So why does this annoy me so much?

[WLSResources/ClothingExch 3,444]

@@gowalking -- Someone else's wasteful, foolish, ignorant, infantile, giving-up or stupid behavior isn't your burden. Having been in your company on two occasions, once with no distractions to conversation for a couple of hours, I know that you're far too light to carry them. Take the energy that goes into feeling upset and put it where it will do good -- in yourself. Don't squander for a squanderer. If they ever pull it together, then you can have some energy to support them.

@@CowgirlJane -- You were done a terrible disservice by that practice. They were practicing the old one-two, insult to injury routine. It should and may be actionable but you're probably way past statute of limitations.

Edited November 6, 2015 by WLSResources/ClothingExch

[RILEYSMOM22 344]

I have a friend whose wife had wls two years ago. When I was contemplating surgery, he was hesitant to give his opinion until I pressed him about it. It turns out, she had complications unrelated to the actual procedure (steroid allergy put her in a coma). Eventually, she recovered and lost over 60 lbs...but, has regained about 20.

I happened to sit next to this woman at a party during my pre-op diet phase. I watched her eat..... and eat...cheetos, chips, Cookies, wine.... and I was so irritated with her, I had to sit elsewhere.

She is now my inspiration to stay on track.

[songsmith 334]

I'm doing the six months' prior diet right now (three months' in). I see a dietitian once a month. She asks me what I've been eating, do I take Multivitamins, am I off the caffeine. She has offered no suggestions for what type of diet to follow. I gained 3 pounds last month (after losing 10). I know why and am definitely back on track, but it would be so much more helpful if she'd offer some guidelines. What am I paying her for? Sorry, what is my insurance company paying her for? They might as well waive the requirement for all the help she's provided. OTOH, the post-op binder has diet suggestions. They should have handed me that right off instead of making me see the dietitian!

There was a prevailing attitude when I was growing up that WLS was the "easy" way out. I think it's still that way. A lot of people don't realize that people still need to watch what they eat, that WLS is not a magic pill that does the work for you. It's a tool.

[gpmed 623]

I used insurance for the surgery, but was still left with a hefty bill for items covered at 80 percent. That means I'll be making large monthly payments to the hospital for more than three years. I have many things motivating me to succeed and the amount of money I'm paying and the pain I went through are definitely among them! I'm surprised that alone doesn't motivate more people. Did I really just pay xx-f-----g-thousand dollars to fall head first into a bag of chips or Cookies? Hell to the no.

[Babbs 14,681]

@@RILEYSMOM22

I hear ya. I got some eyelash extensions a few months back (nice reward for weight loss goals, by the way). A friend of mine owns the salon where I got them done, and she was doing my lashes. I'm friends with her on Facebook, and noticed she'd lost weight, so she'd mentioned she's gotten the sleeve 2 months before I did and had lost about 80 pounds, but was stalled and hadn't lost any more for about 4 months. I did notice she still has about 50-75 more pounds to lose.

They were doing a lunch order, and she had called out for a # something from Sonic. When they brought it back, it was a cheeseburger and fries with fry sauce, which i watched her promptly eat about 3/4 of the whole thing.

So yeah.......

[VSGAnn2014 12,992]

Shaking my head at some of these stories.

Oddly, they are really quite motivating to me. Negative role models can also fuel my desire to be a great WLS success.

Gotta be some kind of strange, hard-wired, primal, tribal, primate behavior: "Hey, look at the idiots! Let's not be like them and survive!"

[~Bobby Jo~ 2]

I actually work with a woman that was sleeved a year ago. We have many lunch days at work where the company buys everyone lunch...I see this woman eating full hoagies and drinking soft drinks. One day I got up the nerve to ask her why she does it and then turns around and complains about gaining weight. Her response was, "that's why they have other surgeries for me to try." It took me a few minutes to come up with a response, but we discussed the difficulty for some people to get the approval for one surgery, let alone getting the surgery and eating/drinking it to failure. I cant wait to see if she shapes up her eating habits.

[MitchieMay 27]

Well, this is an eyeopening conversation. Knowing and doing are two different processes in the brain of someone fighting weight. One hopes that when a person gets to the point of deciding to have WLS they have committed to doing. Apparently, that is not always the case.

I do believe, and know, that people will often say ANYTHING to get into the door, or operating room in this case. Health care professionals are at the mercy, in a manner of speaking, of the patient in front of them being truthful. They don't interrogate and submit their patients to a lie detector test. Unless it is a very obvious condition (medical or mental) I'm not sure how anyone (including the doctor) can predict the bad outcome.

I actually feel sorry for the non-compliant people you describe. They do need help, serious help. Kind of makes you wonder what percentage of people fall in this category

[Alex Brecher 10,512]

gowalking,

As far as I can tell, your MIL’s health and eating are things you have no control over. So, possibly easier said than done, but maybe you can just try to take the positives from this. For example, be grateful YOU know how to eat properly to lose weight, whether it’s something you had to research yourself or you were lucky enough to have nutritional guidance.

Be grateful YOU have the discipline and sense to eat properly – even if maybe you would enjoy those Bagels and mixed drinks, too. Your weight is fine now. Hers is still a health hazard.

I understand your reaction, and I get angry too when I see people not taking advantage of their surgery. But I try to remind myself that I can only take care of myself and not them, and I am grateful I have the support and everything else I need to help me in this lifestyle.

[WLSResources/ClothingExch 3,444]

@@gowalking, @@Alex Brecher and perhaps a few others expressed this view:

"I understand your reaction, and I get angry too when I see people not taking advantage of their surgery."

It's easy to appreciate your take, but I feel differently. I'd be angry if someone's not valuing the opportunity meant that someone else misses out on surgery. Example: I used to do volunteer work for a non-profit that provided free summer vacations for city kids from low- or modest-income families. An amazing opportunity to be out of the city, make new friends and have new experiences. For each session, a few parents, when getting the reminder call to arrive at the departure place the next morning, replied, "Oh, he's not going." They didn't have the sense or the wherewithal to call in advance. Some wait-list parents may have been able to get their kids ready on less than 24 hours' notice, but openings did go to waste. It may also be that new host families dropped out for the following year, having made preparations gone to waste. Those are the circumstances that anger me.. Someone's having surgery and not following through for whatever reasons is sad or foolish, but no one else lost out because of it.

Edited November 8, 2015 by WLSResources/ClothingExch

[CowgirlJane 14,259]

I wrote a big long response... and then decided to not share it. Summary version...

I have both failed (lapband) and had very good success (sleeve) with WLS so I perhaps see this whole judgement line of thinking a little differently.

Someone on this thread knows someone who was a very influential person in my banded life. She was very very helpful to me (lets just say in those days getting support when you had your surgery out of country - in my case Germany because I lived there! wasn't so easy and she really helped me when i came home). She was also one of those "veterans" that basically had the attitude that we just needed to "man up" and follow the rules and we would have astounding success. I tried pretty hard - as misguided as my uneducated efforts were - it wasn't for lack of "try" and it was devastating to be judged so harshly by someone who I looked up to.

i caution all of you to realize that real human beings are "failing" and making bad choices. And they read this **** you write about them.

To me - this unrelenting "judging" of other people's failings with WLS is actually no different than the bias, disgust and hate some people show toward the general obese population. Actually, I think it is worse.

[SweetPotato 142]

Granted, I am a newbie, but I don't understand the judgement and anger towards others' food choices. Changing your eating and exercise habits are hard... if they weren't, many of us wouldn't have signed up to have WLS as a tool to help us. We don't know what it is like to be that other person who is "failing" or "wasting" their surgery.

I'm grateful that my hospital had us (basically) start the post op diet from the day of orientation ... 3 oz Protein (eaten first), 2 servings veg and 1 starch (very specific options).. a fruit instead of veg at Breakfast. So I had several months of following that and got used to what I was going to eat post op.... though smaller portions. I feel like that helped me to know how to eat now, but not every one had that experience. A lot of people are flying blind and i feel like they need support, rather than judgement. It reminds me of when thin people shame larger people for what they eat.. or concern troll them with faux concern over their health. That doesn't make them want to change their habits... it just makes them feel like crap.

[parisshel 1,892]

This is a terrific thread with great contributions from everyone.

Here are my thoughts:

I agree with @@B-52, and I think we might be in a minority, but I do know from experience that my WLS was the only thing standing between me and consuming too many calories. It is not me making appropriate food choices, but my WLS tricking my brain into allowing me to make appropriate food choices.

How do I know this? Because with an unfilled band/no band, I don't make appropriate food choices, or, rather, it takes intense, consistent willpower to make appropriate food choices. (@@gowalking made an excellent analogy to pain levels with NSAIDS and pain levels without them...a world of difference. WLS is the NSAID for obese people It is an external aid to keeping us on the right, painfree (psychologically-speaking) path.) It does not make us more moral, noble or smarter. It just overrides our default [overeating] personality.

My weight-loss inducing food choices were not made because all the sudden I had some new-found wisdom/will-power/or healthy sense of what I needed to eat. No, the only reason I could eat less was because I had had WLS.

When one's WLS tool is no longer effective, we go back to our default (for the most of us). Because that's they way our mind and body works. It is not a moral failing, it is the way we are hard-wired.

If I see someone who I know had WLS and I'm watching them eat normal-size portions of food, or "unhealthy" food, or food that is not compliant with a post-op diet, I don't think "what an idiot." I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their WLS choice isn't "active" anymore.

Because when our tool works, the idea of consuming large portions, or foods that are not WLS compliant, doesn't even enter our brains. Right?

Remember when you were fresh out of surgery? And your tool was sparkly-new? Did any of you start off by eating non-compliant foods?

No, of course not. Because your tool was active. And part of what is was doing was dimming your hunger and restricting your stomach space (this applies to all WLS).

An optimally-working, active tool translates to weight loss/maintenance. I really don't think that someone overeating after WLS is wasting their tool. I think that their tool isn't "speaking" to them any longer. Bands can go awry, sleeves can stretch, bypass I don't know about...but the sweet, effective timeframe of many of our tools can be brief for some of us. Yes, it is sad that someone would undergo such a drastic step to not have it turn out as one dreams (believe me, I know this from my own experience), but I really think the fault is more on the tool than on the person. Am I naive? Possibly.

[VSGAnn2014 12,992]

This is a terrific thread with great contributions from everyone.

Here are my thoughts:

I agree with @@B-52, and I think we might be in a minority, but I do know from experience that my WLS was the only thing standing between me and consuming too many calories. It is not me making appropriate food choices, but my WLS tricking my brain into allowing me to make appropriate food choices.

How do I know this? Because with an unfilled band/no band, I don't make appropriate food choices, or, rather, it takes intense, consistent willpower to make appropriate food choices. (@@gowalking made an excellent analogy to pain levels with NSAIDS and pain levels without them...a world of difference. WLS is the NSAID for obese people It is an external aid to keeping us on the right, painfree (psychologically-speaking) path.) It does not make us more moral, noble or smarter. It just overrides our default [overeating] personality.

My weight-loss inducing food choices were not made because all the sudden I had some new-found wisdom/will-power/or healthy sense of what I needed to eat. No, the only reason I could eat less was because I had had WLS.

When one's WLS tool is no longer effective, we go back to our default (for the most of us). Because that's they way our mind and body works. It is not a moral failing, it is the way we are hard-wired.

If I see someone who I know had WLS and I'm watching them eat normal-size portions of food, or "unhealthy" food, or food that is not compliant with a post-op diet, I don't think "what an idiot." I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their WLS choice isn't "active" anymore.

Because when our tool works, the idea of consuming large portions, or foods that are not WLS compliant, doesn't even enter our brains. Right?

Remember when you were fresh out of surgery? And your tool was sparkly-new? Did any of you start off by eating non-compliant foods?

No, of course not. Because your tool was active. And part of what is was doing was dimming your hunger and restricting your stomach space (this applies to all WLS).

An optimally-working, active tool translates to weight loss/maintenance. I really don't think that someone overeating after WLS is wasting their tool. I think that their tool isn't "speaking" to them any longer. Bands can go awry, sleeves can stretch, bypass I don't know about...but the sweet, effective timeframe of many of our tools can be brief for some of us. Yes, it is sad that someone would undergo such a drastic step to not have it turn out as one dreams (believe me, I know this from my own experience), but I really think the fault is more on the tool than on the person. Am I naive? Possibly.

@@parisshel ...

With respect for your longer years of maintenance than mine (I'm almost 15 months post-op) and your experience with the lapband (I'm a sleeved patient, which is my first WLS), I see things considerably differently than you do, especially regarding your statements bolded above:

Your post (quoted above) assumes that the ONLY tool standing between WLS patients and long-term maintenance and health is their WLS. It ignores the other tools we've acquired in tandem with WLS, e.g.:

* Nutritional education,

* Months / years of building and practicing new habits and a healthy lifestyle,

* Constructing lives that provide us with support and (for some of us) minimizing or deleting people, jobs, homes, habits, environments, etc. from our lives that used to encourage overeating

* Therapy / counseling / group therapy / online support group participation to address many of our individual weight-related issues and behaviors -- some quite severe, others less so, but significant to each of us,

For instance, my sleeve immediately post-op was not healed, my tiny stomach was temporarily swollen, and my response to the sleeve immediately post-op bore no resemblance to what my long-term response to the sleeve would be. The fact that I could eat only a few teaspoons of food in the weeks immediately post-op did not mean that my lack of appetite then was what I could or should expect for the rest of my life or that, months later when my hunger returned that my sleeve had "failed me."

And now that my sleeve is completely healed, I don't feel my sleeve has "failed me" when I feel physical hunger at times. Nor do I feel it's "failed me" when, under stress, I sometimes feel an urge to eat to numb my emotional discomforts. At all these times, it is MY CHOICE to decide when to eat and what and how much to eat. And it is my new tools that I have spent considerable effort acquiring (which I've listed above) that help me navigate my hunger.

I would say the same thing to you I'd say to a newbie who had not even been sleeved yet: Your WLS tool alone will not fix your obesity. You have to build other tools that support your lapband/sleeve/bypass. Otherwise, you will regain your weight.

Tl;dr = Hunger, urges, compulsions, impulses do not equate to broken WLS tools. They're manifestations of real life, which (as a previously obese person) I can choose to navigate successfully using tools I have made the effort to acquire. Or not.

[smb1966 129]

I saw this same mentality during the pre-op classes. I would see people sitting in their cars eating fast food breakfasts and drinking a huge soda before going into a nutritional class for WLS. Of course they were also parking in the cancer patient parking because they were closer then the other spots.

LMBO these exact words came out of my mouth on a couple of occasions!