I lost 90 pounds!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

What? Changing diet and lifestyle - if by changing lifestyle you mean starting to exercise - works pretty much 100% of the time if you stick with it. Where are you getting this 5% figure? My stomach is “huge” - I came within a couple ounces of beating the milk challenge less than 2 hours after having dinner; that’s 120+ ounces so I’m not crying any sympathy tears for a 24-oz stomach - but I’ve never let my weight get out of control. I hit 199.5lbs last spring and I didn’t want to hit 200 so I got my ass in gear and dropped down to 180 in about a month. It wasn’t hard - quite the contrary I took a positive attitude towards it and it was fun. I get hungry just like everybody else but I make conscious decisions and listen to my mammal brain over my reptile brain. This reminds me of smokers who just sit around and complain that cigarettes are more addicting than heroin, they’ve tried every pill, patch, hypnotism, shot, piercing, earring, and everything else - meanwhile they’re puffing away and the only thing they haven’t tried is willpower. If you were on a desert island you wouldn’t be able to smoke, and you’d be just fine. Overeating is the same way. I realize there are some conditions that make it difficult to lose weight but they are far rarer in the diagnosis room than they are around the water cooler. If your only choice is to have the surgery or die then by all means have the surgery but you’re selling yourself short if you think the problem isn’t related to willpower and solvable by lifestyle changes (again - in most cases. I know there are exceptions.)

catflea12: Congratulations on losing the weight. What matters before how you lost it is that you lost it. Just a word of advice: address why you gained it in the first place or you will regain it. Good luck, I wish you the best.

22

Hey, I want to apologize. I really didn’t mean to turn this thread into a debate over weight loss surgery. It should have just been a big “Hurrah!” for the poster and that’s that.

Yesterday was the four year anniversary of my surgery so it was on my mind in a serious way. As a result I was sort of snippy and quick to react to anything I perceived as criticism. I lost 175 pounds and now maintain a weight between 125 and 130 pounds (I’m 5’4"). It was a terrific decision for me.

I had the same experience the poster had. I had lost weight on my own only to regain it. After ten years of being extremely obese off and on I figured if I COULD have lost it without extreme measure by now, I WOULD have. In researching surgical options I found information on my insurance company’s web site (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) that indicated only 1% of people who get beyond a certain BMI (not sure what that BMI was but it was quite high…35 or 40) ever lose a significant portion of their excess weight and keep it off. This is why BC/BS chooses to cover weight loss surgery and why I did not pay a dime of my own money to have this done.

Sure, some people have an easy time losing weight once they gain it. Good for you! You’re either tougher than most or have some kind of physical make-up that creates a good situation in your case. But there must be a REASON that only WHATEVER percentage of us who gain excessive weight are unable to successfully lose it. I mean, beyond just “put your fork down, dummy.” One thing you all might consider is that at certain points in my life I was starving myself simply to MAINTAIN my already unhealthy weight. Starving not to lose weight and become a normal healthy person, but just to stay at 290 pounds or wherever I was at the time.

As I said, if I could have done it, I would have. I’ve got enough determination, enough drive to take extraordinary measures in order to change the situation. You might want to consider that this is NOT the “easy way out.” For one thing, you can die…both on the surgical table and from surgical complications. It’s a heart-wrenching decision. I had to consider, “Do I want to live like this, or do I want to risk death in search of something better?” Most people who have weight loss surgery will never eat a normal meal again. That’s not just a simple lifestyle change, it’s a major undertaking. Also, post-surgical patients have strict rules to follow and not following them can mean re-gain (in addition to other severe problems). It’s not like you get this magical cure and then never have to worry about it again. It just gives you a tool to use to help you maintain a lower body weight. Typically that doesn’t even mean losing ALL of your excess weight, but only about 70% of it.

In addition to that, I have found that enormous changes in body shape and in your appearance do weird things to your psyche. Yes, it’s great being thinner but my concept of what I look like has vanished completely now. People I’ve known for years don’t recognize me, I don’t recognize myself when I look in the mirror, and I feel like I’m walking around in someone else’s body (albeit, a very nice body now!). This has caused unanticipated problems for me.

I was not heavy all my life. I started gaining after college and was overweight off and on between age 24 and 34 approximately. That means that I was an active person my entire life and I had become unable to do lots of things that I enjoyed.

At first this just meant I wasn’t able to play team sports or comfortably go to the gym. Sure, you can exercise at any weight, but the things you enjoy start to become more and more uncomfortable for both physical AND psychological reasons. Toward the end “not being able to do what I enjoy” meant that my feet hurt so badly I really couldn’t walk in the mall for an hour and I no longer fit comfortably in a movie theater or airline seat. Being obese is a terribly isolating problem for tons of reasons. Sometimes those reasons include people like a few of those here who look at you in disgust and roll their eyes while thinking, “Put down your fork, tubby.”

Basically, people go to THIS extreme not to fit into a smaller dress size or to look nicer, but to SAVE THEIR LIVES. Weight loss surgery is a “cure” for numerous diseases which it often rapidly resolves. People go into the hospital on insulin and 10 days later no longer need it. People get to quit taking high blood pressure meds, stop having sleep apnea, and a host of other serious health issues. I didn’t do this to become pretty. I did it so that I could move comfortably and do so over a normal life span. I didn’t want to have a heart attack at 40.

Spending months choking and throwing up while you learn how to eat for your new body is not “the easy way out.” Watching your hair fall out due to malnutrition while you can’t eat solid food is not something anyone would choose if they felt they had an option. It just seems like so many people think that the obese happily munch themselves into enormous bodies and then run off for a “quick fix” to the local surgeon simply because they can’t control themselves like “normal people.” Trust me, this is not the case.

23

90 quid? Cor, luvaduck, me old china. You should nab the crim what did that and tell the bobbies, know worrimean?

24

I realize there are some people who can lose weight by lifestyle changes and keep it off. I’ve been searching for some stats on how successful people are at five years out, and haven’t dug them up yet (sorry, I’ve got lots of stuff to do this morning. I hope to remember to get back to it later). If you found it easy to lose the weight good for you! I wish you equal success in maintaining the weight loss.

I lost weight lots of times before my surgery. Once, as much as 100lbs.
I’m convinced I fucked my metabolism up pretty badly by losing, gaining, losing, gaining again and again.

I wish you continued success! :slight_smile:

25

I’m busy too, but if I get a chance, plan to try www.obesityhelp.com or insurance company web sites.

I think there is some evidence that you mess up your metabolism with huge weight swings. I would say the same thing about myself. After awhile you find yourself dieting and exercising just to keep from continued gain.

26

Thank you, Knitwit, for your long answer, I have often wondered the same thing that Dripping asked but have never dared asking.
Oh, and congratulations to you and Catflea12, however you did it it’s great.

27

But…sorry, but the REASON they gain so much is exactly because they refuse to “put the fork down”. I mean, this IS the truth actually.

If a person has that much determination, why can’t they just use that determination to put the fork down?

Actually it does seem that way. You’ve done a great job of explaining how a formerly obese person perceives this whole issue (and thanks for a great post). But actually it is true that obese people don’t/won’t/can’t control themselves with regard to overeating. Not fun to hear, but it is the truth.

28

To be fair, I didn’t say it was easy, I said it was fun. I worked my ass off for it. It was fun because I chose a variety of activities; swim, bike, run during the week, and hiking on the weekends. Lots of time and sweat went into that weight loss, and lots of skipped restaurant meals in favor of healthier and lower-calorie meals from home. It was actually the spring of '07 that I did this; I’ve kept all but 5lbs off and I think those 5lbs I put back on are muscle. I quit smoking cigarettes in August of '06, by the way, after being a smoker for over a decade. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we put our minds to it and stay determined not to fail. I’ve known people who have lost significant weight through diet, exercise, and lifetstyle change. It takes a permanent change in yourself and a committment not to fall into the same emotional, psychological, physical, and social traps that led you to gain the weight in the first place. I’m off to ride my bike.

29

You are right, you didn’t actually say “easy”, and I apologize for putting words in your mouth!

Oh, and huge congratulations on quitting cigarettes, too! It’s something my father never managed to do (he managed to give up alcohol after years and years of drinking alcoholically, so clearly he wasn’t lacking in self-discipline or determination), even after he was diagnosed with emphysema.

My answer to quitting smoking was to never start. I figure it’s easier that way!

30

Congrats!

I’m overweight right now, and working on losing. Just lost five pounds in two weeks, actually. I should be at my goal weight in a year at this rate.

I managed to fight hunger until my stomach shrank, and decreased my daily calories to 1000. Sounds like so little, right? It’s totally not. I changed the kinds of food I eat, and it actually feels like I’m overeating. I eat potatoes, oatmeal, cereal (Special K with strawberries is probably the best), those little Mott’s cups of apple sauce, baby carrots, etc. I’m constantly full, but I have to remind myself that when I am hungry, I have to reach for the right food. It took a long time of mental conditioning to check calories, calculate, and break myself of old habits. Most of the time, I struggle to hit 1000 calories, because I’m so full.

Adding in more exercising, too. I’m doing Yoga every day, and I feel strong and healthy after a month of doing it. It’s not stressful, either, and you can do it at home. I’d be too embarrassed to go to a gym or take a class.

I’d never be able to afford WLS, even if I qualified for it at one time. So I’m just going to do it the ol’ fashioned way. :stuck_out_tongue:

31

I am curious about this issue myself. I’ll try to be concise, I know I tend to ramble.

The fact is, as you know, it’s not just ME. Or three other posters and me. If I knew of three people who were morbidly obese or becoming that way or whatever who don’t/won’t/can’t control themselves, that would be one thing. But it seems like there’s a VERY large portion of the population (more in some areas as I’m coming to learn) with this problem. Since no one in their right mind CHOOSES to be overweight, it starts to look like something more difficult or potentially complicated than YOUR experience dictates. Thousands of people consciously deciding to engage in self-destructive behavior rather than make the small effort of changing their diet and exercising. Why? Who wouldn’t choose to simply put their forks down rather than risk the health problems associated with obesity, nevermind other issues such as being physically uncomfortable, being socially ostracized, and so forth?

So, to use your example, lots of people quit smoking. Sure, it’s hard, but they do it. Lots of people quit drinking to excess. The percentages of success for those peole seems to be better than that of people trying to lose large amounts of weight. I think that’s likely because you don’t HAVE to smoke or drink to survive. But you do have to eat. Additionally, weight swings DO mess with your insulin production and metabolism to such an extent that when you lose excess weight your body struggles to try to regain it. When you stop smoking your body quickly learns to live without nicotine…it readjusts so that you don’t WANT to smoke anymore. Not so with eating.

There’s some weird “brain thing” going on here that I haven’t figured out. I actually AGREE with you. On a personal level it’s a matter of each one of us taking control of our own bodies and only putting good things into them. But when I look at larger trends (pun intended) I can see that it clearly is NOT that simple. I deperately hate to call these things diseases since I believe that takes away a person’s responsibility basically to act like an adult.

From my perspective, this is what I did: My weight was out of control and my best efforts weren’t enough to change that, so I took the situation in to my own hands and did what I could (and what I felt I had to do) to get into a normal body. I refused to consider it a disease and took the necessary personal responsibility. Now I follow my surgeon’s and nutritionist’s orders which are much more stringent than anything I had to do before. I make sure I take calcium at the right times of the day, take all the water-soluable vitamins that I don’t absorb correctly, eat protein before anything else because I need it the most, and so on. I don’t even chew gum because of the chance that I could swallow it accidentally and be forced to have it surgically removed. Once I gained control I was able to follow strict rules.

But how one gets out of control in the first place and why it’s so difficult for SOME people to regain and maintain control is very much beyond me. I just know that having lived through it, it at least APPEARS more difficult than you might think. And since I can look around at my team at work and realize that I am (honestly) one of only TWO “normal sized” people here, I know this must be a difficult problem to solve. These people aren’t all weak-willed or undetermined or lazy. They’re not all CHOOSING to be obese. Someone who has an easy time controlling their weight can’t just tell me it’s a matter of eating less and have that be that. I can look around and see that the problem is bigger and more complicated.

In order to qualify for weight loss surgery you must go through a lengthy learning process…it takes 4-6 months to ramp up for surgery. You have to sit in nutritional seminars, go through psych evaluation, and prove to the team that you’ve tried everything else you could think of to become healthy. So anyone who gets to that stage knows EXACTLY what they have to do to lose weight, they have just been unable to. They’re willing to risk death, but seemingly not willing to change their diets? This just isn’t true…surgery forces a diet change that they happily take up. If they’re successful that is.

There are those who have such a hard time that they even out-eat their bypasses. Again, this has to be such an overwhelming tendency to self-destruct that they go to great lengths to maintain it. Maybe my question about simplicity is one of WHY people lose control and stay out of control rather than HOW it’s done or how to stop.

32

Ok, here is the issue. I agree that initial weight gain is often the “fault” of the person. Whether their overeating/lack of exercise is driven by depression, pregnancy, hypothyroidism, a rough patch, or simple laziness, people can prevent themselves from gaining weight. The problem comes when it is time to lose it. Let’s say you used to weigh 120 pounds. Following college, you’re stressed about your job, and don’t have a lot of time to cook, so you put on 20 pounds. You maintain your weight at 140 without losing anything for another year. Finally you decided to kick your rear in gear. The problem is, you have established a new homeostatic set point for your body, which is now actively fighting your attempts to lose weight. You go on a diet and start to exercise. The problem is, your body wants to keep that weight. It increases your hunger drive. It slows down your metabolism. It releases hormones that make you crave food/sugar/calories. Your intestines work harder to strip all the nutrients out of whatever you eat. IOW, it is incredibly difficult. I have been doing obesity and diabetes research (as my job) for the past five years. 95% of dieters fail to maintain weight loss. An old joke in the field? “What do you do if you want to gain weight?” - “Go on a diet”.

Sometimes WLS is the healthiest thing you can do for yourself. Particularly RNYGB, which helps your body reset it’s set-point. So good on you catflea! you have a lot to be proud of.

33

Ok, I am not being snarky or contrarian at all here, but I want to ask you about this because it doesn’t seem like you have thought of it. Most other countries don’t have the obesity epidemic we have here in the US. I know it’s getting bad in parts of western Europe and a few other countries, but last I heard we’re still the heaviest country by far. My dad went to Ethiopia and Angola recently and said there was not an overweight person to be seen. I’ve never seen an obese person in Mexico (I have seen obese Americans of Mexican descent, and yes I realize one of the heaviest people in the world right now is from Mexico.)

Look at this. It’s all western countries down to arguably Turkey (#18) at less than half our number, and then Japan (#28) at a tenth of us. The US has a healthy lead of over 6% - there is not that much of a gap between any other two countries on the list.

34

See, this, I think, is the crux of the mater. I don’t know anyone who has an “easy time” staying slim or losing weight. It’s hard freakin work and it takes self-discipline and willpower. I read and hear this attitude so often from obese people…“oh it must be nice to have such a “fast metabolism””, or “I wish I could lose weight as easily as you do” etc etc. Um, no. I don’t have a “fast metabolism” and no, staying fit is no “easier” for me than them. I just control my eating, deal with hunger pangs and put down the freaking fork. They don’t.

It comes down to how people define “hard” or “difficult”. When people with self-control and willpower encounter a difficult or hard task, they dig in and just tough it out. Weak-willed people faced with the exact difficultly wail that it’s “too hard” and give up.

Again, they are crumbling when faced with having a “hard time”. That, by definition, is a person who does not have the necessary self-discipline.

Folks can ramble and argue and debate the issue for pages and pages, but it still comes down to plain old willpower and yes, it is just as simple as “put the fork down”.

35

Why put the word fault in parenthesis? When did fault become a four-letter word in any discussion of obesity. Of course it’s their fault. No one strapped them down and forced them to eat all that extra food.

These statements (bolding mine) are very common diet myths that are always trotted out during diet discussions. The problem is, there is absolutely no evidence to support any of them. And they also make no sense from an evolutionary/survival standpoint. You can’t “make your intestines work harder”…they already do their job as efficiently as possible.

36

Oh, I absolutely HAVE thought of this! And I’ve read about it and done research and even written about it myself. The problem is there are either a) numerous answers or b) no good answer. Not that I can figure out anyway. Americans have more money for food, BUT lower income groups tend to have a higher incidence of obesity. Huh? Then again, the poor get lower quality food, have less access to fitness centers and health clubs. I have no idea why, but it’s absolutely true that Americans are FAT. It’s also true that there are places in this country where it’s much worse than others. It has to be some sort of cultural tendency to over-indulge to the point of self-destruction.

The average American woman is 5’4" and weighs 163 giving her a BMI of 28. That’s means on average we are overweight and pushing obesity. There’s no doubt that Americans are terrible at this. I just don’t think the fact that it could be a cultural trend makes it any more/less “easy” or dismissable as individual weakness.

I was raised in the Midwest. When I take my European (Irish) husband home to the farm for a visit, he’s appalled by the way my family treats food. My parents sit at the lunch table and discuss what to make for dinner while they eat. Then they get up and go sit in front of the Food Network and read cookbooks. For entertainment on a couple of weekends per year they make literally DOZENS of pounds of sausage at a time and they bake complicated deserts on a weekly basis and for any “event” that they can think of. I think when we start considering food “entertainment” an enormous portion of the time it is very problematic. It’s certainly disastrous for me and the switch in using food for fuel vs. for fun was a big part of my post-surgical re-learning. Enough so that I now plan to stay in a local hotel rather than with my family when I visit because the way they eat literally makes me sick.

Incidentally, my sister is underweight and has been hospitalized for anorexia. Very strange.

37

I don’t think you’re doing anybody any favors by repeating the “put down the fork” line over and over, but I do think there is a lot of truth in this right here. So much of life is the attitude we take towards things. When I said losing weight was fun, someone automatically assumed easy. You can condition your mind to flip around and make hard = fun. When I climbed Humphreys Peak it was not easy at all. Far from it, it was hard as hell, but it was fun. Same with a lot of things. I’ve gone back to college now after being out of school for over 10 years and it’s hard as hell, but I’m taking a positive attitude and it’s fun. I used to dread quitting cigarettes but when I trained my mind to think about it the right way it was fun.

38

I see there are passionate views on this, so I thought maybe I would open a debate thread and maybe we could let this thread be the celebration it was meant to be.

Here is the debate.

Congrats on your weight loss!

39

Great idea! Thank you very much.

40

Congrats, catflea12! I’m sure it wasn’t easy.