Countdown to banding day

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

A sure fire cure

Would be nice... For hiccups

No seriously I kid you not I have had the hiccups for an hour. It has taken me 2 minutes to log in and write the 1st line because I had to keep deleting and retyping because I was hiccuping and typing the wrong thing.

This sucks. I know what casued it too. Bread. Had casserole for dinner and had a small amount of afghan bread to soak up the bit of sauce in the bottom of the bowl and here we are an hour later in hiccup city.

I wonder if bread does this to anyone else. I seem to get the hiccups evertime I eat bread. I don't think it helps that I eat really fast. Which of course brings up another question. How do I slow down my eating?If I scoff this fast with the band I will be yawning the technicolour rainbow all over the joint. I have always eaten fast. It was the quick and the dead at my house growing up. You didn't eat fast you missed out if there was a second helping and if you ate too slow the kitchen was closed for dessert by the time you were finished. Not to mention that the vultures would be circling to eat what was left on your plate. It was like feeding time at the zoo. Like those litters of little piggies, that you see crawling all over the mummy pig, god forbid they let go of the nipple cause that's it for you piggy, your fat little brother will push you over the hill and you have to run around and get back in line. Well in my house the kitchen was the mother pig and the chocolate topping bottle was the teat.

And let me tell you it's not like we had the world's greatest chef cooking for us either. I will be honest my mothers cooking left well a little to be desired.. namely taste. To be fair give my mother a complex recipe for a 12 course banquet and you are laughing yum diddly o. But give her something everyday and she wasn't too crash hot. There were a few famous incidents.....

Stuffed Eggplant - now let me take you back to the early80's when eggplant wasn't a very common veg, especially in a western suburbs lower income household. But she wanted to give it a go. She bought 3 . cut the tops off. Hollowed out the insides and threw that away????? and then stuffed them with a can of 3 bean mix, put some melted cheese over the top. Needless to say that was foul. No really, just foul. I think this was one of the few times i wasn't forced to eat everything on my plate.

Oh then there was curry that turned the white plastic spoon yellow. A vibrant shade of yellow. I think this happened when I was maybe 13 or 14. When I moved out at 22 the spoon was still yellow.

Ok I know, there was the spag bol that was a vibrant pink colour due to being watered down so much and bulked up with baked beans. Hello.

All in all she didn't do to badly, she made the budget and the meals stretch which couldn't have been easy, and I ended up here at 165kg so I must of eaten what she cooked. And these days when you go for a meal it is usually pretty good, but some memorable moments were had at our dinner table.

I have taken some of the things that I believed contributed to me being 165kg and toned them down at my dinner table now though. My girls don't have to eat everything on their plates and they are not forced to eat anything they don't like. There is a balance between healthy food and junk and they eat regularly throughout the day. Dessert is not an everyday thing but when we have it everyone is offered some, you don't have to eat all your dinner to get dessert. Nobody eats from anyone elses plate. P is the biggest culprit for doing this especially when the girls have knocked up and there are still roast potatoes on thier plates. I stop him and try and explain where I am coming from on this point. So we get by. And I think we do ok.

I haven't yet told my girls to go wrap the chicken in toilet paper and put it in the fridge to cook (a famous mother quote) but I am sure that I will say something equally dumb and they will require some therapy and maybe a blog to see some of the funny side to their childhoods.

I think I may have just opened a can of worms. I think you may be hearing a lot more about my relationship with my mother as we get closer to banding day. It is complex, as I am sure people can relate. It needs some thought......

3 comments:

Cat McKenzie said...

I grew up in a house very like yours. You had to eat quick or either my dad or brother would be picking food off our plates before we'd had a chance to finish. We also had to clean our plates before we could leave the table (because the human garbage compactors would only take the best bits ... and would leave you the crap).

All I can tell you is that in the five months since my banding, I've learned to eat slowly. Oh, sure, I forget sometimes, and then I do pay the price for that, but every day it gets easier and now going slow and really thinking about what I'm eating is pretty much a facet of my life.

If you get a chance, see if you can get a book at your local library called "If Not Dieting, Then What," by Dr Rick Kausman. He developed a technique called mindful eating, which is actually really fascinating and which is quite helpful.

If you can't get it, have a look at http://www.mindfuleating.org/index.html. It basically explains the concept (although Kausman's book is better).

Cat

Bulge Bandit said...

Thanks cat

I'll give that book a go. Very hard changing habits of a lifetime

Melanie said...

Hi there
I can relate to lots you are talking about. I've been reading your blog and I think we must be being banded around the same time. I'm a decade older than you and my kids also tend to be on the chubby side - it's genetic. My husband is thin and tall! I'm writing this munching my Optifast Chocalate bar - I'm being banded by Dr Michael Crawford in Sydney on 31 July. I'm finding Optifast hard going but keeping the final objective in sight. I'm scared but excited by all our fellow bloggers' successes. Perhaps we'll be cheering on the next wave of banders by Christmas. Cheers, Melanie