag. *sigh* I have no idea how I am going to start liking new things!!!!!!

An exciting new twist

So I met with the nutritionist for the first time tonight. I have been DREADING this meeting, since I know that what I eat is the worst thing about my health. And I just don't know how to start magically liking new things! It's taken me a long time to get in with her and apparently I waited too long, because in exciting news...

I get to do the two-week liquid "liver shrinking" diet

TWICE!

Apparently my surgeon's office has decided that at the beginning of meeting with the nutritionist, we should go ahead and do the liver shrinking diet to "jump start" our weight loss and get us motivated. Of course, then I have to start the Nutripoints system (which is NOT a good one for me, not that anyone will listen when I say that), and two weeks pre-op go back on the LSD. Yippeee!!! Here's what I have to do every day for two weeks:

Breakfast - Carnation Instant Breakfast pre-made or Slim-Fast High Protein (they are very specific)

Lunch - same as breakfast, with the addition of some fruit (which I don't like)

Snack - cottage cheese or yogurt (don't like either or these) or I can choose from baby carrots, grape tomatoes, or cucumber slices (don't like any of these) Here's what my nutritionist - the expert who's supposed to help me make this work for me said - "Oh, just try it." Because for the last 30 years I've just been avoiding them for fun.

Dinner - sandwich made with 4 oz. of Healthy Choice or Hillshire Farm 97% fat free turkey, chicken, ham, or roast beef and two slices of Nature's Valley double fiber whole grain wheat bread. 1 cup non-starchy vegetable.

I think that's it. So, there's clearly quite a bit of flexibility on this plan. I also have to get in 64 oz. of liquids during the day which includes all the usual no-sugar, no-calorie suspects but also fat-free broth, fat-free jello, and sugar-free, fat-free fruit flavored popsicles.

So like the obedient girl that I am I have gone out and bought all of this tonight (at 10:30 - I need to start setting bedtimes and sticking to them) and I am going to try one new thing a day. I'm not super-excited about this, so wish me luck!