Weight loss and surgery

In My Humble Opinion
21

I agree with tremorviolet - you probably don’t see every meal that your friends eat. So, they may share a plate of nachos - and be so in tune with their body that that is good for them for a long time.

I know about mindless eating. I still fight it. (I’m another WW success story - 50 pounds lost, maintaining for 3 years). If you’ve been overweight, you’ve probably lost your sense of what is hunger and are working from habit/emotion.

I believe there are multiple parts to losing weight. One part is portion sizes. Learning about calories in foods, and what it means to you. Another part is building better habits. And a third part is, yes, exercise. Exercise does not have to mean just jumping on a treadmill. Find something you love. Or at least like. There is a huge range of choices out there.

And for the final question you had - isn’t it better to be 25 to 50 pounds lower a year from now than it is to be that much higher? Yes, it’s slow to come off, but the work is worth it for so many reasons.

Susan

22

I just popped in to congratulate Ginger- those pics are great!

Weight loss is hard- otherwise everybody would be thinner! :wink:

I did Atkins and then changed my eating habits. I lost 35 pounds and have kept it off (within 7 lbs) for almost two years.

For me, it was ALL about what I put in my mouth- the food was the key, not the excercise (I am sure, because I didn’t do any. Not one bit.).

Change is hard, and it takes time. But it can be done. Good luck.

23

Just another vote for “you don’t need surgery, just a decent diet plan and a commitment to it.”

I went from 235lbs to 195lbs last year, over a six-month period, using just The Hacker’s Diet (summary: Eat less, and track your weight daily). No fancy foods, no exercise, I just ate less, weighed myself every day, and got a better understanding of what hunger pangs are and how to manage them. I’ve crept up to 199lbs since July, but I’m starting another bout, and expect to drop down to 170 by June. Just keep your expectations realistic (losing 1 pound per week is reasonably fast), and you’ll be fine.

At the risk of sounding like a cliche, if I can do it, so can you. :slight_smile: And really, once you start making notable progress and start having to buy smaller clothes, you’ll feel great about yourself.

24

You definitely should read the Hacker’s Diet (see earlier message). One thing it teaches is that the scale lies. Your weight fluctuates by 3-5 lbs. in either direction of your “real weight” every day, depending on how much water is currently in your body. If you only follow the numbers on the scale, it’s easy to get discouraged because you starve yourself all day, then see that your weight jumped up 3 pounds.

THD uses a 10-day “moving average” to calculate your real weight (no complicated math required), and teaches you to watch that – and not the scale – to see if you’re making real progress or not. Using the afformentioned example, after you step on the scale, note the weight, and calculate your real weight for the day, you’ll see that you’ve actually lost 20% of a pound (say, 300 calories) over the day before, and feel good that you’re making progress.

25

Afriend of mine used to say, “I didn’t put the weight on overnight, it’s not going to come off overnight.” You have to understand that you have to fix the cause of the problem - what you eat, your activity level - more than fixating on your weight. The number on the scale isn’t the problem, it’s just a measurement.

StG

26

I’ve just had bariatric surgery, but mind you I’m 43 and had a BMI of 54. DON’T do it at your age-- you’re literally mutilating your digestive system. It is absolutely the solution to do ONLY if you haven’t done anything else. But after reading your second note, I can tell you’ll be more than OK.

Just a thing about exercising-- we tend to visualize it as being on treadmills on a gym and really, really boring. But there ARE tons of fun things out there that burn calories, everything from kickboxing to beginner’s soccer/basketball/whatever to the ultimate geek sport, geocaching. Go check out some classes at your gym or community colleges, see if anything sounds appealing. I did this, and you should see my GPS and cool collection of trinkets. :smiley:

27

HIJACK:

How are you doing, Mojave? I’m just over a year out & doing really well. If you need any support, I’m here! :slight_smile:

VCNJ~

28

Thanks. I wasn’t fishing for compliments, I just wanted to show kushiel what can be done. And I’ve got 16 years on her! Imagine what her young bod can do.

29

Rjung makes a good point- wieght fluctuates like body temp over the course of a day.

What I found worked well, was to weight myself at the same time every day. Actually, the last time, I weighed myself once a week, at the same day/time, on the same scale. It was a digital at a hospital.

Different scales will give you different readings, even when set up next to each other and used one right after the other! Consistency is the key.

30

There should be a rule that only fat people can post comments to posts like this, only because it brings out the same old stuff about diet and exercise being the only answer to permanent weight loss, mostly said in a slightly condecending tone from someone who has never had to lost more than 15lbs or who has lost weight e.g. a year ago, 5 months ago, etc. Since only 6% of people who are significantly overweight keep the weight off (usually gaining more) they are not experts either. I know plenty of normal-weight people who never diet and do a little exercise and are healthy.

Physicians freely admit they do not have the answer to obesity because diet and exercise are only successful for weight loss in very few cases because the human body resists calorie restriction and of those few who stick it out, 94% fail to keep it off.

I have always been overweight; my mother, father, sister and brother are normal weight. One aunt of four is fat. In studies done of identical twins separated at birth, if they have the fat factor (whatever that is) both are fat despite totally different social influences.

I’m not saying fat people don’t eat too much, I’m posing the question of why? Most really obese people are fat infants, fed by the same mother who has a normal weight child and sometimes normal weight themselves. Of course some people get fat due to emotional factors but I’m not talking about them here. Why would someone overeat from birth?

From age 9 I’ve been successful many times at losing weight, anywhere from 10lbs to 130lbs. Recently I lost 40lbs. I swim many laps every week and do weights and have for 5 years now. As any doc will tell you exercising does not help you lose weight unless you go at it aerobically with a lot of intensity for long periods of time. Runners are not fat. Only young people can exercise in this way.

Look, all I’m trying to say is this is an awful disease with no cure. The few successful ones say they exercise intensely every day and have to watch every bite they put in their mouths, living with the fear they will start to overeat again. It has nothing to do with moral character like many people of normal weight like to think.

There’s no cure and my doctor said the only thing the medical professional has to offer for obesity is surgery; he hopes they will find some genetic cure in years to come.

For people who have been a normal weight as a child and for part of their adulthood, for me they are in an entirely different category and might be cured with diet and exercise.

31

suezeekay I started at 330 lbs and last summer I underwent the severest type of bi-pass that can be done. link So not only am I fat, but I have actually undergone the surgery.

Surgery is a non-trivial action and I strongly encourage people to try behavior modification before going that route.

You will have to undergo behavior modification anyway because as I have pointed out, you CAN gain weight after surgery if you continue to eat the same things you did *before *surgery. Due to the illness, actually trying to lose and the surgery, I was down to 209 and now weigh 238 (after putting on 31 lbs). I have now gone back to trying to build the habits I had before I got sick - the ones that were helping me lose on my own. Excercising and eating right. I am mostly succeeding, and not giving up.

If I had the chance to choose between no operation and having one, I would choose none. There are many many who have chosen to have one and are thrilled. I am truly glad for them. But I would still recommend you work hard at it before you try something that drastic.

32

suezeekay - The thing I don’t understand about the “it’s all genetics” line is that we are a much fatter nation than we were 50 years ago, but we’re genetically more or less the same. It is also a fact that portions are much larger now, people eat out more, more fast food, less exercise. So I don’t buy it. Sure there are people for whom genetics may play a part in their weight gain, but for most it’s more a lifetime of poor choices.

I don’t say this to be confrontational - I say this as someone who is a size 12. You can see that I make my share of poor choices. But I’m not blaming my size on genetics.

StG

33

suezeekay - I’ve been fat my entire life. I hope that qualifies me to post here.

34

That attitude really irritates me. I never really qualified as fat-I reduced my size from a 8/10 (law school cheetos pudge) to a 4, I don’t know how many pounds that is…but do you think it’s easy? I watch everything that goes in my mouth. I don’t eat over 1500 calories a day…EVER. I come home from a tiring job and a bitch-ass los angeles commute and I still haul my dead carcass to the gym 5-7 days a week. I spent all summer losing that. Please tell me how that’s easy. Am I not allowed to participate in weight loss threads?

Losing weight is a pain in the ass for everyone. It’s hard for everyone. I’m not diminishing that some people have more to lose so it takes longer and is more frustrating but it’s not like being 10-15 lbs overweight means that you have great self-esteem and some magically easy weight-loss.

35

I was overweight from around 9 to 28. I lost 50+ pounds. I have kept the weight off for 3+ years. And I ask as well - am I allowed to post?

None of us are saying it’s easy. But surgery is not easy either. The health problems caused by being overweight are not easy. Life is not easy. You have to choose what path has the most satisfaction for the pain. For most people, it’s keeping to a healthy weight.

Susan

36

While it’s conceivable that diet and exercise may be very effective at preventing weight gain, it’s been shown over and over that for the vast majority of people, permanent weight loss is a different problem - regardless of where you start, the body seems to resist weight loss in a big way once you lose more than 10% or so of your weight, and of those who manage more than that, the vast majority regain it all by five years out.

The mechanisms how this work have been elucidated fairly well - reduced fat stores signal the hypothalamus to increase eating frequency, increase meal size, reduce resting metabolism and discourage activity. All the things you’d expect the body to do if it thought it was starving to death - which unfortunately it does, even if we’re talking about an individual who’s still over 200 lbs.

So Suzeekay’s completely right - weight loss tips from someone who’s lost a large amount of weight in the past few years (and certainly within the past year) while helpful shouldn’t be considered “success stories.” Most very fat people have probably on the short term lost large amounts of weight at least once in their life. Weight loss that’s maintained for a year or so is attainable in many people (though not easy). What’s much rarer is for large amounts of weight loss to be maintained for more than three to five years.

This is absolutely not to say it’s impossible- **Susan Forster ** who hasn’t regained anything in over three years looks like she’s on her way to beating the odds - and there are a few others on this board who’ve done it too. It’s just that from a statistical and biological perspective - recent weight loss or weight loss of relatively small amounts does not present the same biological difficulty as going from fat to thin permanently.

anu-la, I don’t want to dismiss the work you’ve done at all - you’re precisely an example of what hard work can accomplish. But in a way you’re proving Suzeekay’s point. You concede that even for a loss of 10 or 15 lbs, (which research shows is quite attainable) - weight loss is nevertheless quite difficult to maintain. Yet you assume that it’s no more difficult for 50 lbs or 100 lbs, that it’s just a matter of “more time” when the studies show that the more the body loses, the greater the resistance the body offers to weight loss, so that by 50 lbs and certainly 100 lbs, long-term weight loss is a statistical rarity, and probably unrealistic for most people. It happens now and then, but a far more common outcome is for people who try to do this is to regain in excess of what they’ve lost.

37

My posting qualifications: Former size 16, approximately 200# at 5’8" in 2001 at age 22. I am currently size 8-10 and vary between 135-140#. I have maintained this weight since about January of 2004. I was always active and just had bad eating habits. Here are a few things that worked for me:

  1. Walk places you need to go. I was in college and walked to campus, around campus, and back home every day. This is excercise you can’t quit because you have to go somewhere. I am now a bus rider so I have to walk to and from the bus stops and I do errands on the bus route. If you have to carry your groceries a block to the bus stop in the winter in Wisconsin, you are spending calories.
  2. Find activities you like. This wasn’t hard for me, since I have always been active.
  3. (I heard this somewhere, it isn’t mine) If your want ice cream, eat ice cream, but not the whole pint. You have favorite foods, we all do. The first bite always tastes better that any subsequent bite so have one serving of ice cream (a half cup!) four times instead of the whole pint at once.
  4. Learn to read the nutritional labels, especially the total calories. Total calories is the most important number on the label. Low fat foods are usually not any lower in calories that the regular counterparts. Serving size is the second most important number on that label. Serving sizes are much smaller than you probably think they are.
  5. Learn to cook from scratch and make most of your meals this way. I don’t have a microwave because it is a tool to overeating (for me). If you can walk to the kitchen and grab a bag of chips, you will. If you have to get out a chicken breast, get out a pan, turn on the stove, grill the chicken breast, steam a vegetable, etc. You have a lesser tendency to overeat just because you are bored.
  6. Drink when you are hungry. I would stop and have a cup of tea befor eating a snack in the evening. If you are still hungry, then make yourself a snack.
  7. Learn the difference between full and stuffed. I used to eat to uncomfortable. I never really ‘got’ the difference until I started not finishing restaraunt portions. When I ate at a restaraunt, I would eat about half of the food they brought and take the other half home to eat later. Now I cannot eat that much. I don’ tknow if it is psychological or real, but it is as if my stomach has shrunk.
  8. Don’t cut out anything altogether. I still drink beer and soda, I eat scrambled eggs, I eat ice cream. I just do it in moderation. Instead of 4-6 servings of pop a week, I have a pop whenever I really want one, which is a few times a month. I eat ice cream almost daily, but only 1-2 servings.
  9. Celebrate small victories. One of my big motivations was not having to buy bigger clothes. When my waistband stopped leaving an angry red mark on my stomach, I was happy. When a belt became mandatory, I was happier. Buying smaller clothes makes me really happy. I keep my old clothes because I think it is hilarious that my clothes outgrew me. If you pay attention to how you feel, you will notice less fatigue, less joint pain, more energy, less hunger, less sweatyness walking upstairs, better breathing, better sleeping, etc.
  10. Find supportive people to tell you how good you look :smiley:

This post was intended to be helpful and I apologize for the lecturing tendencies it has.

38

Hijack enclosed:

You did seem to gain a very cute growth on your hip though…was that a side-effect of the weight loss?

So it isn’t worth trying? Fat people should just resign themselves to being fat and unhappy? According to the American Lung Association, the average smoker relapses 2-4 times before successfully quitting so trying to stop smoking is worthless too? I really hope that this wasn’t what you were trying to say.

I was born big and was always in the upper percentiles of the height/weight chart. I ate alot all the time, but was also always active. The doctors always told my parents not to worry about it at the same time they were putting me on adult doses of medications because that was my size. I ate too much because I was young and dumb. I am guess that the OP was the same way I was at 19. There is a cure for obesity, it is diet and excercise, or medication, or surgery, or some combination thereof. I know lots of people who have lost significant weight (50-100 pounds) and have kept it off for years and eat and excercise normally. They were almost all fat babies and fat kids and fat young adults and decided that it was time for a change. Throwing up your hands and chalking it up to fate or a ‘fat factor’ whatever it may be, is giving up living a long healthy life. At 19, I really hope the OP isn’t ready to do that.
End Hijack

39

I thought what i was saying was clearly descriptive, not prescriptive: some people can lose 50 or more lbs for >5 years through diet and exercise, but these people are statistically rare. The biological reasons why this is so are fairly well understood.

*My * only conclusion, based on that information, was that Suzeekay was quite right in objecting to equating short term weight loss or small-amount weight loss (impressive as these accomplishments are in themselves) with the problem of a permanent 50 or 75 lb weight loss.

What decisions one makes based on this information is entirely one’s own choice. I myself would use that information to find ways to be happy anyway, should a thin body prove elusive.

As for the question of surgery - even if diet and exercise don’t work I think it’s a terrible mistake at her BMI. (And actually no reputable surgeon would do it). The health risk of her BMI (even should she never lose a pound) don’t even approach the risks involved in weight loss surgery.

40

That attitude irritates me as well. If I didn’t watch what I eat and get my butt in the gym 3-4 days a week, I would easily put on weight. I know a thing or two about fitness, therefore I feel it is perfectly appropriate for me to participate in weight-loss topics if I so desire.

A lot of people don’t want to hear the truth–that diet and exercise is the tried and true way to lose and maintain your weight. I wish I could tell people that it’s no big deal and easy to keep in top shape, but it isn’t. Sure, good genetics play a part, but most of all I look the way I do because of the time and effort I put into it. I’m not playing around when it comes to my health. It is a priority in my life, and I treat it as such.

Ginger, you look great. That is such an accomplishment.

And good luck Kushiel, I hope you find a plan that works for you. The best thing you can do is find a form of exercise that you enjoy. Start small (20 min. twice a week) and go from there. And start trying to work in five fruits and veggies a day. You’ll be suprised how filling veggies can be, and the nice thing is you can eat a bunch of them and not worry about the calories (they will clear out your digestive system though, hooo boy :smiley: ). Also, a good friend of mine has lost over a hundred pounds on WW. She swears by it.