Another year, another operation... and another diet?

I haven't been paying this blog much attention lately, I do check in to it, but I've been otherwise occupied.  I see that as always, everyone is coming here to check out my kebab recipes - are we a nation obsessed with homemade kebabs, or something?  Anyway, this is what's been going on.

Mr G had an emergency operation last Monday.  He has been in awful pain with the reoccurring hernia, and after an appointment with his consultant - or rather his consultant's registrar, where he was told that they wouldn't operate on him until he lost weight, he's been quite dejected.  We've started on a weight loss plan (more on that later), and by last Sunday he was in agony.  He phoned the out of hours GP service who gave him an appointment but told him to go straight in to Casualty.  Casualty had a 5 hour waiting time to be seen, this was before 11 am in the morning, so God only knows what had been going on.  The triage nurse told him that if he hadn't been seen, which was likely, to keep his appointment with the out of hours GP.  He saw the GP who wanted him to be admitted.  Long story short, he was admitted that night, and the next morning he saw a new consultant who wanted him operated on that day, as he was concerned about the level of pain he was in. He had the operation that afternoon.  It turns out that the last hernia op that he had, the mesh they had put in to stop the hernia reoccuring had moved.  And where the hernia had pushed through, it had taken part of his bowel with it.  No wonder he was in so much pain, and unable to barely move.  And that bloody registrar mithering on about him losing weight?

So he's home and in a lot of pain but in really good spirits.  Please God let this be the end of it now, because I don't think either of us can take much more of this.  He's had warning after warning by everyone who has spoken to him to take it easy and recover this time, before he starts building and digging and all the other things that are floating around in his head.  I've told him if he doesn't, I'll divorce him. 

We've been to watch Crusaders a couple of times, the club has had a lot of difficulties the past few weeks, high profile players leaving, financial issues.  It's a bloody shame because it's a cracking club, fantastic atmosphere, the fans are great, the staff are lovely.  Their next game is on Good Friday, and Mr G can't drive until Easter Monday.  He's on the couch plotting as to how we can make it there.  He's even throwing the most random suggestions out such as, do my Mum and Dad want to go shopping in Wrexham on Good Friday, driving our car?  Unlikely, Mr G.  Unlikely.  There are trains running, and the station is right next to the Racecourse ground, so that is a possibility, but it would end up costing us twice as much as the petrol would do.

We're on Day 17 of a new eating plan.  I don't want to call it a diet, because if you could see what we've eaten, you couldn't call it a diet.  Seriously.  A friend who has done fantastically on Weight Watchers hit a plateau and it got me thinking about dieting.  I've been trying to lose weight since... 1992 but more specifically since the start of the year.  I tried vegetarianism (but I ate a little fish, as I am a crap vegetarian as I don't eat cheese) and I put weight on, so I was really annoyed.  No meat, and 6 lb heavier than when I started off.  I was on the edge, I tell you.  Even though I have lost weight successfully with Weight Watchers in the past, deprivation always gets to me in the end.  I could eat that chocolate bar/pizza/bag of crisps/bag of chips/kebab but something else is going to have to give.  And that something else is, well, my food.  So, I am sensible and choose food as opposed to junk, and the craving for that junk grows and grows until I snap and binge.  So, as I'm 'out of the loop' where any diet other than Weight Watchers and Slimming World are concerned, I decided to do a bit of investigating.  And whilst looking at forums about the 5:2 diet, I stumbled across another diet, The Every Other Day Diet.  Also known as Alternate Day Fasting It basically is what it says.  You diet every other day.  Similar to the 5:2, on alternate days, you eat 500 calories.  Every other day, you eat whatever you want.  Yes, that's right.  Anything.  And you lose weight.  I've lost 11lbs so far, Mr G has lost 8.4 lbs.  I'm bettering the very best weight loss I was having in Weight Watchers whilst strictly dieting, and I've eaten - pizza?  A whole pizza, to myself, not a slice.  Chocolate bars?  Crisps?  Haagen Dazs ice cream?  Cinnamon buns?  Pies?  Cheesecake?  And I've lost 11lbs in just over two weeks.  As long as you stick to 500 calories every other day, it's that simple.  There is an accompanying book, The Every Other Day Diet by Krista Varady, I've bought and read it, and it's really interesting in that she provides the data from the trials she conducted on people over the years, and the health benefits etc.  But it's this simple.  Every other day, 500 calories, the other days, knock yourself out.  It's absolutely bonkers, I read the book and thought 'Yeah, right!'.  It's one thing seeing case studies in books, but they could be made up.  So, I Googled further and found a blog of a young woman who had followed the diet for a year and lost 7 stone in the first year.  Her account convinced me.  A large weight loss, without deprivation longer than 24 hours.  That's what I need to get me back to a healthy weight.  And it's working, and I'm thrilled to bits. 

51 days until my 40th birthday, and it looks like any plans I need to make are in limbo at the moment.  But Mr G's health is the most important thing.  I've got a whole year of being 40, haven't I?  And if it comes to it, there's always 50... ;-)