Week One done…did I survive?
I have passed a momentous event; the end of week one on Optifast.
Day One came with some high and low points. The low being that holy crap I had put on 4kgs since my first appointment with the surgeon. That meant I had the 7kgs that he wanted me to lose before surgery, plus the 4kgs extra I now weighed and since I’m an over achiever the extra 3kgs I already wanted to lose as well so I was a nice even 10kg less than when he saw me before surgery. If you’ve done the math…14kgs by Jan 30th. Well, 14.7kgs if we want to be really specific because I have a weird quirk about preferring perfectly rounded numbers so it would mean my end weight prior to surgery would be an even number.
When I said I had issues people I meant it. Things are suuuper weird up here taps head
So if that was the low point of the day, what were the high points?
For starters, I worked out pretty quickly before this week started what were the good flavours of Optifast and what were the ones that made you question who had taste buds so broken they allowed those flavours to even exist.
Since there have been quite a few questions asked of me over the past week about how I’m doing on Optifast or how it tastes I’ll do a full review of it all in the coming weeks once I have finished trying everything.
Also, I hadn’t been hungry. I started this on the 2nd of Jan so I was off on leave from work. Then I had one day in the office where I was pretty much alone so it was easy to focus on work and not on what I wasn’t eating, and then another 4 full days back at home working and feeling surprisingly good. I wasn’t hungry, I enjoyed the bits I did get to eat, I had plenty of energy for the gym and had all the motivation in the world to go.
By the end of Sunday, 5 days into my pre surgery diet, I had lost 3.7kgs. It was actually quite a shock to lose it, that quickly, especially given the fact that no matter how well I’ve eaten before in the past and how much I work out. I went into Monday’s return to work feeling good.
A typical daily meal; 3 Optifast shakes, 2 cups of vegetables and for the days when I’m a good girl who goes to the gym I get to eat that little tiny bit of fruit.
Being back at work brought about a few things I hadn’t really considered too much.
1- Seeing lots of people eating all of the food you really, really want to eat will make you hungry.
2- Being back doing normal work hours meant I was awake for longer in the day.
You put these two things together and it equates to me starring really awkwardly at my team while they are eating. Like probably pretty uncomfortably so. If you guys are reading, I’m sorry if I was weird.
For the most part it was bearable, I was making it through but looking back now I probably wasn’t drinking enough water either. Even though I have a drink bottle that I take with me from meeting to meeting I’m terrible at remembering to go and refill it in the few minutes before my meetings start. So, probably 9 times out of 10 when a sudden feeling of being hungry hits it’s probably more that I’m just thirsty.
The other thing that had been bugging me was that a couple of times now after my workout I would start feeling dizzy. After speaking to a few people that I knew who had also been on Optifast when I asked them about what their workouts were it ranged from none at all to “I used to take the dog for a walk every night.” I’m not one to diminish the efforts that anyone else puts in but I was starting to wonder if the reason I was feeling dizzy after working out maybe had to do with the fact that my average workouts everyday were 10kms on the stationary bike, 2kms on the treadmill and either 2kms on the elliptical or 2000m on the rowing machine. It was looking like it was a little bit more than a lot of people do prior to them having gastric sleeve surgery.
Since I had a few other questions about the soup section of the list of what I can eat as it was, I decided to email my dietitian and see what she thought. Did the amount I was working out mean I should be allowed an extra cup of vegetables and was the miso soup I was allowed something that I should be counting as part of my 2 cups of vegetables or did it fit in the fluids category of what I could have?
Now I cry at a lot of things, videos about dogs, the episode of survivor where they get a family reunion, that bit in Love Actually where Emma Thompson just found out Alan Rickman did the dirty with that skanky office tart, but it’s not often I cry about food. Let me tell you, there were some serious tears welling in my eyes when I got the email back from the dietitian telling me that not only could I just add in a cup of miso a day if I wanted to and it not count in the vegetable section but if after my workout, water and my piece of fruit I still felt dizzy I could up my vegetables by another cup. I know, you’re all crazy jealous of me right now.
The three days I spent working in the office this week were tough. I did feel more hungry than normal, I thought about food more than I had been before but since I worked at home on Thursday and had Friday off I had none of that at all.
I think to get through the next three weeks is going to be a constant challenge but I’m up for it. According to all the info from the dietitian I am through the worst of it so now it is just about staying strong and keeping those workouts going strong.
As of Saturday I’m now down 5.7kgs. Not bad for 10 days. That goal of 14.7kgs is starting to look more and more doable.
There is one tiny dark side of the Optifast diet that I have discovered though…I literally can not stop thinking about cheese. I dream about it every night. I knew there would be some foods I would struggle to let go off…if I’m being totally real, I’m not surprised it’s cheese.
Literally me.
