Do you ever regret your surgery?

[Lisa :) 231]

I am 15 months post op and have been in a stall for over 3 months now. I know that the reason I'm not losing right now is b/c I'm snacking way more than I should be. What's great is that I haven't gained ANY weight!! I'm also at, what I believe, is my "set point" (the weight my body wants to be at). In the past when I've gotten to this point, I give up and I gain it all back. Now, that doesn't happen!! My only regret is that I waited so long to do it!! I would do it all over again in a heart beat!!!

[KRB829 47]

I have no regrets!!! I was 410 lbs, I was on 18 different medications, I couldn't even walk from my bedroom to the bathroom without gasping for air, and my life was miserable. Now I am 137 lbs down in 4 1/2 months, I'm off of 16 of those medications, I can walk, run, breathe, I feel wonderful and I still have 90 lbs. So no regrets for me, I am living my life like it's golden:)

[cygnusatratus 73]

[quote name=Lisa ' timestamp='1358359455' post='636771]

In the past when I've gotten to this point, I give up and I gain it all back. Now, that doesn't happen!! My only regret is that I waited so long to do it!! I would do it all over again in a heart beat!!!

Exactly why I defied my wife's wishes and had this surgery. Ask me in a year how I feel about it. I hope it is better than I feel today.

[sarsar 824]

Almost 2 years out and I have, not once, ever regretted my surgery. I am thankful to God that I had this done and I thank Him every day for giving me the opportunity to have a small stomach. When I decided to have the surgery I did enough research to know that I was ready for this and that it was going to work. I made a decision never to look back and waste my time thinking of what could have been. Where there times that were/are hard? Of course but that is just life.

Once you lose weight and start really living your life, surgery isn't the main thing on your mind anymore. You are actually living again like a normal person and you feel free. You have a new way of eating and drinking and it is just normal for you. You will get there, I promise.

This surgery has changed my life in more ways than I can count. I am so very thankful! I am happy, I am alive and I am ME again!

[kortolano 100]

How can you know for sure unless you try it ??????? No one lives of shakes for the rest of life Neither they have to survive on 800 cals a day eventually you will need around 1200 calories and you will be able to eat regular food.

Sent from my iPhone 5 using VST

I have tried many times. I got down to 135lbs just to gain it back because i do not have the will power to only eat 800 or 1200 calories a day. It starts off like oh this peice of cake wont hurt then before you know you are downing a fried shrimp poboy and a large diet coke weight twice as much as you did before you started. If I had the self controll and will power to only eat 1200 calories a day i would not weigh what i do. I need sleeve as a tool to help me.

[aug62012 27]

I have not regretted it, not even the day after surgery or when I woke up in the recovery room in a lot of pain. It has been 5 1/2 months since surgery, I am down 87 pounds. 10 were from the 2 week preop diet. I am off my cpap machine and blood pressure medicine. I can shop in the regular section for clothing and feel great. I LOVE my sleeve.

[Lisa :) 231]

Exactly why I defied my wife's wishes and had this surgery. Ask me in a year how I feel about it. I hope it is better than I feel today.

I'm pretty sure a year from now you WILL NOT feel the way you do today!!!

So much changes once you get past the 6 month mark. I also think it's important to remember that stalls are part of the process. I used to get super discouraged when my weight would stall. Now, I focus on the ways in which my life has improved that have nothing to do with the scale or my size!! I FEEL so much better. I have more energy. I'm a triathlete now!! Even if I don't lose another pound....I'm living the life I've dreamed about for the past 15 years!!!

Hang in there!!!

[clk 3,519]

No regrets. I am 2.5 years out and pregnant and my biggest complaint is that the lactose intolerance that was making itself known with small inconveniences became a full blown issue post op. It would have happened anyway, but it happened sooner due to the sleeve.

And yeah, any of us *could* have lost weight on diets before and likely tried. And likely failed, or we wouldn't have seriously considered the sleeve, am I correct?

The difference? My tool is permanent. Everyone is different but you're still fresh out from surgery without even six months under your belt. Willpower and the Atkins diet will only get you so far, even if you cut out most of your stomach. The real difference here is that I had a tool to keep the hunger under control, the portions in check, and the scale moving (albeit slowly) while I worked on the REAL issue behind my obesity. Which wasn't an inability to eat a special diet or hop on a treadmill - it was an emotional attachment to food. I was an overeater (and totally in denial about it) and I had a completely unhealthy relationship with food. Diets? I'd done those for eighteen years and failed before I finally found a way to eat like a normal person who has never had a weight problem.

And all the rest of it: being thin, being more active, keeping up with my kids, no longer being diabetic, having great blood pressure, not suffering from joint pain and a host of emotional/mental perks like regained confidence and losing the social anxiety that had plagued me for years - all of that was just the icing on the cake in the rebuilding of my new life.

I owe every bit of that journey to my sleeve. Without it, I couldn't have focused on anything but how hungry I felt on the current diet.

You're doing great. And I've seen a number of people go back and forth on this. I can't speak to what you could have accomplished without surgery. But I can tell you that in my experience, no diet was going to last the seventeen months it took me to get to goal and it wouldn't have given me the extra tools I needed to not just lose the weight, but the baggage.

~Cheri

[jen1211 203]

I am only 5 weeks out and other than a few moments immeditely after surgery I have not regretted it! At 5 weeks out, I have lost 40 pounds and that 40 pound loss has free'd me in so many ways! I can only imagine what a year can do! My breathing/activity tolerance and sleeping are so much better already. I'm very happy and looking forward to the next year.

[amytug 996]

Strange fruit- stinkin thinkin will get you nowhere.

[sarahas 2]

I'm not sleeved yet but have all these same fears . specialy reading all these diffrent posts on this forum . pi have 2 little kids no helth prob except sevee back pain and that I'm fat is that a good enough reason to make this permanent change will I b e able to have enough energy to run after my kids after? will my depression worsen? and meds not work I was so suee I was ready ro do rhis now I'm feeakin out

[joseph 40]

Ye, i regretted it, but NOT anymore, the time i regretted it was when i had leak,the stent was so annoying,it was like a cancer,but thank god, now i'm good and i've lost so much weight im thankful.

[Kapoorvilla 117]

YES!!! This Am stepped on the scale weighed 255.6. I was sleeved 12/5 weighed in at 277. On 12/21 at my first preop I weighed 255.? The frustration of being on a very restricted eating pattern and not losing weight is absolutely mental torture. I stopped weighing daily and only weigh on Thursdays so after a week of hitting every goal on my plan and seeing the scales and the measure tape stay the exact same thing for almost a month now YES I regret this surgery!

I had a complication so my whole world knows about my surgery. Can you imagine what they all think! I am sticking to all my goals given by NUT because everybody talks about the honeymoon that you have the first few months and how you loose the most then. Well I have only lost the initial 22lbs and nothing for a month. This honeymoon really stinks!

I think for me this was a mistake that almost cost me my life and now I am going to look like a fool before everybody who knows me because my body won't loose. I regret this surgery very very much at this stage. I feel helpless I am doing what I am suppose to do and nothing is working.

Yes I know about stalls, yes I know about Water, carbs and exercise. None of that is really making a difference in my weight loss or my feelings rigth now. I really regret that everyone knows I had this surgey and now I look like fool. They probably all think I am still eating junk and being lazy but that is far from the truth. As a matter of fact I quit eating fried foods years ago, cut down carbs years before surgery. Was at 900 calories daily for a long spell before surgery. I should have known when I failed to loose much pre surgery on such a strict diet that I was not going to loose post surgery.

My highest weight 386 in 2006, I lost to 270 range by 2011 and bounce around between 270 to 320 upto surgery were I was 277. Now for all I have went thru 22 lbs!!! Wow REALLY!!

I sincerely am beginng to doubt I will ever be successful. I know some will say well you have already lost 130+ lbs but I had really hope this surgery would take me to a NORMAL weight. I had tried for a long time but hit this wall in the 250's and even the surgery will not let me break thru the 250's!! I thought I had broken this stall by eating really small amounts every three hours upping fluids and activity. Always hitting the Protein but all of that got me 0 lbs and inches for the effort. It is going to be really hard to get motivate to workout.

" your gaining muscle" someone said, well I am sure under this fat I look like Hercules by now then.

Thank You VST for letting me rant. It feels better to say it all but I am still 255.6 Arhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

[vonego82 36]

I have no regrets!

I should have done it sooner.

But those feelings are part of the process and remember that that was also an addiction.

[Strangefruit 179]

...Willpower and the Atkins diet will only get you so far, even if you cut out most of your stomach. The real difference here is that I had a tool to keep the hunger under control, the portions in check, and the scale moving (albeit slowly) while I worked on the REAL issue behind my obesity. Which wasn't an inability to eat a special diet or hop on a treadmill - it was an emotional attachment to food. I was an overeater (and totally in denial about it) and I had a completely unhealthy relationship with food.

You're doing great. And I've seen a number of people go back and forth on this. I can't speak to what you could have accomplished without surgery. But I can tell you that in my experience, no diet was going to last the seventeen months it took me to get to goal and it wouldn't have given me the extra tools I needed to not just lose the weight, but the baggage.

~Cheri

I think, Cheri that you hit the nail on the head... what I am "regretting" is really mourning my relationship (albeit) unhealthy - with food. I am 52, and for over 40 yrs have had a love / hate relationship with food... I have "broken up" with food, loved food, gone back to food, and what I am feeling now is the inability to resume that broken relationship. I have to look at food differently now - food as nutrition, not food as comfort, as love, as entertainment, as so many things...

With the sleeve, even when I eat healthy food, I have to stop before *I* am ready...not when my stomach is sated... it is a hard thing to unlearn. My relationship with food is what I am mourning... I used food to reward myself for so long, I resent that when I really *want* something, I can't have it - even when I *think* I deserve it.

Last week, my son texted me to please stop by Krispy Kreme and bring home some hot donuts... I did and got a dozen... I did not even eat ONE as I was afraid the greasiness and sugar would cause dumping syndrome (which I have never had, but like a root canal I know I don't want it)...

And, I guess it bummed me out...that I couldn't even have ONE.

I needed to read the responses...you guys *are* right...I am off my blood pressure medicine, I am exercising daily and feel better, the scale is moving slowly, but I am wearing clothes I haven't worn in over 2 years... I guess I just needed to "say" it aloud - that sometimes I am sad that I cannot order pub fries and a margarita anymore for dinner...