Claire, I don’t claim to speak for the op, but I think it’s unnecessarily contentious to add in your negative commentary on what she’ll probably do with your suggestions. If I were to receive advise phrased like this, I’d have to fight my defensive reaction to being insulted in order to take it. Presumably, you’re offering it to help, and I imagine she’s more likely to be receptive if you offer it without the commentary.
The biggest dirty word is exercise. Most of us don’t exercise enough and for the overweight it becomes a trap – it’s harder to move, it’s painful, don’t want to do it to begin with, people get deconditioned, the weight goes up, for sure don’t want to move then because it’s uncomfortable, it hurts . . . and so it goes.
An old friend of mine has been obese for most of his life, just a jolly fat man, you know? Last year he injured his back getting out of the tub. He’s had multiple operations/rehab/nursing home stays in the wake of this. He’s not getting any smaller while he’s laid up with this back injury, neither. Now his kidneys are shutting down, today he had his first dialysis from the ICU of a hospital here.
Watching him go through this nightmare, this rocket sled to hell, I’m rethinking a lot of my opinions about exercise – by comparison to this how bad could more exercise be?. I’m so grateful I can walk, run, etc. and I’m more motivated to move, move, move. Because obviously not moving enough will kill ya.
Anyone here tried the Beck Diet Plan?
I’ve been reading the blog of an opera singer in Texas who has made herself over through diet and exercise, starting with Beck –
Check out her photos before you start reading:
http://100lbs.typepad.com/photos/shrinking/index.html
http://100lbs.typepad.com/the_next_hundred_pounds/
And some articles on this lady (with video) in the New York Times:
You’ve got some work ahead of you whatever you choose but I would encourage you to try the noninvasive/nonsurgical alternative before you present yourself to the cutter.
I suspect you have a lot of friends here – nearly everyone struggles with weight to some degree, even if just the “middle-aged spread” that comes with getting older and being less active. Few of us are teenagers, I suspect many of us are sedentary, and we’re all in this together.
Me? I’ve been more and I’ve been less. Been especially less since I joined a marching band – nothing like hauling a 35-pound sousaphone all over town. Best thing I’ve ever done. (I’d do it every day except it freaks out the neighbors if the rest of the band doesn’t come along.) Maastricht, do you play an instrument? 
Claire, I did look into the Maintainers library stickies on 3FC. Indeed, lots of good advice there. I ordered a few books from Amazon.
At 233 pounds at 5 ft 7 inches your not THAT bad off, I mean provided you are otherwised OK.
I’m not one to advocate drastic steps but look if you really tried and it didn’t work, and you can afford it, go ahead do it.
The only suggestion I can ask is make sure you can talk to other people this doctor has peformed the operation on.
That’s the only thing I’d really insist on
I have a friend who had weight loss surgery. I don’t know how much she weighed before, but she’s a tall girl (6’0") so I think she easily was well over 300 pounds. After the WLS, she lost it and got down to a healthy weight for her height. She looked AMAZING. That was about four years ago, and she has now gained a bunch of it back, to the point that she is asking me for weight-loss strategies so she can take off the weight that has crept back.
To me, this says that while the surgery can help, it’s only a crutch that you can use in order to help you make the lifestyle changes that you need to make anyway, and if you don’t make those lifestyle changes, the weight loss won’t be permanent. Which just… I don’t know, that seems horrifying to me, going through all that expense and pain and having major surgery performed and having your insides altered, and then the weight loss isn’t permanent anyway.
I have struggled with my weight for most of my adult life, and right now I’m entering my 7th month of actually sticking with nutritional and fitness changes. I’ve lost 15 pounds so far. The weight is coming off very, very slowly, but the important thing is that it is continuing to come off and I think all of my lifestyle changes are sustainable for me. Ivylass talked me into joining SparkPeople back in January and I credit that with a lot of it, specifically their philosophy that when you make major lifestyle changes, you need to do it gradually, a little at a time. Don’t completely change your diet and start exercising 7 days a week all at once. Make a small change, but stick to it. Once you have that under your belt, make another small change, and stick with it. And keep going until you’ve made so many small changes that your body is responding, you know? I also find that religiously tracking the calories for everything you eat, and I do mean everything, including that bite of cheese that doesn’t really count and the handful of grapes that don’t really count, etc., really helps with weight loss, partially because it helps you very clearly see that wow: If I want to eat 500 calories for this meal, I can either have this huge heaping portion of vegetables and fruits, or I can have this half of a greasy cheeseburger. Or whatever.
Also, I started running, and it changed my life and made me really serious about fitness.
Anyway, sorry for blabbing my personal crap all over your thread, but maybe some of it is helpful, I don’t know. My personal feeling is that the weight-loss surgery is a bad move if your basic problem is one of motivation.
ETA: My peak weight was 210 pounds at 5’7", so not terribly different from your starting point.
I had a follow-up appointmet with the clinic this evening, to ask for some more info to make the decision. It is indeed now or never: this doc will operate if my BMI is 35, but not lower. And that’s my current BMI.
The doc made it sound like no big deal, and he did recommend the surgery for me. For instance, he said that I would only have to take a vitamin tablet and a few drops of oils solubel vitamins a day. Injections are for people who didn’t watcht their vitamine intake, did’t get medical check-ups to measure their vitamine levels. That is the kind of people that needs injections, he said.
I also asked about flatulence and diarrea. He siad that with the mini gastric bypass, an improved version of the Roux-enY, that doesn’t happen any more.
I got suspicious. It just sounded too good to be true.
So I’m going to try and lose the weight naturally, for now. Let the Prozac do its thing. If it fails, hopefully (ha!) I will gain enough weight again to try surgery then.
Okay, you keep saying this is now or never, but if you are in the same position as most of us heavy people you try to lose the weight, lose a few pounds and then gain double it back. If weight loss was permanent we wouldn’t even be talking about the freaking surgery. I promise if you lose 20 lbs and then you feel stuck you can donut-and-burger your way back up for the surgery. This is NOT a now or never situation and approaching it like that might make you make a foolish decision.
What a wise decision on your part, Maastricht. I didn’t dare post about one of my friends’ experience, but she has been hospitalized several times since her surgery a little over a year ago. It’s not easy adapting to a totally different relationship with your food and body. She’s still in her 20s, so you think it would be easy for her… but it’s hard.
You’re a good-looking woman, and I’m rooting for you to do this on your own once you get the right dose of antidepressants.
Your decision sounds very reasonable, Maastricht. If you do continue to run into difficulty, there will be improvements in WLS in the meantime and the choice will still be open to you.
I had a RNY on Fat Tuesday in 1998. I was 5’3" and weighed 300 pounds. I lost 155 pounds and then settled in at about 150-155 for a long time. I had very few problems. Dry chicken and dry rice would make me sick. But I could eat the beef and sweets that I thought that I wouldn’t be able to.
My friends were wonderfully encouraging! Two of my colleagues from the English Department where I had taught decided to have the same surgery after I did. No one criticized me to my face. And I had to tell a few people who I was. Most were aware of the threat to my health that my weight had been.
I eat lunch at my club two or three times a week. At first I didn’t mind people saying that I “eat like a bird.” That was very new to me. Now most of them know that I’ve had a bypass.
These lunches are tending to put a few pounds back on now that I’m taking food home. I weigh about 185 now. I could live with that if it weren’t for the fact that I’m shrinking. I’m not sure how tall I am now. But I know I’m not 5’3" anymore.
If I eat too much, I get a pain in my chest that feels like what I always thought a heart attack would feel like. These attacks usually last about 20 minutes and are hell. A couple of attacks have lasted for an hour or so.
The surgery itself was terribly painful and they made me walk the next day. Thought I would die. I had a tube in my side that lead to my old stomach. If I bumped that tube, I wanted screamed. “The easy way”? Uh…nope. But it was the only way for me. I had tried lots of other programs.
But I don’t enjoy exercise. Someone who does has half the battle licked.
At the time that I had my surgery, one in every 100 patients died. My surgeon had a record that was twice as good. But I was morbidly obese. I had life-threatening health problems because of my weight and my internist strongly recommended the surgery.
The only injection that I have to take is B12. I take it every three months, but I probably should take it every month. I’m also low on iron, but I’m supposed to take a daily dose.
I made the right decision for me.
I think you’ve made the wise decision by waiting.
But… you seem to feel that you’ve got a good handle on your shortcomings, so I’ll say this: you say dieting didn’t work for you and exercise didn’t work for you, and it seems like followthrough and dedication to the program may have been the reason they didn’t work.
Watching your vitamin intake and getting medical check-ups is going to require followthrough and dedication. You may be the kind of person that will need injections.
Also, be wary (and get a second opinion) if that doctor’s pracitce is primarily weight-loss surgery. He may have recommended surgery because that’s how he gets his income, but it’s entirely likely he would recommend surgery because that’s what he’s used to doing. The ol’ “he has a hammer, so everything must be a nail” problem.
I thought one of the side effects of ant-deppressants was actual increased weight gain? I know that has been my experience with various psych meds, and typically, IME, it is weight that is nearly impossible to lose due to the metabolic changes that accompany the medication.
Also, you mention that you excercise quite regularly… I would point out that regular excercise may make you eat more (especially women) and sabotage your “diet”. That’s not to say you shouldn’t excercise, only be aware of this as a possible cause of your recent weight gain.
Argh…I had a long post ready for you and it got lost when I tried to spell check it. But it’s OK. I looked at your profile , and see that you are a new mom. That may help me make my point even better.
I never really considered Weight Loss Surgery until I became a mom, and had gotten over 300#. But after a year of research, and constantly thinking about it, I decided not to do it. I am currently doing Weight Watchers, and have lost 50# since Feb. 2009.
I know 3 women who have had WLS. The first one to have it, is back at WW after having gained about 40 pounds back. No, she didn’t gain all of the 150 she lost, but she was lucky to catch it and will always have to watch her eating. The second person is contemplating a weight loss program, and has been asking me questions about it recently. She has gained back about 35 of the 140 she lost. And she never even got to her goal weight. The third person was a young mom, like yourself. She was very borderline(about 240#), and very beautiful, also like you.
She is Dead!
She died, on Christmas Day, less than 6 months after her surgery, due to a perforated bowel. She left two little girls and a devastated husband behind.
My son is only 5. I know he would rather have his fat Mama, that is always trying her best to lose weight(and finally succeeding) than to have a thin(er) dead one.
Best wishes to you, and all of the rest of you out there who struggle with this issue. It is a very personal choice and a hard decision.
I just wanted to chime in, sort of after the fact, and say that WLS will definitely not give you willpower that you didn’t already have. It may limit what you eat temporarily, but eventually, like my dad and a friend of mine, you will be able to eat your way around the restrictions.
For just one quick example, a gallon-sized bag of oatmeal cookie dough (scooped into ready to bake cookies) disappeared over about a week’s time. They were all eaten by my dad (approx. 3 years out from his surgery). He has kept alot of his weight off, going down from over 400 lb to current weight of about 250. But still, a whole bag of cookies?
Also, I know that someone mentioned Sparkpeople and I have had a fair amount of success using the calorie tracker at livestrong.com. I’ve gone down 60 pounds very gradually and eat whatever I want, as long as I keep track of how many calories I’m eating everyday.
My brother in law just eats all day. Instead of taking 45 minutes to finish his dinner, he now takes two hours - but weight 100 lbs MORE than when he did weight loss surgery.
And since you wanted to be talked out of it…one of my girlfriends went septic after surgery - she survived after a six week hospitalization. The surgery has had OK long term result for her - she lost over 100 lbs and while she has regained some of the weight and is still obese, she is nowhere near where she was.
Hope this is helpful –
From the current Good Housekeeping magazine:
CLICK TO GET FIT – You don’t need a pricey trainer to get in shape. MyFitnessPlanner, a free Web service, provides personalized workout advice – then sends you weekly get-going emails. It really motivates: In a study of 156 women those who used the too boosted their exercise about 23 minutes per week (while the control group dropped 25 minutes). To try it go to http://dairycouncilofca.org/ and type “MyFitness Planner” into the search box.
HOW FAST SHOULD YOU WALK? Moderate exercise provides proven heart benefits but you may have to pick up the pace to earn them. Left to our own estimates of what’s fast enough, studies have shown that many of us aren’t getting the fitness boost we think we are. To find the best speed researchers from San Diego State measured energy output as 97 people walked on a treadmill, then translated the participants’ speed to a formula we all can use. The right pace? About 100 steps a minute says lead researcher Simon J. Marshall, PhD. To load your iPod with songs that set the tempo go to http://djbpmstudio.com/ and click on “Index by BPM” then choose 100.
Check your pace with a pedometer – Tylenol will give you a free one here:
https://www.justkeepmoving.com/web/guest/home
They also have exercise videos and other information on the site that you may find worthwhile.
Anything that makes you move is (no pun intended) a step in the right direction.