If your concern is appetite suppression- have you tried some of the more natural “cures” for that? Green tea is great, even caffeine. There are oodles more and they certainly do work. There are also thousands of pills on the market that offer appetite suppression-- mostly the untested diet pill variety, but there are several prescription ones as well. Come to think of it, have you tried Ally? It’s FDA approved here in the States and will basically make you shit yourself if you eat too much. That seems to be along the lines of what you want to force yourself to eat less.
That sounds like a good idea to try, before undergoing expensive surgery. I reckon you can ignore pain for quite a while before it becomes debilitating, but trying to carry on your day after you’ve shat yourself would be challenging.
Maastricht, do they sell it in Holland? (Are you in Holland? I’ve just assumed so because of your name…) Even if not, they might sell something similar; is there a reason that wouldn’t work as an experiment?
Damn. Nailed it.
I got a little tubby right after law school (basically I had been a sedentary slob for the past few years, and my bad habits finally caught up to me). I started walking alot more and working out and watching what I eat and I lost the weight. It’s not that freaking hard.
Alli , Topomax, and similar medications are for sale over here. But the effect is, at best, temporary. If I had to lose only a few pounds, it mught have been worth a try. But I need to lose about 60 pounds, and I see the necessity to change my eating habits permanently, once and for all.
I do understand the hostility, even sven. Indeed, many people spend a lot of willpower and effort on this matter, and see my choice as the easy way out. I don’t see it that way; I see it as a way to force and to facilitate myself to do what they do on willpower. Or to do what is doable (not easy, but doable, as proven by the fact that they are doing it) for those people. Not drinking alcohol or sodas is easy for me; cutting out all sugar was not easy, but doable.
And that is my whole point when I say that counting calories and restricting what I eat at mealtimes isn’t doable for me. I have tried, I have given it my best, and I saw that I didn’t keep it up for more then two or three days. Perhaps it is a practical versus a moral standpoint. The moral standpoint says that I should be able to do it; and that I should try harder.
My practical standpoint says that given what I am and can muster, it’s not going to happen. So the logical thing is to try something else, no? And as I said, the odds are on my side. I linked earlier to an article on pub-med about wls in the Netherlands that wasn’t written by the surgeon who performed the surgery. That put the odds for long term weight loss at . Articles written by the surgeon paint, of course, a much rosier view . (although to be fair, this Dr Rutledge is als know for the heavy follow-up guidance program for his patients, that likely also contributes to his succes.
The odds of people keeping off more then 10 % of their body weigth for longer then a year are, well not as bleak as the 5 % often quoted, but certainly under 20 %
Impatience plays a part with me, as well. Weight has been an issue for me, like for many people, for years, decades, even though I gained the last 50 pound in the last five years. I am at a point where I am no longer interested in methods that might work, or not, or that should work, if only I wasn’t who I have proven to be. Paradoxically, you could say that I want ths surgery because I have finally accepted myself for what I am, including my inability to diet on the one side, and my ability to take a risk like this on the other hand.
For those interested: the surgery will cost me, all in, 6000 euro’s, thats about 7000 usd.
Does your surgeon have an answer for what happens if he’s wrong and you still have trouble sticking to a diet plan even after the surgery? Saying “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” seems a little cavalier - did he outline to you steps that make you confident that even if the surgery doesn’t give you the willpower you need to stop over-eating, the post-surgery support will?
Honestly, it’s just that that’s stopping me saying “Go for it, it’s your decision and your body, and if it will make you happy, then have at it!” But I am worried that you seem to be considering this surgery to be a sort of panacea, something that will fix all your problems. Have you got a Plan B, in case it doesn’t work out that way?
This is frustrating, because it seems like you are getting your teeth pulled because you can’t stand to brush them. Now, sometimes teeth have to be pulled, but the aftermath of dealing with dentures is just so much worse than brushing your teeth that it doesn’t seem like a good trade off when you have other choices.
It just seems like you can’t possibly be giving yourself enough credit: you’re so young to have decided what you are and are not capable of. It’s like watching someone get married to someone they only mostly like, because they are sure they can’t possibly do better.
What, specifically, stops you from calorie counting? When does it fall apart?
And the secret to dieting is NOT to “give it your best”. The secret is to find a plan that doesn’t take “your best” to stay on, so that it is sustainable. Such plans exist.
Nicole, no plan B here. I was going into surgery believing this was it and I HAD to make it work. 
You’ve convinced me to ask my surgeon again about this, though.
I was putting my faith in the numbers, actually. Judging from my weight, my eating problem can’t be much worse then that of other , more heavier people who go in for surgery as well, and succeed. And I repeat that the odds of people succeeding, are, from the research links I gave above, much higher then you’d think from the bleak anecdotical evidence provided in this thread.
Indeed, and I found one in giving up sugar. Still, there is damage from the past to undo, 60 pounds, so I think I need a flying start.
I still don’t understand her statement that she is not an overeater, 
A good question. I honestly don’t know. I have about four notebooks I specially bought and lined to start monitoring what I ate. None of them has more then a page of writing in it.
Plus, I hate memorizing calorie numbers, or looking them up, and doing the math.
It’s not that I hate memorizing stuff: I had no trouble memorizing the Latin names and numbers of over 500 plants.
Seriously, how would I go about to find why I can’t keep up counting calories? Warning: any advice that contains the word “just” as in “just do X” will be ignored.
Fine, have it your way. But by your definition, there would be more overeaters then “normal” eaters. Not just anyone who’s overweight would be an overeater, but anyone who has ever eaten more then she or she should is.
True, and you’re probably right to be optimistic about the outcome. Most people don’t die, after all, and if you’re determined enough to make it work, it probably will. But I would talk to him before you have the surgery about what support (counselling and nutritional advice, and the like) there is available post-surgery, in case you find yourself in trouble - and maybe ask if he knows of any post-surgery groups, I don’t know if they exist, but if you can talk to people who’ve actually had the surgery done by your surgeon and stuck to it, that might be useful too.
Yes, the studies say that post-op peer groups are a great help and that people who are active in them fare better. I planned to do it the cyber way, by becoming more active at the forums of www.obesityhelp.com and I have joined a RL group in my local hospital, only they convene only every two months or so.
Do you keep any sort of a mood diary? As part of working out what your triggers are for eating more than you ought to, it might be useful to consider it, before you have the surgery. Then you’ll know more about what kinds of situations, post-surgery, to be particularly cautious in. (Do you eat more than you think you should at the pub, or at birthday parties, or eating out, or whatever. Do you eat more when you’re happy, or sad, or pissed off, or PMSing, etc.) As part of that, you could note down how you feel about writing down the calorie content of your meals - maybe by writing it down over time, you’ll see a pattern develop.
(That might be a stupid idea. But it’s an idea…)
What “way”? I’m just asking you to clarify your rather bizarre and contradictory claim that you “don’t overeat, you just eat too much”
I read it as making a distinction between people who habitually overeat at all their meals (“overeaters”), and people who gradually put on weight over a long period of time, because they have too many occasional snacks or extra helpings of dinner and don’t manage to work off the extra calories (“people who eat too much”).
Soul-searching, quiet, intense reflection. There’s no “just” about it, but no one can do the work except you. If it’s the mechanics of it that drive you crazy, have your tried a website?
http://www.thedailyplate.com/
http://www.sparkpeople.com/
They are each a little different, but all are free, have huge data bases (and allow you to enter custom foods and recipes) and do all the counting for you–you just put in what you eat.
You could lose that 60 pounds in a year eating quite a bit–I’d start at 1850-1950 a day, which is a lot of food (and if you cycle you can eat 2200-2400 on days with special occasions if you eat less other days).
The only thing I’d recommend is to buy a kitchen scale, because weighing everything is 1000 times easier than measuring. With calorie counting, you can have that extra piece of bread–you just count it, and cut something later. And if you go to the beach for a weekend once a year and want to go overboard, you can without consequence. With the bypass, you can’t ever do that again, not for the next 70 years.
The problem is that is comes across (unintentionally, I am sure) as saying "I am not a fatty (a lazy, gluttonous person), I just eat too much.
Rather like a friend of mine who wouldn’t go to rehab because it was for junkies, and he just smoked too much crack. (true story)
I’m a psychologist, and to me “overeating” is, a very specifically defined behavior, “bulimia”. By that definition, I’m not bulemic.
So, my irritation at the term came from my study, where we tried to be specific in our definitions. I would nag about someone using the term " depressed" in a non clinical sense, too.
I do confess to having an eating problem, sure, or I wouldn’t be at this weight. But by the DSM definitions, I don’t have an eating disorder. Rather, I think I eat like anyone would like to eat if they wouldn’t have to watch their weight. So, in the way evolution made us.
But anyway, this is not really a fruitful discussion for me, so this is my last word on the matter.