My Mother had this done a few months ago, she has talked about it for years but wanted my explicit blessing before going ahead. I asked her to learn about WHY she was so obese before she resorted to surgery and to make sure she was educated about nutrition and excersise part of it. At that stage she considered bacon and eggs fried in bacon grease with buttered white toast a healthy meal. She refused to do that but found a doctor who would do the surgery anyway.

Now 4 months have past since the surgery and she has only lost a small amount of the weight they expected, she is back to binging but because of her now tiny stomach capacity she keeps vomiting. She argued with her doctor that a hashbrown from McDonalds is a perfectly fine breakfast and can't understand whats wrong with her eating mashed potato and gravy from KFC. She still refuses to eat what the doctors meal plan dictates and is suffering for it. She is in total denial about this and thinks she is just medically different to every single other person in the world.

I absolutely support the use of the surgery but please do the emotional preperation BEFORE you have it. My Mother still doesn't know why she overeats and her health is suffering because of it.

Everyone has already said how I feel about WLS vs doing it on your own so I'll not beat that dead horse. I am just piping up as a form testimony to the ability to do it on your own.

I lost 137 in the first year of eating healthy and changing my mindset which I think is just as fast as successful WLS. I have lost an additional 32 pounds in the past 6 months (with adding exercise and gaining muscle mass and weight) so, NO surgery is definitely NOT the only way to go.

Good luck - although you won't really need luck once you figure out what will work for you. I think I'll wish you Good Willpower instead

CC: I am paranoid about doing it because I do have a problem with just stuffing myself, if I can't train my brain not to do that, I won't be successful if I do the surgery. I don't want to spend the money if my eating habits negate the benefits of it. I think if I ever want to have the surgery, I have to do something first to show that I have "earned" it. Like some others have said, it's like having a headstart, but I don't know if I would properly use that headstart or not.

Pacifica TYVM for posting so that I could see your story I posted more on your forum, but your story sounds like where I am now.

I'm a day or 2 late in posting here, but I just want to say I know you can do this on your own if you want to. I'm 60 and have lost 72 pounds in exactly 6 months by just eating smaller portions but lots of fruit and veggies, and by cutting way back on snacking, processed foods, carbs, fats, and sugar. It hasn't been easy, but the truth is, it hasn't been anywhere near as hard as I thought it would be.

You will get the support and friendship you need in here to help you every step of the way.

Lin

Im a lil late with responding.....but i started at 376 pounds and now weigh 194 pounds (have lost 180 pounds) .... i have done this without surgery, simply with perseverence (has taken me 5 years) and eating good clean food and exercise...so yes DEFINITELY can be done. I now only have 28 pounds to goal

A lot of people have said that they changed their diet. Do you change what you eat, or how you eat, or how much you eat, or a combination? I was considering a low carb diet (not necessarily Adkins). I'd considered the pre-portioned meal thing, but I know for those you include your own fruits and veggies, so if I'm going to buy those from the store, may as well buy the whole meal there

Everyone's answer is different: Some change what they eat, some change how they eat, some how much they eat, and many change a combination of things and most (but not all) get up and move. You really have to find what works for you and what you can live with if you want lifelong success. This is true with both "on your own" and the surgical tool options.

*BTW I am not anti-WLS but I AM anti the fact that my BFF risked her life having WLS and is now TOTALLY non-compliant with all aspects of the lifestyle.

Combination.

MOSTLY for me it came down to how much, but what happened is that changing what I ate meant I was satisfied with much less. Adding veggies and/or fruits to each meal. Whole wheat grains instead of "white" grains. Low fat, or fat free options for things like dairy products.

Little by little I found that I could be satisfied with a healthier substitute or just a smaller portion of what I'd normally eaten before.

Being mindful and writing down my food is still the biggest part. I'm the type of person who can overeat just about anything, so writing it down keeps me accountable and keeps me from fudging the numbers in my head.

Combination. First it was just how much... then I wanted more "bang" for my calorie buck...

I could have written Lovely's post btw, including the last bit on writing everything down!!!

No, you don't need surgery. Also, there was a recent study that showed that weight loss surgery did NOT extend a persons life span.

Losing weight is simple - less calories in, more calories out.

Now, if only it were easy.....

I have no opinion on the WLS thing, but just wanted to be another voice saying it's not the only way. I still have a ways to go on my journey, but I really feel AWESOME right now, eat great, move a lot (often will take a challenging hike for FUN these days!).

I guess my diet can be summed up by saying I eat a lot of protein, veggies and some fruit, lighter on the carbs (very few empty ones), some low fat dairy, and very few sweets. My daughter and I have a standing ice cream date every Friday. I didn't incorporate the ice cream treat until 9 months or so into my plan, because at that time one ice cream was enough to send me over into cheat land. Now I can handle it in moderation as long as I don't make excuses to add in a splurge at every possible occasion (there are LOTs of work pot lucks, cookouts, parties, celebrations, bdays, holidays, etc, etc, and not EVERY one of them can be an excuse to go off plan - for me at least!).

Anyway, I think I have the whole mindset boiled down for myself (and this is as individual as every eating plan out there, I'm sure). I don't like myself very much when I don't do what I say I'm going to do. It's a shame spiral. Sometimes at the beginning I had to put my ipod on full blast and scream at the top of my lungs, or take the hedge clipper to my overgrown bushes in the backyard until I was sweaty and panting to avoid eating something I said I wasn't going to eat. And enough victories in that direction have given me a newfound confidence and self-love that feeds on itself and has really taken over every aspect of my life. I wear makeup and jewelry now. I bought myself a cute pair of sandals and a new hairdo. I fuel my body well and give it the exercise it needs. I am loving this chick who does what she says she's gonna do, and I treat her like a queen these days!

Nowadays, the angst and feeling like I need to scream or do hard manual labor to stay on my way of healthy eating is long gone. Now I pretty much just do what I do. It's still a struggle at times, but you don't even have to get close to goal to start realizing why you have put the effort in. And that's where I think sometimes that having gotten up above (or close to) 300 lbs can actually be an advantage in totally overhauling a lifestyle. We KNOW how it feels to literally be sidelined from life. I think a lot of us understand better than someone with just a few lbs to lose what the stakes are and what we truly have to lose if we DON'T make a change.

Anyway, I guess I've gone on long enough. Best wishes!

I do think we have to be careful about saying "you can if you want to badly enough," because there are a lot of people who want it more than anyone can want anything, but can't manage it witout weight loss surgery.

In fact, those are the people wls really is best designed for. Those who've tried everything to the best of their abilities and still failed.

Some may always have compliance problems, but it's not always because they're ignorant or stubborn, or stupid. Change is just damned difficult, and large changes are even more so.

Working as a probation officer I saw so many people who earnestly tried to change their criminal and antisocial behavior, only to fail and fail again when the opportunity for "fast (but illegal) money" presented. I once sat with a guy (residential burglary was the family business. His father and grandfather had supported their families by theft and gambling), and we determined that his "profession" earned him less money for his family than a minimum wage job would have - and yet he was on probation 3 times in the course of my 5 years as a probation officer (he was given probation and short jail sentences every time because he had the "good luck" if you can call it that to have been caught before he actually ever got into a house, so he was never charged with actual theft, just tresspass, home invasion and once property damage).

The temptation of "easy money" was virtually an addiction for this guy. Sadly, he was one of the most likeable guys you would ever meet, and bizarrly one of the most open and truthful people I've ever met (sounds like a contradiction, but every time he was arrested, he fully "spilled the beans" about his intentions to the police. He never tried to say he wasn't doing exactly what he appeared to be doing).

I do believe in free will and power over our actions, but I also believe that it can be extremely difficult to change behavior patterns, especially those that were set early. It can take an almost superhuman amount of effort and will to break behavior patterns, especially when you've known nothing else, and may even have seen nothing else. You have to believe change is possible. You have to put in the work to make it possible, and you still may fail over and over and over again. You may even need outside intervention to make part of the change for you (for a burglar that may mean jail or prison, and for some obese people it may be weight loss surgery).

I do want to be clear that I'm not saying obesity is a crime, I'm just using it as an analogy (and maybe not the best one), there are just many behaviors that are a choice, but don't feel like one at the time. Sometimes getting someone else's help (even to the point of forcing a change) can be the catalyst for change. It needs to be ok for people to realize and say they need that kind of help.

You nailed it. One thing that I have learned (I don't remember from whom or where) is that when you identify a bad habit that you want to change, you next have to REPLACE it with a good habit. This week I have been working on cutting out carbs, it was especially tricky because I traveled out of town for business. HOWEVER I think I did a better job of having good eating habits while being on the road this week than I have for the past 3-5 years.

I have decided to change my life habits in phases. First changing my eating habits (I am doing that now!), then including exercise in my life daily. The most important thing for me will be tracking. I think that my brain is so programmed to want to see immediate changes that I forget it takes a while to get started, but once I get started I can't stop. It's like using a water pump. You have to pump for a while before the water comes, but once you get started the water will keep flowing as long as you keep pumping!!! (Yes, I have used a water pump before. It's hard damn work! LOL)

I know that my life needs a high level of personal discipline: I am self employed AND a graduate student, so I'm used to coming and going whenever I want to, but not being smart enough to do things in a timely manner. Until now!