Today, I just got back in the pouring rain from my Lighter Life introductory session. Lighter Life is a Very Low Calorie Diet programme (a VLCD for those in the business) allowing 500 calories a day in the form of shakes and soups. I considered this way of eating (or not eating) about a year ago but chickened out. Too weird. Too abstemious. Screws up your metabolism, doesn’t it? Saggy skin! And mustn’t forget the gallstones brought about by too-fast weightloss.
Exactly a week ago, it was 100 degrees in Yellowstone National Park. I had 3-year-old Stella in my back carrier. My heart was pounding. My breath came in raw spurts. And suddenly, after the years of lying to myself, the truth grabbed hold of me and gave me an ungentle shake. “Your heart is carrying around two whole adults. Each of your thighs is the size of an average waistline. You haven’t seen your cheekbones in decades. You are rushing to your grave, and who will take care of Stella?”
Suddenly, something broke inside my head. I needed all this adipose OFF me QUICKLY. WIthout my having to negotiate over how much cottage cheese, how many slices of bread (and was it wholegrain?), did I pour too much milk into my latte, and oh my God, was it semi-skimmed???? It’s them Voices, Ma, them Voices that drives me crazy.
Tonighted I expected a pat, business-oriented counsellor in a High Street skirt-suit to greet me. After All, the Lighter Life programmes are run as franchises and needn’t attract the brightest pennies in the pile. God knows I have met one Weight Watchers/SlimmingWorld/ Slimming Magazine “teacher” after another who didn’t know her carbs from her fibre. I am tired of possessing more technical/medical information than the average weightloss ”expert”. So I was pleasantly surprised that my counsellor tonight had a thoughtful, intelligent, formidably technical answer for every one of my probing questions. She has lost the equivalent of an adult human herself in terms of weight and understands what it is like to have faced obesity from childhood.
Off to the GP tomorrow with my medical forms, and I hope to start in less than two weeks!
