T -1 Ian, the man chips built.

Well with one day to go to surgery I got thinking about what made me the man I am today. Was it chocolate: nope, hate the stuff and would happily see it banned for no other reason that it would piss some people off (I’m like that at times!). Was it booze? Nope again. While I can drink, I don’t as frankly the taste is normally nasty and the headache I get after only a few slips simply isn’t worth it. Also, its much more fun watching people get drunk and acting the fool, than you be the fool yourself.

 How about snacking? No again, I don’t really do that. I do have a nasty habit of eating while preparing food though, something which has been cured to a degree by CBH taking over the cooking duties in our house after 20 years of leaving it to me. 

 No, my down fall comes from chips….. yes that’s right, the MIGHTY CHIP. All hail to the deep fried potato. Let’s worship at its feet (yes, I know they have eyes but not feet) and raise it to the status of a god like invention. 

 I won’t bother going into the history of the chip, although there was a rather good BBC 4 documentary on fish and chips a few weeks back for those who are interested, but my history of chip eating is the subject of this post….dissolves back to the dim and distant past……well 1973 to be exact (what do you mean you weren’t born!!)…….

 

Back in the day, I enjoyed nothing more than going to watch our local team play. Their ground, the great and sadly missed Green Pond Road was some 10 minutes walk away from our home….10 minutes which gave me plenty of time for a post match bag of chips. My expenditure for the evening would go like this…admission 12 ½ p, 2 ½ p for a programme, 5p for a can of coke at half time and 5p for a bag of chips on the way home. So, an evening entertainment for 25p…. try telling the kids now days that you could have an evening out for five bob and they would look at you all strange and ask who was Bob and why did you need five of them?

Moving forward a few years, well about 10, the next incident which comes to mind was a football trip to Yeovil. My bother Gary and I arrived at the ground on the team coach about two hours before kick-off so headed out for something to eat…..and of course found a chip shop in which my now late brother (he died at aged 49 after he fell off a ladder…. Yes, his weight meant that he was unable to fight the infections he caught in hospital….) gave a master class in chip eating finishing off not one, but two large bags of the steaming greasy love torpedoes…. Er, perhaps I should have worded that differently? And to top it all off, after the match he had another two bags while we waited for the coach home… Gary, a man for all chips. 

We move forward Dear Reader to 1994. I have moved to the West Midlands and find myself working with the shittiest people I have ever worked with…. Thinking about it, I would have preferred to stay working as a temp putting rubbish in a waste compactor than working with these low life back stabbing scum. And of course, that’s their good points. I really hated working in the office, so would take myself off out at lunchtime and to go and sit in my car. Yes, I know it’s antisocial but that’s how I am at times. Anyway, whilst trying to get away from my work colleagues I made a discovery the love of which has stayed with me since….battered chips. 

Like we don’t have “wallys” in the Midlands, I am almost completely sure you don’t get battered chips in the South East….its such a shame and I feel for you, I really do (actually, on my last trip home I noted the loss of many fine local chip shops with many of them being turned into “fast food” outlets….yuk yuk and double yuk. Perhaps I should start the “Campaign for Real Chip Shops”). How to describe their taste is beyond my literary skills (which as you will have noted are quite limited anyway) but let’s say I would walk a mile of two to a shop which sold them, rather than have normal chips. That’s not to say that normal chips aren’t worth eating but why have ordinary when you have extraordinary. To this end, I was so pleased when King Cod opened only half a mile from here….. they know me and my order by heart. I feel sorry for them now that I am no longer able to buy from them; their trade is going to suffer badly.

To bring us up to date, given my increasing weight, CBH has moved me away from fried chips, to something she calls “oven chips.” No, not the nasty frozen over priced rubbish you can get from Tescos etc, but to homemade ones tossed in a little oil and some pepper and roasted in the oven. While they don’t have the fattiness of a fried chip, they aren’t bad.

 

Overall therefore, chips have made me the man I am today. By chips, I am going to miss you…sob.   

T-2. The Bonk and sweet sugary hell.

So, two days to the operation and still I am bricking it. A little more so given the events of the last few days................ dissolve, wibbly wobbly style to Sunday afternoon.....

It being a nice afternoon: sunny, warm and little wind, and having finished my work around the house, I dragged my old fat body out for a ride with the intention of doing at least 20 miles and perhaps, with a little luck and a fair wind, a few miles more. Sadly that's not the way it turned out.

It started so well however with the "mountains" of Staffordshire put to the sword by my powerful leg muscles. Or, in reality, I managed to drag myself up a couple of slopes which normally cause me issues. Indeed, after 10 miles I was feeling good. And then it hit me, the bonk.

Okay, stop sniggering at the back. To "bonk" means something completely different to a cyclist than it does to a "normal" member of the public. To bonk to a cyclist means that they run out of energy as their blood sugar levels drop to a low level meaning the muscles can't use sugar to form energy. Or something like that. All I know is I was bombing along the airfield road watching the gliders when bammmmmm.... nothing left in the tank....it was like I had been hit by anti aircraft fire and was going down..... sorry.

For such occasions, most cyclists have a "gel" and with the aid of this sticky, horrible mess, I managed to get home a little underpowered and underspeed. My wish for a "long" day in the saddle (long day to me is far different than that for other cyclists!) went out of the window, but another 14.4 miles at 11.8mph was achieved, taking my yearly mileage to over 1 200. Now I know that's not great, but its better than last years and the year befores effort.

So what do I put the bonk down to.... well it might have something to do with how few calories this pre-op diet gives you. For example, on Sunday I started off with one egg, some mushrooms on toast for breakfast and then one diet shake for "lunch." Around, as a rough guess, 500 calories. According to Strava, the ride itself burnt over 800. The diet is also quite low in carbs which are useful when cycling. I do feel I am going to have to watch very, very closely what I eat whilst out cycling to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

Right, finished with bonking, which as a fat bastard CBH will be pleased to hear..... and onto Sweet Sugary Hell....

As part of the pre-op diet, the clinic expects the victim....sorry the person undergoing the treatment to lose some weight and reduce the size of their liver. To do this, they (Healthier Weight) sell a pre-op box which contains sufficient meal replacement shakes for the pre and post op "liquids only" diet. Well, being the good boy that I am....stop laughing at the back.... I decided to try one of them yesterday morning instead of the Tescos own brand I had been using..... NEVER AGAIN.... they were so sweet I can still feel my teeth rotting away despite having cleaned them twice since! How they get away with selling such rubbish is beyond me! A quick look at the packet shows that they are mostly sugar which, as someone with diabetes and a hate of anything sweet, is about as much use to me as a chocolate tea pot!

So, I have 98 Healthier Weight shakes laying there waiting to be drunk that I have no intention of  ever going near again! If you want them, make me an offer....although I do realise I haven't really made a good job of selling them! Instead, I went to the well know slave employers Holland and Barratt and brought some whey powder with the intention of making my own protein shakes. I'll add some fruit, a drop of milk and a multi vit and it should do the same and leave me not facing a huge dental bill at the end of the day!

Right, that's sufficient from me for today....some might say the first line was sufficient but hey ho!

Bricking it....

No, not the Scarborough FC coach after the game back in 1977..... I didn't actually do the bricking but stood at the back holding coats and shouting encouragement in a moronic way as most brain dead 16 year old's are able to do. Now, as a still brain dead 53 year old I would never think about throwing a brick at a coach. That would just be stupid....

Anyway, returning from my idiotic teenage years: somewhere I would never like to return to, apart from the health and fitness I had then of course, you may ask why I was bricking it yesterday?

Well, I received notification of when I needed to be at the hospital which of course started me thinking about the operation and how nasty that will be (if you don't think it going to be uncomfortable etc, then have you really read up on it) and then how on Earth am I going to get back from there?

My issue is not the actual getting back, perhaps I should have put that a different way, but what happens to my wife (here after known as CBH- "considerably better half"), if I have to stay in overnight. CBH isn't good traveling alone in places she doesn't know, so I was worried that there was no way she could get home. Thankfully, to put my mind to rest, I spoke to the nurse who will oversee my care who informed me I would be out that evening, around 7pm as very very very few people need an overnight stay. Phew.

However, thinking about it a bit further, do I really think that after quite major surgery (okay, some would argue that its not that major.... being cut open in at least four places seems major to me) and being given blood thinning drugs and painkillers, is it right to send someone home with only CBH to care for them. Now I know (or lets be honest, would like to know) that CBH would look good in a nurses outfit, she isn't a nurse and with no A&E in town after 10pm (f*cking Tories closed it down and still got re-elected. I don't understand the people of this town at times), if something goes wrong, it could turn serious.

As you can see from the above, I love looking on the bright side of life... to this end, I also updated my will yesterday leaving everything to CBH, although I told her the local cats home was getting it all; which she seemed okay with....? (We have six cats so the money will go to them in the end!)

Returning to the subject of getting home. Being banned from driving for 48 hours, we have two choices of how to get home. My preferred method would be by train from Birmingham International. If we knew when I would be discharged, I could book a First Class ticket back for as little as £5! Now I know First Class may seem a little poncy but for a fiver???? Or, we could go home by taxi....

Now I have a thing about taxi's in that their regulation is quite lax and I am never a fan of being driven by someone else...no one is as good a driver as me and I am willing to shout at anyone else on the road who dares to challenge me on this....as CBH says, if we get to the end of the street without me seeing a moronic driver, we have done well. That's quite harsh given we live four houses from the end of the street! However, after speaking to the hospital who recommended a taxi firm, I gave them a ring and for only £61, they are happy to drive me and CBH home without pre booking. That's not bad really as long as the driver doesn't think he it James Hunt or drives like one!

Do I feel more relaxed about the operation et al? A little I suppose but I still wish it wasn't happening and I could get my weight under control in a natural way. However, I tried that and it doesn't work for me. Oh, quick laugh....the nurse I spoke to asked me how the pre-op diet was going. Okay I said... I was a bit hungry this morning so I had a fry up. You should have heard the sharp intake of breath from her.... until I explained that it was a non fried fry-up of tomatoes, mushrooms, a few beans and one egg. And lovely it was too.

Finally, or this post will end next week.... did a quick ride after work last night. Only 11 miles in 52 minutes but it did feel a little easier. I didn't go further as I promised to be back in time for tea and at 4pm on a Friday evening, the traffic tends to be quite heavy.

Right, enjoy your weekend...off for a bacon and egg sandwich for breakfast.... non fried and without any fats of course!

T-7 days.... dieting is easy....

Today is the half way stage of my pre op diet. So, with major nerves, I "jumped" onto the scales. Well actually, I have a long wee, a large poo and tried to breathe out as much as I could before stepping into the scale.

Did it work? Have a lost weight after eating less than 1 000 calories a day for seven days? Also, I have topped up the exercise I have undertaken to at least half an hour a day.

"Well," I thought stepping off the scale: "That can't be right." So, I tried again. And yes, it did seem right.

So it seems that dieting and more exercise does actually work and you can lose weight. However, losing weight is easy, its keeping it off that hard. I am sure that if I was not going to be chopped in half next week and a mega large piece of plastic stuck inside me to stop me from ever enjoying my life again...........not actually true but there is part of me that believes this! There is another part of me which tells me that if I lose weight, then oppotunties currently not available to me will eventually become so.

Take for example the fact that today is the first day of the Audax New Year (happy New Year all... and no we don't have dancing dragons or fireworks is Audaxers.... we prefer bus shelters and cake. For those who have no idea what Audax is, this should help: http://www.aukweb.net/aboutauk/faq/  And no, you do not need a beard.  Or at the moment I am reading a book about the National Hill climbing championship (A Corinthian Endeavour by Paul Jones. Available in all good book shops and on Amazon for those who don't mind their tax avoiding nature). It would be nice to be able to climb hills on my bike such as the Col de Hyde Lea or the mighty "Col de King Cod (might have to avoid this latter Col as it takes me to my favourite chippie!).

So life is a bit of a balance. I have to suffer now for gain later. Or do I give up and carry on as I have been doing so, and lose out now and lose out later as well? Silly really as a decision has already been made and the operation is go ahead next Thursday: the 8th.

To that end, I received the paperwork from the hospital today.  Got to say, for a private hospital who are charging a substantial amount I would think (no idea really but I would estimate that a couple of grand out of what I have paid will go to them for the use of the room and the theatre, but of course, I might be miles off) its a bit mean for me to have to pay for postage to return an admission form to them. Oh and they want my credit card details in case I buy a newspaper or something when I am there. God, what meanies, I'll buy my copy of the Morning Star on the way there.

It seems I have to be there around 12.30pm (oh and while I am moaning, the standard of English in the letter was poor. Yes I know I am one to moan about poor English but that's never stopped me!) so hopefully they will "do" me around 2pm and I will be out around 6 to 7pm and home by 9pm? It would be useful if Healthier Weight/the hospital gave me more information but as I am expecting a phone call from them in  the next day or so, I'll ask then.

Okay that's enough for today. And in case you were wondering, I have lost 5kg this week (or 11lb). That's a hell of a lot for one week but as it feels like I have given up eating, its not surprising! Its certainly not a level I could keep up for any length of time!