Well, I have decided on a new course… haven’t started down it yet, but will soon.
I went to my doctor last week. We talked about possibilities. I had been thinking about trying a weight loss program that would provide more one-on-one support… a counselor who would pester me in a way that loved ones can’t, successfully. I feel like one-on-one attention when i was slipping was the weakness of Weight Watchers. I liked being part of a group in weight watchers and i like their diet, but when i started slipping, i wish there had been someone who would call me every day and make me weight in more and just plain pester me.
L A Weight Loss has been advertising a special and i have heard good things about the program. My doctor said that she had heard good things as well and said that she thought it would be good to try it.
I went in and talked to them Friday. I liked most of what they said. So why the delay? Well, we have flex dollars for medical expenses. It is the end of the year and if we don’t use them we will loose them, and if i have a doctor’s prescription for the program, i can submit the cost and get some flex dollars back. The delay has been getting the prescription, but it is finally arranged and i will be signing up Thursday or Friday.
The main attraction of L A Weight Loss is that one-on-one attention, of course, but they have a couple of other features that i find interesting. One is that i sign up for how much weight i want to loose and they estimate how much time it will take to loose it (2 pounds a week). Then they tack on a year of maintenance and i pay the whole thing up front. (thus i am financially committed). At the end of their estimated time, if i have not lost my weight, they refund part of my money (so they have a financial stake in seeing to it that i succeed). And after the loss there is a year of maintenance. During that time i still go in periodically and weigh and discuss problems. If i keep my weight off for 6 months they refund 25% of my total fee and if I maintain for a year they refund another 25%. This gives me strong incentive to keeping the weight off for a year. The idea is, of course, that if i can maintain for a year, i can maintain forever.
So I am going to try it. It was this or lap band. I told myself that i had till the end of the year to get back on track or i was going to look into lap band. I do not want to go the surgery route, but if that is what it takes i will. The frustrating thing about resorting to surgery is that all the surgery does is make your stomach little and if i would just eat less for long enough it would shrink without the surgery. Of course, it would never get as little as the surgery makes it and with surgery it shrinks all at once and you do not have the option of binging or overeating. You physically can’t do it. (Of course, i understand that a dedicated eater can, over time, stretch the pouch they make in your stomach and eat badly and constantly so they overcome even lap band.)
So .. tell me that watching a lap band surgery was a factor in deciding to avoid it. 🙂
If anyone else wants, you can go to this site – http://www.or-live.com/ – and watch all sorts of surgeries. It’s a dietary aid all by itself.
And Mom – give lots of details, especially in these first two weeks. I guess this means your Thanksgiving meal is going to be a little non-traditional, though. But still, keep us all posted.
lol the movie did not make me decide not to get lap band right now, but it decidedly increased my desire to avoid it. It also gave me a better understanding of the potential for permanent damage to my stomach. They say that the band is “placed” around the upper stomach forming a pouch and that is it removable. Perhaps if i were a surgeon i would feel more casual about it and understand that everything that was done could easily be undone, but as a not-surgeon, it looked like there was alot of pulling tissue into unnatural positions and stitching it there. It also grossed me out to think of all that stuff in my body to cure a condition that i brought on myself and could cure myself.
I am not sure what to do about Thanksgiving. Hopefully i can have Thanksgiving. Perhaps, though, it is fortunate that it is just the 2 of us this year.
Thanksgiving doesn’t need to be traditional in order to be good and tasty. Make a few dishes that fit the new diet that sound interesting/weird/that-sounds-weird-but-maybe-good… after all, if you only get to sample a bit of each that fits right in with Thanksgiving. Sneaking in a bit of turkey is optional.
Keep your site updated on how you are doing; I am interested in seeing how this diet program really works.
Chris, are you reading what i write at my site?
I look over there every now and then. I don’t leave comments because I think you are using the site more as a personal log than something you seek comments on…
Ah…. It is good to know you are reading it. Do feel free to say something if you have something to say. I guess it is a personal log, meaning i do talk alot about me. 🙂 I don’t need you to comment just to comment, just to tell me you were there… but if you have a question or a thought, i would welcome it.