Suppose somebody wants to lose a lot of weight (60-100#).
Considering they are of average health, would it be possible to lose the same kind of weight gastric bypass or lap band surgery recipients do if they simply ate the way post-surgery operants do?
Based on Lifetime channel “Jackie’s Story” type shows, it seems that small amounts of food several times a day is the standard diet since the stomach cannot hold as much as it used to.
Does this mean that the surgery only makes the stomach smaller, which means the hunger mechanism is repressed and not triggered so often? And is the body is technically starving (under a doctor’s supervision) to lose lots of weight in such a short time (and nutrient deficient as evidenced by thinning/loss of hair some experience)? How might low blood sugar factor in all that?
Could a person accomplish the same without surgery if they just don’t eat a lot, and fight against the hunger? Or am I missing something?
My understanding is that if they could eat that way, they wouldn’t need the surgery. But after the surgery they MUST eat that way.
I’ve always wondered why you couldn’t get the same effect by, say, always wearing a non-stretchy belt. Metal, say. (I have several metallic belts. This is not at all kinky.) You put the belt on, when it starts to cut into your gut, stop eating. Never take it off and get one you can’t loosen. Say a gold chain of a certain length. As you lose weight, take links out.
If it were that easy, nobody would be overweight in the first place. Try getting overweight people to starve themselves, and see how often they succeed.
In theory, for the most part, yes. Some types of weight loss surgery get in the way of absorption of nutrients. That part wouldn’t be replicated by simply eating the postoperative diet without the surgery.
But otherwise, yes, you’d lose the same weight eating the postoperative diet. However, the point of the surgery is to force you to limit your food intake to the postoperative diet and/or reducing hunger so you don’t feel you need to.
However, if you don’t get the surgery there are better diets that accomplish the same thing. A doctor and/or nutritionist should be able to help you out if you want to go below 1200 kcal/day in order to lose weight very quickly.
I lost about 70 kilos (some 150 pounds) in two years by eating a lot less, but still a fairly reasonable amount and also getting more exercise, mostly in the form of cycling. I eat two slices of bread in the morning (with cheese or jam or some such), another two for lunch, a piece of fruit and around 40 grams of nuts in the afternoon, a normal size evening meal and 50 grams of cookies for desert. If I get really hungry I eat one or two extra slices of bread. On that regime, I consistently lose weight. (I do eat too much on occasion, causing a temporary setback.)
About the only bariatric procedure that can be reasonably duplicated by simply eating multiple tiny meals is banding. eg: the Lap-Band.
Most procedures involve malabsorbtion as well. The roux-en-y (RNY) for example, cuts out some of the stomach and bypasses about a foot of intestine. You can’t replicate this with small meals.
If someone is losing their hair, they’re probably not taking the right kind, or enough, of bariatric vitamins. The RNY, clobbers the body’s ability to absorb B-vitamins, so the baraitric vitamins bring about 8,000% RDA of B-12.
One other factor that hampers the “just eat small meals” idea is that bariatric surgery puts a lifelong ironclad requirement to eat small meals on a person. Someone wanting to replicate the potential of bariatric surgery without actually having the surgery does not have the specter of severe pain, vomiting or “dumping” hanging over them if they eat more than they should.
I had a friend who did something like this, under the guidance of the Cleveland Clinic. It wasn’t the same as what a gastric bypass patient eats I don’t think…I could be wrong but I feel as though they eat less protein than this diet.
Like bariatric patients, PSMF patients have to have regular MD and psych visits, and take a lot of supplements. And yeah since they don’t have a smaller stomach, the dieters do have a lot of hunger. But probably not as hungry as they would be if they had a full-sized stomach and ate exactly what bariatric patients eat. There is a lot of satiety to be found in protein and fats.
Anyway, my friend did well for the first year and lost over 100 lbs. We’ve stopped being friends since then (ok he was an ex boyfriend and now he’s engaged…) but according to pictures he’s back up to where he began. I feel so bad for him because it was a really hard thing for him to do in the first place and it was all for naught.
I can only speak from my experience. I have lost about 100 pounds in the last year. I didn’t do any crazy diets, honestly. I cut down the amount of food I eat greatly but I didn’t starve myself. I decreased the amount of fat and carbs I eat but didn’t cut either out completely. I greatly increased the amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables I eat and if I eat snacks I limit them to fruit or nuts. I also increased how much I exercise, which got easier as I lost weight.
I have to admit I was very hungry the first couple of months and even now I find I miss certain things but I do eat “bad” food from time to time, just in small amounts. Good luck.
For some reason which is not fully understood, most patients who have had Lap-Band do not get as hungry. In the USA (it used to be ???) common to do Gastric Bypass as well as Lab-Band: the Gastric Bypass was intended to reduce nutrient absorbtion. This does not seem to be common now in Aus (???).
Gastric Bypass is a much more compilcated surgery than simply snapping a band onto the stomach, and it appears that it is not necessary.
Not getting as hungry is not just because the stomach is smaller and gets full faster: there is a definite change to the hunger mechanisim, apparently directly mediated by the change in function when the stomach is banded.
Some patients do not have the common loss-of-apetite response to lap-banding, and those patients are at risk for complications, including a burst stomach from eating more than you can handle.
This reminds us that it is very difficult to loose weight by self control, even at risk of bursting your stomach. Although some people manage it for some time, extensive research has shown that overall, diet alterations have very little long term effect on weight.
Personally, I lost quite a bit of weight when I had my jaw wired. A procedure that also used to be used for weight loss, but less effectively. But I’m also getting old, and that is associated with weight loss.
The bypass also helps with reducing the amount of the hormone ghrellin which aids in satiety. As a bypasser for over 15 years, the combo of restriction, malabsorption and loss of that hormone and a frigging continual 900 calorie a day diet is what keeps me thin. I exercise, etc…but I’m convinced that decades of obesity killed my metabolism. The post surgical period is the time in which one gets used to tiny portions which gradually increase as the stomach begins its inexorable re-stretching. And I agree with the belt trick I saw mentioned above. Casual loose clothing allows upto ten lbs to creep on unnoticed. Then poof! You try on your winter suits and they magically shrunk during summer casual dress
In terms of weight loss, probably yes. If you could get morbidly obese individuals to ignore all hunger cues and maintain a diet of 300 to 600 calories a day for two months and then long long term under 1000 a day, then they would likely lose as much weight as bariatric procedures accomplish.