I am fat. I have always been fat. It’s rather annoying actually. If I hadn’t been fat I wouldn’t have gone through puberty at 11, therefore I wouldn’t have stopped growing at 13 therefore I wouldn’t be so darn short.
Exams, school, Medschool, career, etc, always came first. And when you have 4 stone to loose even when you turn over a new leaf and start going to the gym, you aim for about 1lb a week weight loss. So bugger all happens, you don’t loose weight and then you give up. That’s it.
I’ve worked with two diabetologists who have both mentioned my weight as if it’s a big problem. And with a BMI of 38 it is a big problem. I can’t blame it on being trans – I do swim without embarrassment. (I have to admit I just get changed in communal changing rooms and no one seems to notice I don’t have a penis). I just like eating food. It makes me happy.
A few of our nurses have lost lost of weight on lighter life. Basically it’s a 500kcal a day diet, you live off ready made soups and shakes, and you don’t eat food.
It’s stupid. It’s vaguely healthy. I’ll give it that. There’s enough medical supervision to ensure you wouldn’t get scurvy. They make you go to a group therapy session once a week to talk about your issues around food. This is meant to mean that you combat your issues around food so that you don’t go back to binging.
Oddly enough they don’t publish there follow up data. Everyone I’ve meet who’s done it has ended up putting the weight back on. Or at least some of it.
Clearly it doesn’t work in the long term. Clearly it is a expensive waste of money and really doesn’t have much success in making long term changes.
So why am I writing this drinking a lighter life 125calorie soup?
Because to be honest I can’t try anything else. I’m crap at the slow weight loss because of the lack of results. I just hope that I will manage to maintain my weight.
The first problem is that they wanted to know my medical history. I had no intention of telling my ‘group leader’ that I was trans, the woman seems to be an annoying idiot to be honest. Also the groups are single sex – so she might not be comfortable letting me into the the mens group if she knew.
Now technically as a very low carlorie diet is meant to be medically supervised, so you are supposed to get a form filled in by your GP. As it happens I know that there’s no reason I can’t do lighter life. So my friend filled in the form for me, as she doesn’t know I’m trans there was no problem there. They didn’t notice that the Doctor wasn’t my GP, the just checked that it was a Doctor.
Well I have now been doing it 1.2 weeks and lost a stone. That is actually quite impressive. I’ve got the hang of not eating quite well. I’ve managed to go for a weekend away with my girlfriend and sit opposite her whilst having a romantic meal for two without eating anything. That was tough.
But I’m actually seeing positive changes, so that’s good. I’m also getting fitter. You’d think on 500 calories a day you’d be tired, but I’m not I feel great.
Things people have said