Quote:
Originally Posted by dilweed
I am new to not only this message board but ANY message board. I never thought I would do this but I've been reading messages on here for awhile and I decided that this is the place to be in order to discuss a WLS because no one who hasn't had it or thought about it could understand.
Anyway, my story is this....I had my "stomach stapled" in 1989. I was one of the first to have this type of surgery. It worked great for a few years and then the weight started coming back on. I've been on every diet that is known to mankind since then and have lost weight only to regain it. So now, 24 years later, I am planning to have the surgery done again. I am literally 3-4 weeks away from surgery and I keep going back and forth in my mind about whether or not to go through with it. My surgeon is planning on doing a gastric by-pass unless he gets in there and discovers it's going to be too difficult and then he will switch to doing a sleeve.
I know I want to lose the weight, desperately. I just need some feedback from people who understand if I am doing the right thing. I know, I know, no one can make the decision but me but I need some advice from people who don't know me and who aren't really vested in this decision.
Questions:
What caused the weight to come back soon after your stomach stapling? Did your stomach expand?
Why did the dieting fail? Did you start on a particular diet, and couldn't stick with it?
Like you, I considered WLS -- and was very close to doing it. However, I decided to give myself one last shot at losing the weight on my own. That is where I am now. If this works, great. (So far so good). But if I am not able to keep the weight off or stick with a weight loss plan long term, who knows.
Anyway, what made me pause about the WLS was that I have friends who had the surgery, but gained a lot of their weight back in the years after. Not ALL of the weight, mind you. But a lot. What occurred to me is that the WLS will definitely take the weight off, but to keep it off and maintain, you have to - at some point - change your eating habits. I figured, if I have to do that eventually anyway, I'll try to do it BEFORE having surgery to see if that works. Again, so far so good. But nobody is more surprised than me that I have been able to do this. I thought the chances of me having WLS were more than 50%.
Anyway, that's my two cents -- as a person who has not had WLS. I know that there are MANY people who have had WLS that can't say enough good about it, and who probably owe their life to it. So, I am not trying to talk you out of WLS by any means.