The Rollercoaster ride of weight loss / gain

 

I can't stand it. This is the first time in my life where I've had this sort of thing happen, and it's driving me slightly mad. 

As folk who know me will already know, I've had the sort of nightmarish year health-wise that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Nothing to do with COVID-19 (thankfully) but just as the world was going into lockdown, I was diagnosed with Gall Bladder disease and then acute Pancreatitis. 

This meant two spells in hospital, an agonisingly painful procedure, being nil by mouth for a fortnight and then an agonisingly slow recovery from all that as I wait for an op to remove my gall bladder (at time of writing, some 6 months on, I'm still in the queue but that's fully understandable in the current circumstances, with the NHS stretched to the limit fighting the Coronavirus). 

The weird fallout from all of this has been acute weight loss. Sounds like a dream come true for a middle aged bloke who struggled to lose even a couple of pounds before (despite a vegetarian diet and a reasonable exercise regime). I dropped to 10 st 0 lbs, the first time I'd been that weight since the mid 90s (before I only dropped to that weight because I was a poor student, and literally lived hand to mouth). 

My normal weight's nearer 11st 10 lbs, so losing nearly 2 stone really meant that I looked like I'd been released from a concentration camp. I didn't recognise my face (doubly so because I now have a 'permanent' beard for the first time in my life too, one my wife won't let me shave off, strange woman!) I didn't feel healthy, and though I still had a podgy tummy (largely due to the pancreatitis / fluid retention / bloating), I'd lost all my muscle mass and strength as well. 

I have spent the last few months trying to claw my way back to health. My diet has radically changed, not through choice but because of the health problems I'm scanning every single ingredients list for stuff I eat to ensure it doesn't go over 3g of saturated fat (look at the nutritional information on practically anything you eat and even if you're a vegetarian / vegan, you'll probably be quite shocked at the sheer amount of saturated fat in even the most innocent-seeming foods). 

Being a total bore about this stuff is infuriating. My wife almost sounds gleeful as she reads the nurtitional values while we're online shopping for our weekly groceries, crossing off all the stuff that previously I'd happily scoff down without a moment's pause, but now can't eat at all. Cheese - ah cheese, the foodstuff of the gods, now consigned to the tiniest sprinkling of mozzarella if we make a pizza but now never eaten at any other time (god I miss cheese and pickle sarnies with proper mature cheddar, or a slice of Danish Blue on a cracker, Gromit). 

Chocolate? Forget it. Weirdly most sugary things are still OK, and I can still drink coffee (thank grud) and drink semi-skimmed milk. Hacking away the saturated fat from my diet means that though I initially started to gain a few lbs as my appetite returned, I could never get above 10st 4, in fact most of the time it rises and falls between 10st 2 to a high of 10st 4-5. 

I can't eat large portions any more (doing so means a night of pain, regardless of fat levels). To try and regain my muscle mass I've taken to regular 30 minute workouts every morning (a mix of muscle exercises, yoga and aerobic stuff to get my heart pumping, as well as walking my daughter to school every day which is another 30 mins of light exercise there and back). 

I still don't recognise my body, and I still don't feel particularly healthy, despite being told by my fitness programme that I am now the ideal weight / BMI for my height (before, apparently, even at 11st 10 I was supposedly morbidly obese!)

The recent rumblings from the government about what constitutes a 'healthy' weight are laughable when you consider that as your muscle mass increases (along with your fitness levels) your weight also increases (bigger muscles weigh more, who knew?) and some of the fittest people I know are also 'big' by any ridiculously idealistic body shape guidelines. I guess my point in rambling about all this is that I miss the old me at times (I definitely miss my previous strength levels) and really don't recommend banjaxing your gall bladder and pancreas as a method of acute weight loss.