If you still struggle afterwards, why do it?

[Wags 549]

Cara' date='

I may be an odd ball, but I do NOT struggle at all with keeping the weight off. No white knuckling here! I reached goal in six months and that was back in Dec. 2010. I've been maintaining for over 2.5 years.

I would do this again in a heartbeat, I wish I had been 35 or 40 instead of 50 when I had VSG!!!! It's life changing, life altering - it's wonderful, every day is STILL is exciting to me. I've been on board and beyond thrilled since I woke up in recovery. It's fun, it's a wild ride and you will not believe how different your life is a year into this journey!!!

I am pretty darn lazy, and by that I mean, I am not a gym rat, I am not a member of a gym and I do not do any 'formal' exercise. I park as far out as I can in parking lots, even in triple digit heat, and I do it on purpose, I go up and down our stairs more times than I need to. I have a 5 lb weighted ball that I toss around on occasion and I have even started doing 'wall' push ups. That's it. I know me, I have the attention span of a four year old. I did NOT want part of my weight loss to be due to my sudden interest in exercising....so I can honestly say, NONE of my weight loss was due to joining Curves, Gold's Gym etc. I DID know that I would need to make lifestyle changes that I could do forever, changes that would become my new life, my new normal. That is what I did and that is what I will continue to do. Age, boredom nor a twisted ankle will be a stumbling block and deal breaker!!!

There are things I do that I call my 'dashboard' - just like on my truck. I watch my dashboard and if something needs 'changing', I know it right away.....not eight or ten pounds down the road.

1) I weigh every morning

2) I weigh and/or measure my food when I'm home

3) I log my food on line (my fitness pal, I keep track of calories and protein)

Last but not least, I attend support groups. Most people go to one, I have four that I attend each month. I feel like I'm paying it forward. So many folks let ME pick their brains and ask numerous questions & calmed my fears early on. Now I am doing it for others. I am usually further out than most people at the support group meetings, so I seldom come across somebody to answer MY questions, but there are plenty for me!!! LoL

There are other little things that I started doing prior to surgery and continue to do, at least most of the time. Keep in mind, a lot of our 'issues' are all in our heads!! I eat on a smaller plate, a salad plate or bread and butter plate, it's great for 'visually' seeing a plate that isn't all plate and a dab of food. I eat with a seafood fork most of the time. Little changes like that, also become habit and it is helpful.

Good luck on whatever decision you make. Make sure to research, ask questions.....get on board, all of you, to make lifestyle changes. I feel like I eat like a naturally thin person, for the first time in my life, I am in control, food is not. Know that the doctor removes approx 85% of your stomach, after that, it is all up to you. This is a life time commitment, and like I said, I don't consider it work or time consuming, it's my new life. It is forever, there is no end date and it is worth every single change I've made. I still eat, nothing is "off limits" to me except carbonation, big deal, right???!!! There are things I choose not to eat or at least not often, but no hunger makes it much, much easier to resist when I need/want to.

Again, good luck!![/quote']

How much did you have to lose to reach your goal weight? How tall are you?

[NtvTxn 1,262]

How much did you have to lose to reach your goal weight? How tall are you?

I've lost a total of 81 - 84.5 pounds, I fluctuate. I lost 23 pounds prior to surgery.

I'm 5'7"

[moonlitestarbrite 902]

my surgeon thinks that the stomach is at least in part responsible for obesity. he believe that in obese people it is dysfunctional... it produces too much leptin and doesnt send full signals. so removing much of it is really helpful to us fat people. just his thoughts about why some people get better from comorbitities before even losing any weight. he said more research needs to be done.

i am thrilled with the surgery because A. i now know when i am full. i never really felt full before. B. i am not hungry all the time anymore.

there is a huge difference between "i need to develop healthy habits now so i dont regain the weight in two years" and struggling. being conscious of what i am eating and exercising regularly is the price i have to pay to be healthy. this is not a struggle, its what everyone has to do.

the struggle for me is learning to cope with my stress, anxiety and ADHD without food. i have been medicating myself for a long time now. since i was 10. i am 47. but it gets a little better day by day. the exercise helps. and so does feeling better about myself.

if you are sick of being fat and ready to make some long term lifestyle changes to be healthy, than you might be ready for this surgery! but its not a magic bullet and there is still work you will need to do in order to achieve and maintain your goal, esp with a sleeve.

[Justinh125 472]

For me, it doesn't feel like "white knuckling" anymore...anytime I used to diet, I felt hungry all the time, and it was perpetually frustrating.

Now, when I'm hungry, I eat! And since it's only a small amount of food, my total food intake for the day stays very low. But when I eat, it feels extremely satisfying, even though it's much less food than I used to eat per meal. So for me, the biggest difference is that this doesn't feel like "white knuckling" anymore.

[SuperFab 689]

I haven't be sleeved yet, but I must say this is the most influential, inspiring thread I've read.

[Justinh125 472]

Here's another example of how I feel like the sleeve has changed things for me:

This weekend, a very good friend on mine came to visit. We've known each other since we were about 12. As long as I've known him, he's always been extremely thin, and I've always struggled. In fact, there were times where he's tried to gain weight but couldn't do it. But what's interesting is that he never thinks about calories or which nutrients or anything. When he's hungry, he eats, and that's that.

For the first time, I got to feel a little bit of what it's like to be like him--being able to eat when I'm hungry and not have to worry so much about over-eating a giant meal and dealing with the consequences. Per meal, I probably only ate a tiny fraction of what he ate, but I felt full and satisfied. No longer was I the one having to sit there and obsess over calories and portion sizes. No "diet" could have done that for me personally.

[Wags 549]

I've lost a total of 81 - 84.5 pounds, I fluctuate. I lost 23 pounds prior to surgery.

I'm 5'7"

Thanks so much! I started st 253 and am at 196 right now. I'm almost the same height and was just curious to see if it was even possible for me to reach goal that early. I'm 3 months and 3 weeks out and my weight loss has slowed considerably this month ( I've only lost 5 pounds in three weeks). I eat between 700-800 calories, 80-90 grams of Protein and less than 50 grams of carbs. I log everything I eat on MFP. . I have the same philosophy as you do about exercise. I only want to do what is sustainable for life. Any advice?

[NtvTxn 1,262]

Thanks so much! I started st 253 and am at 196 right now. I'm almost the same height and was just curious to see if it was even possible for me to reach goal that early. I'm 3 months and 3 weeks out and my weight loss has slowed considerably this month ( I've only lost 5 pounds in three weeks). I eat between 700-800 calories, 80-90 grams of Protein and less than 50 grams of carbs. I log everything I eat on MFP. . I have the same philosophy as you do about exercise. I only want to do what is sustainable for life. Any advice?

congratulations!!! Do NOT poo poo 5 pounds. Celebrate every pound, not everyone will reach goal as fast as I did, we are all different and I really was very rigid with myself!! In my very humble opinion, changing behaviors, mindful eating.....planning what we'll eat and not just eat on the fly. Logging, weighing ourselves and our food, none of it is too time consuming and it all keeps me aware of how far I've come and I don't ever want to get complacent or forget what it was like yo yo dieting and failing for about 30 years! You can do this, it IS possible, never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd weigh in the low - mid 140's. I definitely underestimated what can be done with our new little tummy!!!!

Like I said, Celebrate each pound, each non scale victory. My favorite one is waking up and realizing I have a collar bone!!!!

Good luck and feel free to ask me anything!

[laffypatty 47]

congratulations!!! Do NOT poo poo 5 pounds. Celebrate every pound' date=' not everyone will reach goal as fast as I did, we are all different and I really was very rigid with myself!! In my very humble opinion, changing behaviors, mindful eating.....planning what we'll eat and not just eat on the fly. Logging, weighing ourselves and our food, none of it is too time consuming and it all keeps me aware of how far I've come and I don't ever want to get complacent or forget what it was like yo you dieting and failing for about 30 years! You can do this, it IS possible, never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd weigh in the low - mid 140's. I definitely underestimated what can be done with our new little tummy!!!!

Like I said, celebrate each pound, each non scale victory. My favorite one is waking up and realizing I have a collar bone!!!!

Good luck and feel free to ask me anything![/quote']

How many grams of carbs do I eat per day?

[moonlitestarbrite 902]

How many grams of carbs do I eat per day?

for what?

[laffypatty 47]

for what?

I'm sorry. I meant to ask how grams of carbs NtvTxn has per day.

[moonlitestarbrite 902]

got it! lol

[Sydney Susan 333]

I'm nearly 5 months out so not the Veteran you are looking for, and I hope some of our long termers like Lauraven, Gmanbat and some of those very eloquent long term "slow" losers (whose monikers i cant recall right now) wade into this with their words of wisdom. Thanks to Ntvtxn for her response (although I am dead jealous of someone who doesn't struggle).

I know you're not asking us why we did this or why you should do this, but rather why do this if long term the outcome is the same. It's a good question, particularly for younger people, that should probably be considered more before we throw ourselves into getting otherwise healthy bits of our body chopped out.... often at great risk and cost.

I lost 20kg in 2 months without really trying, and another 2 kg in the 3 months since, so I think it's fair to say I'm struggling. I've just had a load of blood tests so am hoping to find out there's something medical going on that can be rectified. I'm also suffering from really severe reflux now, and that makes me want to eat "slider foods" that soothe my very sore throat and oesophagus. All in all, life isn't super fantastic right now, but I hope my dr will be able to solve these problems.

Do I regret my surgery? NO WAY. I feel amazingly better 22kg lighter, though still need to lose another 10kg. I feel like I've "re-set" myself - which is not the same as feeling transformed I hasten to add.

My head is still my head, and I like food and tend to comfort eating when I'm down, same as before. I badly needed restriction and to get my appetite under control, but I think the latter is more about low carbs than the sleeve per se (for me at least). My dr and dietician also say it seems I need to eat less than 800 cal/day to lose weight and 1000 to maintain - far lower than most and than I'd have believed, but I've since noted on these posts that I'm certainly not alone in that.

If I had known the calorie restriction I should be on and the power of a low carb diet on my appetite I might have tried harder - I did lose weight with these mechanisms before but always regained quickly. That this still happens now has made me realise there really is no way out of these strategies for me - a useful but hard won insight.

I can see that I've changed v significantly in terms of my expectations of portion size, and that's terrific. Eating a whole pizza was so easy to do before and now the thought is distasteful on so many levels. One or 2 (or more likely a couple of bites of a second piece) is more than enough and there's no lack of satisfaction as I watch the family tuck away more, whereas there used to be when I tried to restrict myself even a little.

I feel more in control - not completely under control - and have great hope for the issues I have being resolved and those next 10kg getting the attention they need. I don't expect it to be easy but previously I felt helpless, and trapped inside a body that didn't feel like mine anymore. I think that's the key to deciding on drastic action like this.

Now hopefully more vets will tell us how it is to struggle 2, 3 and 4 years out, and whether it still seems worth it to have gone through the pain, costs and risks of the sleeve.

Thanks for asking such a pertinent question. It's of value to us all, even to those of already sleeved and struggling, as we try to work out strategies to shift us from "unsuccessful" or "somewhat successful" to "successful and satisfied".

Good luck with your decision and your weight loss journey, however you decide to embark on it.

[Sydney Susan 333]

Edited: deleted accidental double post.

[A_ReNUDE_me 148]

Okay' date=' this has been on my mind big time lately, as I'm sure it was on many others pre-op. I've been trying to decide if I want to do this. I've been fat ALL my life, always. I never knew anything else except for a brief period of time in high school when I was biking all the time and hardly ate anything. Otherwise, yeah, I was the fat gal everywhere I went. My weight is currently 250 and I'm 44 years old. Sooo, tired of it.

When I read about people on here really struggling with keeping weight off a couple of years out and more, I keep wondering, what was the point, then? If you have to watch your food like a hawk, get on the scale a great deal, fuss and worry about weight gain...why not just do all those same things with all of your stomach intact? If you're willing to do it now that you've had the surgery, why don't we just do all those things NOW and keep our stomachs?

So what I'm not hearing in the posts is WHY having had the sleeve done was beneficial for you. Do you feel you are living the same way afterwards as you did before it? Does it help you keep your weight in line, even years later? People keep calling it a "tool", how is it assisting you later on when the weight gain becomes a worry?

Before I do something this drastic, I would want to know that even when weight gain became an issue a few years out, the sleeve was still helping me in some way while I exercised and ate right. If you start to gain some weight, is it easier to get back off because of the sleeve? Because if all I'm looking at is this dramatic weight loss for the first couple of years and then I'm back to white-knuckling my existence with food, then what were the expense, pain, and possible risks for?

I hope this makes sense. I'm tired of being tired, being the fat lady in the group, losing and regaining, and watching my weight issues get worse over time. I don't want to waddle my way through the rest of my life. I want to feel good and look good and avoid diabetes and other issues. I'm a nurse and know what I'm looking at if I stay at this weight. Sigh!

Thanks!

Cara[/quote']

Healthygal..I am preop also..I am a 42yo 5'3" 215lbs BMI of 38.1, type2 diabetic w/HBP and High Cholesterol..I take up to 80 units of insulin a day + over 10 pills to control my health issues alone. I'm winded after walking down one flight of stairs and just recently gave up smoking. So....I k now I have to do something or else my future includes a very sick limited lifestyle if any life at all. But like u, I often get concerned reading some of the posts where someone has reached a ling stall or has regained. BUT here's the jist of what I think..this sleeve will just be a tool to help me restrict the amounts of foods I can consume in each sitting. Something I obviously struggle with todsy,hence why I haven't lost more than 10 lbs in the last 15 yrs and have spent hundreds on every diet possible. I think this tool will allow a reset button only health/ weight,but like anything if I don't stay active and make good decisions it can eventually lead to poor habits and possible weight gain.

I just hope that we are all going to use this tool to regain our health and ultimately give ourselves back the life that God intended for us to live in HAPPINESS.

Best of luck to u.