I have a follow-up appointment with my primary care physician tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it. I wish I had chosen a PCP who was supportive of WLS but at least she gave me a referral.

I don’t know what she’s going to say when I tell her I didn’t start the diet. I’m going to tell her I can’t follow a diet that has red meat and beans and that doesn’t allow for substitutions. I also don’t think it made any sense to go on a diet before being evaluated for WLS. I have to remind myself not to be combative with her about dieting because having a statement in my record that I am uncooperative would be a strike against me.

I have an appointment with the dietician on Wednesday, so I am going to tell my PCP that I would rather wait until I see the dietician to see what she says about whether I should go on a strict diet now.

I don’t believe I have hypertension. I was so worried about having high blood pressure (My paternal uncle died from a stroke. My brother had a stroke in his late 20s.) that I bought a blood pressure machine soon after I saw my PCP, and I have not had a single high reading on it (except for a few times when I didn’t do it correctly. You have to sit quietly for 5 minutes before taking your BP. Otherwise you can get a ridiculously high reading–like 159/110).

Although I know having high BP is in your favor when it comes to being approved for WLS, the fact is high BP can kill you so I don’t want it.

In my discussion with the social worker, she said it was a good idea to start altering your eating habits beforehand rather than doing cold turkey. So I have started to do this.

Despite all my research I didn’t know you had to give up caffeine. Yikes! I can feel the caffeine withdrawal headaches coming on already. No really! I have cut down on caffeine in the past few days. I take Tylenol if I feel the slightest headache.

I have officially given up diet soda as of Friday. It wasn’t as hard as I thought. I’m now drinking Crystal Light and it’s not bad.

However, I have a card for a free coffee and I am going to have that coffee tomorrow, but that will be my last.

I have also for the most part stopped drinking while eating. I used to think that you would choke on your food if you didn’t drink while eating. Now I know that’s not true. I’ve found that sweets lose some of their appeal when you can’t drink to lessen the sweetness. Don’t get me wrong! I didn’t say I stopped eating them, but the sweetness gets to be too much after a while when you have nothing to wash it down.

Well, that’s it for now. Let’s see how much my PCP scolds me for not starting a diet and gaining more weight.