Following on from my introduction post, I thought I would follow on with the question I see online a lot, Why can't you just diet?
It's an interesting and fair point, but before I get into that, I want to go through and say this is inspired by ABC Australia's "You can't ask that" a series in which questions are asked you would never ask someone in your daily life, it goes through many different categories of people and there is an episode of overweight people in which questions are asked.
The biggest question (Or feedback from randoms in the street is) ... Why can't you just diet?
Well I have and that is why after so many previous failed attempts I find myself seeking professional help with surgery, but being in the right mind set (because dieting is f*****ing hard) and hard to stick to, I have found the transition to my healthy eating pre surgery to be much easier than i thought.
Moving away from the "diet" mentality and embedding in myself it's a lifestyle change is something I think everyone should embed when trying to lose weight and keep it off.()
My diet in the last 12 weeks in which I have lost 26kg (57 pounds) has consisted of a fresh produce from the category A section of allowed vegetables on optifast (See here) . With the assistance of my dietician I have also been able to have Diet Jelly, 100gm of meat a day also on top of my 2-3 shakes per day.
Due to my size, it's hard to exercise so I've found just the food changes alone for now have yielded great results. I have exercise planned post surgery
Some of the diets I have tried in the past have been diets like 4321 Slim & Detox, Cabbage diet, Lemon Diet, cutting out certain things like carbs or eating until certain times of the day or a diet where you can eat anything you want 1 day a week, but I think the fundamental floor in ALL of them is that it's just that a DIET, it starts all back at the core with a lifestyle change.
While I am currently on shakes now pre surgery (this is to shrink the liver) post surgery I have some really great food recipes in place, being able to only eat 1/4 of a cup of food at a time I have gone and purchased 70 small 250ml containers and have been meal prepping, getting a whole heap of little meals in the freezer so that I can easily cook one meal that I would have eaten in the past, and instead making it into 5-6 servings.
I have also upped my quality of food too ( A Great example is mince, in the past I would use 2 or 3 star mince, not understanding exactly how much fat is in it (17G fat per 100G as opposed to the extra lean mince which is 5G of fat. Calories are also halved in the high end mince.
It's certainly a learning curve, when you have been addicted to food as much as I have in my life, trying to re-wire the brain into thinking something else is certainly hard, but I am ready for that rewiring.
I have been putting a really poor unleaded in my body for a long time, and it's time to upgrade it to premium.
Weight loss surgery is not the holy grail answer, you can't lose a majority of your stomach and then expect to just drop weight, if you don't fuel your body, you may get results in the beginning, but it's setting you up to fail in the long run!
Anyway that is the answer to that question, I plan to post a lot, if you have any direct questions, please feel free to inbox me (And I am happy to make a post similar to this to answer)
Paul
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