Well that’s 5 years wasted.

GP’s are generally very fat phobic. Honestly, they don’t always care about health, they care about BMI. I’ve been to the GP about tonsilitis before and they haven’t looked at my throat at all, just given me weight-loss advice.

Over the years during these appointments that were nothing to do with my weight, I had been given referrals to Weight Watchers (once) and Slimming World (twice). The trouble with weight loss clubs like these (one of the many troubles!) is that they only work if you eat rubbish foods. I don’t tend to eat rubbish foods, although I do love a picnic or a buffet, and I would never turn down a quorn picnic egg or a bag of ready salted crisps. But, overall, I eat healthily. I eat a lot of vegetables each day, admittedly not a lot of fruit. I try to avoid white pasta and breads, and I don’t drink as much water as I do decaf coffee. I’m trying though. EVERYTIME I had these GP referrals to a weigh loss club, I put on weight. Around 6kg each time, sometimes more. I did my 12 week referrals, and then went back to the GP. You can’t get any help from a GP until you’ve done your 12 week ‘learn how to have disordered eating’ training. I mean the clubs are utterly ridiculous. I lift weights because I know my body, and I know the cortisol produced by aerobic exercise flares up the lipedema so I put on weight with aerobics, whereas weight training increases the body’s ability to process insulin, so I’m more likely NOT to put on weight. Slimming World told me if I want to reduce my BMI, I need to stop lifting weights, because then I would get lighter. Not thinner, not healthier, just reduce my BMI. Weight Watchers taught me to cheat weigh in – drink a load of water the day before and salty chips with a greasy burger before going to bed, and your body flushes out all of that water and more by the next morning making you lighter for weigh in. Slimming World taught me that if you eat a solid banana you can eat as many as you like as a ‘free’ food, but mash that banana and it’s a ‘syn’. The people at all of these weight loss clubs wouldn’t eat or drink before weight in, sometimes dehydrating themselves and waiting until 6pm before they would have anything, then after weigh in go and get fish and chips, or go to the pub, or get a takeaway curry. I’d pop for a wee before weigh in’s, and hear the women straining in the cubicles either side, hoping to lose another half a pound by having a poo.
They are not healthy places to be.

Anyway, I went back to the GP after one of these referrals in a right old strop, and told him I needed some medical help before I’m too old to be able to have IVF. So he prescribed Orlistat. Oh it makes me feel queasy even typing the word. Orlistat is a drug that stops around a third of the fat you have in your food being absorbed into your body. That fat is… expelled… from your body as a yellow oil. It’s absolutely disgusting, and you have to time what you eat very carefully so that you’ll be near a toilet when you need to be! It made me smell weird, like old flowers. I lost around 9kg in 3 months which was amazing for the IVF journey, but they caused really bad gallstones. Really bad. In fact, when I finally had my gallbladder removed 5 years later, the surgeon was impressed by how many stones I had in my gallbladder! I do like to do things well!
But you see, you can’t have IVF while you have gallstones. So I had to wait for my gallbladder to be removed. A GP once told me if I ate loads of fry-ups, it would cause such a bad gallbladder attack they’d probably take it out there and then. I ended up in A&E a few times, never because of a fry up! haha! Although one time was my fault, it was Christmas and I was still eating a little bit of meat at that time, and I ate 5 pigs in blankets. Agony. They didn’t take it out though, because when they went to look up the referral, the GP hadn’t submitted it. So THEN I got put on the waiting list. My trigger foods were all types of lettuces, cucumber, pork products. I think anything fatty probably is one, but I’m not a huge fat-eater so it never seemed to be an issue.

In the fifth year of being on the waiting list, I had my gallbladder removed. Only because I’m fat, I had to go on a milk diet for the two weeks before surgery. This is absolutely one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I knew it would be worth it, I had our goal in mind. If you don’t know a milk diet, it’s ‘prescribed’ by hospitals before surgery if you have a high BMI, in case your gallbladder is stuck to your liver. They don’t do any scans or anything to check if it is, it’s a just in case. It feels like a punishment for being fat. So for two weeks, you have 2 litres of almond or oat milk per day, one vitamin tablet, and one cup of oxo (for salt). You have around 400 calories per day. You are very hungry, you are very constipated, you are very weak, you can’t concentrate. And the trouble is, after a few days, you just don’t want anymore milk. I tried drinking it at mealtimes as meals, I tried sipping it throughout the day, I tried in two big goes, but after about four days, you’re all milked out. I think I went down to about 200 calories each day for just over a week. I got a crunchy vitamin tablet, just so I had something to crunch. That along with the cup of salty oxo was the actual highlight of my day. I lost 5kg. Who knows if my gallbladder was stuck to my liver or not, but I know I went into that surgery not cheating once, and feeling incredibly weak. You know what the surgeon said to me? “Well, at least you know how to lose weight now.”

By this point, my BMI was still too high, and I was 5 years older.