Patience - an important lesson

I thought I'd give you a little insight into how things have been for me in the last year. A year ago I had a small fill, taking my total band fill up to about 7.7ml. This gave me a really nice level of restriction and for the first time in a while, I felt that my band could really help me to control my eating. However, the thorn in this theory was my binge-eating, primarily chocolate focused. At that time I was eating at least six or seven bars of chocolate per day, often eight bars, plus some other cakes and trifles. I estimate that I was consuming 1500-2000 calories per day through chocolate, ON TOP of a normal diet of about the same. It doesn't need a mathematician to work out that I was consuming nearly twice the calories that I actually needed. No wonder I was steadily gaining weight. I tried all kinds of things to cut down on the chocolate but nothing worked.

I have always subscribed to the view that a diet should be sustainable, otherwise it won't work. By the same token, I have always believed that since 'normal' people can eat a little chocolate, so should I be able to. And so my efforts over the years have been to cut down on chocolate consumption, rather than to cut it out all together. But I finally saw sense on May 25th this year, when I took the decision to completely cut out chocolate from my diet. Since that time I have very, very slowly begun to take back control over my diet and begun to lose weight again.

I thought I'd quote an anonymous comment on an earlier post (from 2010): "I too am a chocoholic and I have successfully lost weight in the past only to pile it back on (I was 5.5st lighter 2 years ago). I have come to the conclusion that I cannot eat any chocolate - total abstinence is the only way forward (I have managed to give up chocolate for years in the past and I always become complacent: "a little won't hurt....." - the trouble is I cannot eat just a "little". - Well there's at least a little comfort in knowing I'm not the only one!!

A year ago, I weighed 17 stone and 4 lbs, and now I'm exactly a stone less. So it's taken me six months to lose a stone, but maybe this is another lesson that I have learned from the last four years of being a bandit - patience, patience, patience - you can never have too much! Don't rush things, it's a marathon not a sprint. It is better to take six years to lose all the weight I want to, and to keep it off by developing good habits, than to lose it all in a year and put much of it back on again (which is effectively what happened to me).

Next time, more about the acid problem over the last year.... Bet you can't wait!!