Weight change & associated health problems

I personally find it easier if somebody says to me, “Don’t eat any sweet things. Cut it out all altogether.” I will comply with that much easier than if somebody says, “Well you can have a little bit of chocolate, but only a bit every day.” Because I like volumes, I don’t want to eat one biscuit, I want to eat the whole packet of biscuits. So if I’m, for me personally I find it easier if people were to give me a list and say, “Right, you can’t eat any biscuits, you can’t eat any crisps. You can’t eat any,”…. you know.

Yeah.

I find an exclusion diet, for me personally, for my personality because I’m quite compliant, is much easier.

Okay.

So, have you ever heard of the alphabet diet? So, you cut out all foods beginning with A and then the next week, all foods beginning with ‘B.’

You have done that diet?

I have done every diet, yeah over the years. So I found those quite easy [laughs].

Yeah?

Yeah.

Okay, and has it worked for you that diet?

I only did it for a short period of time, but yeah, exclusion diets for me work much better than, than portion size really.

So what has helped for you to lose weight? Correct me…

I guess I’m not looking at it like I’m on a diet. I’m looking at it right, it’s a lifestyle change. I’m eating a lot more healthily now than what I did before.

Okay.

Whereas before I used to be, sometimes if I hadn’t had anything to eat up at my mums, I would stop and have fish and chips and bring them home or I would get a carry out. I don’t do that now. I will still have a curry, but I make it myself. I use the spray fat instead of like oils. Haven’t had anything out of fish shop in maybe two year, yeah.
 

Since I came out of hospital this last time, I’ve been eating a lot more fruit and veg. I don’t get the recommended five a day every day, but I usually manage four. Sometimes more  and over, over a week, I would say I probably average four a day  either through bits and pieces  like yesterday when I was out shopping, and I was starving hungry I bought a sandwich in the local sandwich shop which contained a bit of salad which all goes as part and parcel of course even though it’s got to add up with other things.

I had a few pieces of dried fruit yesterday, again counts towards your five a day. I’ve been eating bananas like they were going out of fashion. I’ve been eating apples like they’ve been going out of fashion and I don’t know why but I’ve suddenly, well I do know why actually, I suddenly acquired a taste for satsumas. When I was in hospital they, they restricted my fluid intake to one and a half litres because of fluid retention and the nurse there advised me if I felt thirsty the best thing to do would be to eat an orange or a lemon.

Okay and what are you eating less of, or trying to eat less of?

Just about, just about everything to be honest. I suppose chips was my big downfall. My son will tell you it was chips with everything. It was almost getting to the stage where if I had cereal for breakfast, I’d have chips with it. But I’ve stopped those not completely but I’ll maybe only have chips now once a week where, whereas it would be three, four or even five times a week. I try not to eat potato unless it’s new potato and I tend, I tend to bulk up on fruit and veg because I found it’s not that that upset my stomach at all even though something in the old grey matter told me it would do, and it didn’t.

But even things like oven chips, roast potatoes, you, you brush them with oil and put them in the oven. You don’t sit them in it and goose fat and let them fry. Yeah, so it’s, it is things like that sometimes around you don’t actually need some of the cooking techniques that you imagine you have, you know, you built up over the years and think, ‘Oh, I must have a roast potato that’s in goose fat or, you know, that you can at least just bobs above the fat as it’s cooking away in the oven.’ You can brush it with oil and just put it in. I think it’s around looking at those. In fact, I enjoyed the challenge in one way.

I couldn’t swim much at first, couple of lengths and that sort of thing but like the jogging, it develops, and it develops, and it develops. Now that swimming started round about 60, early ‘60s. I’m now 86 so I’m going back twenty-five years.

And now I swim every day. Every lunchtime, not today. Every lunchtime I go for the swimming in the local baths and from that, beginning where I said I did the length and maybe two lengths. At Christmas that had just gone, the bath, normally the baths aren’t open now for adult swimming so you can’t do an awful lot but at Christmas they were open all the time.

And I, and I just went in and I thought, ‘I’ll see how many lengths I can do.’ I was by that time, by last Christmas, in the habit of doing about thirty or forty lengths in an hour. About a minute a length, you know, that, that sort of thing, which quite pleased with it. But on this particular day at Christmas of last year, I’ll see how far they can go and believe me or believe me not, I swam a length for every year of my age. In other words, I swam 85 lengths….

Wow.

….and I was so proud of that.

Absolutely, there’s no hundred per cent but everybody who knows me, family, friends, they said to me, ‘Oh wow, what’s happened?” and I’ve said, “Well since I’ve started taking steroids and medication I’m just, this is what I look like,” and anybody that takes steroids it happens to us all, we get this face, this moon face effect. And I said to them, “What it is, is your body tries to store fat in other places so it will shoot to your face, or the back bit of your neck or round your midriff area,” and unless I’m you know, killing it in the gym, it’s unfortunately is going to, that’s how I have, I have to get used to looking like this because at the moment there’s isn’t going to be a way of me, to be able to burn off that amount, that much amount of fat and that much amount of calories in my, my current physical state, so I’m just noticed I was getting bigger and bigger and when I got to thirteen stone, I was like, ‘I can’t, I’ve got to try and do something.’ So hopefully, well not hopefully, it has, I have been losing weight. I’m, from 88 kilograms, I’m now 84.2.

Okay.

So, I have lost, I’m quite happy with it because it means that I’m losing. So long as I’m not gaining, I don’t care, I don’t mind. I didn’t want to get any further than 88 kilograms.

And this is just by controlling what you eat…

Yeah.

…because you can’t…?

Because I can’t exercise, so that just shows you, just simple changes in your diet can actually, can actually help because I’m, I’m no way going to be able to run on a treadmill [laughs]. I know, I know this until they come up with a plan that can get me off these medications, the most I’m going to be able to do is swim and I’ve have to be an Olympic swimmer to be able to shift all this weight in a set amount of time.

Do you have those, do you still have those hunger pangs or…?

No luckily, I fought damn hard with the consultants to bring my steroids down.

We’re trying to get it down to five milligrams. We’re at seven, so I feel that I’m heading in the right direction, so long as I, you see the problem is they get frightened because they’re like, “Oh, you know, we don’t want you to have another bad asthma attack,” You know, this one could be the fatal one because that’s what you think, that’s what you know. You don’t know that particular asthma attack could be the one that puts you in hospital so you’re wary of taking your medicines down but I found that since I’ve gone down in my medication, my appetite is starting to kind of normalise itself now.

I have normal hunger pangs [laughs]. I still, I’m managing with protein shakes for breakfast, but I know that I’ve got to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, that’s it and I maybe I’m allowed a snack and that’s it.
 

I found snacking difficult. That’s the one, that’s the in-between meals. The meals were not a problem. It was, you know, behind you I have a box of snacks and to be able to just walk past the box every day was never, I could never do it, ooh, ooh and now I can actually have the box there and not. I’m just learning what I can snack on and what I can’t snack on and finding extra things. For me, I found even the people say, “That’s still bad, there’s a lot of salt in it,” carbonated water.

So, when I feel a little bit hungry I have some bubbly water for squirty, I put lemon juice in it, lemon it and that tricks my stomach into thinking it’s full, it fills me up, so I can hang on until mealtimes. So, I do little things like that. Maybe have a piece of fruit or even a cup of tea, it’s fine. Cutting out the desserts and that. I order things, so I know, I know Haagan Dazs, so that comes off my shopping list, you know, that sort of thing. I’m mindful now of not ordering things that I know are going tip me over the edge and I’ve suddenly had a likening now for dark chocolate and I used to hate dark chocolate [laughs]. But no, if it’s all I can have, then I’ll have that. At least, it means I’m still not being a naughty girl. I’m allowed that.