The Biggest LOOSER -- running weight loss thread

I've dropped about 20 pounds, with a goal of losing much more.

I'm following the simple plan of eating much less and exercising much more.

I'm limiting my caloric intake to about 1,600 calories and hitting the gym at least four times a week.

I'm tracking all my progress on a Fitbit and that little thing is amazing. I had no idea how much walking around I was doing and it also keeps track of my sleep, which is also pretty amazing.

I'm worried about the upcoming holiday season and sticking to the diet plan but I've pre-decided I'm not going to freak out over it.

 

I've been tracking calories with myfitnesspal.com and I've lost 6 pounds in the last four weeks. It's not a lot, but I'm looking for slow, sustainable weight loss that I can keep off after I get to a good weight.

 

I'm a successful gastric-bypass patient, and I would have you think about this further, and consider it, especially if your doctor does, and especially if you've ever gone to a GP surgeon for a one-on-one consultation, and he/she thinks that you, physically, would be a good candidate.

(There are optimal ranges of body/person/numbers types that suggest whether someone would be able to succeed, and at what level (weight) that might happen at, and a good surgeon will probably be able to, literally, predict it). Given my particular size, body type, and otherwise good health history, my surgeon said he thought I'd be an ideal candidate, and gave me numbers at which he thought I'd probably settle around when all was said and done and the honeymoon period was over. And, you know what? I have been a classic case, and done almost exactly as he'd predicted, all along the way.

I understand about just not wanting to do it. One of my brothers was all set to do it last year -- had picked a surgeon, gone to classes and consultations, gone through the pre-op program, and had gotten insurance approval. All that was left was to schedule a date. But at the last minute, he just backed out. I think he was scared a bit -- his wife had gastric bypass way back when it was first new and done differently and more invasively, and she had a serious complication about a year afterward. But, she also has, now, lost more than 180 pounds, and kept it off for close to 15 years, and is very healthy and happy because of it. I lost 146 pounds -- I'm a much smaller, shorter person than my sister-in-law -- and have maintained (within a 10-pound range of my lowest weight) for more than five years now.

My brother? He is still struggling, as he has his entire adult life, and not losing much almost no matter how little he purports to eat. (I'm sure he eats more than he says, and I know he's got a pretty sedentary job, and though he makes some effort to exercise, it's not nearly enough right now while he's got a lot of weight to lose).

What the surgery did for me was make it so that I wasn't having to fight to get down to a certain weight. Then, the habitual changes I'd made over the course of the process, and the body chemistry/tolerance changes that occur, and what you know/have learned through the process, all combine to make it easier to maintain a lower, healthier weight after the initial "honeymoon period" of a year to 18 months (when you lose most of your weight, and when it happens the fastest/easiest) has ended.

Yes, you have to maintain some semblance of an exercise program, and you have to eat better, forever, afterwards. But gastric-bypass makes that easier to do, and more routine, to do, and, once you get to a point of more normalcy, it doesn't have to be anything all that all-consuming.

I go to the gym three, sometimes four days a week, and I do still eat pretty regimented/repetitively, but that's only because that's what I choose to do now, I like it, and I find that that's what works best for me.

There's virtually nothing that I can't or am forbidden to eat at this point. But there just are some things that go down easier, or that, after which I know that I feel better, or worse, and so, I eat accordingly. But that's it.

For example, I loved pork before surgery. Now, I almost never touch it. Even though I still like it, I know it just doesn't sit well with me now, and that goes for all kinds of pork. I get left with the same feeling with hot dogs, and bacon, and such. I know other patients who have trouble with pasta, and rice, or other high-carb things. I do OK with those, as long as I don't eat too much of it at once. But some patients just don't touch it, and treat it as I do pork. You learn what works for you over the course of the process.

A typical dinner for me -- and I eat this, willingly and happily, four or five times a week -- is a ground-turkey burger in the dish, with no bun, with a vegetable or a mix of two vegetables, and some unsweetened applesauce. (I had always used applesauce kind of like a dip, for a lot of things, even while growing up, and it has turned into a good, fortuitous habit, post-surgery. I find it helps things go down, and I love it. I eat applesauce -- now the unsweetened stuff, though -- with almost everything, it seems.

Anyway, the goal of bypass surgery, in my mind, is normalcy -- to become a normal person, of a normal weight. And my experience has been that the procedure definitely helps you get there -- without wasting your whole lifetime trying to do it. THAT, to me, is the reason to have the surgery.

It's not "the easy way" to lose weight, as some will look upon it. But it is an easier way.

And if you work it, and learn from it, and -- this is key -- learn to listen to your body -- it will work for you, too.

 

I'm asking this in a total non-judgmental way, because I'm curious to know what it's like.

So ... why does one end up needing gastric bypass? I know it seems naive of me, and you can tell me off if you'd like but I used to be overweight myself - officially obese. Do you just feel absolutely no control over whether or not to east certain foods? Can't you just ... not eat it? Are the hunger and cravings uncontrollable?

What is it like?

 

I need to go to work and am running late now because the previous post. I'll come back later and respond.

 

If you were officially obese -- especially more than just a little bit, so that your obesity was not just a number that happened to be at the lower end of that range -- then you should have some inkling of the answer to that.

Eating, or not eating, for people who have come to overdo it, and do it poorly, is rarely just a matter of just not eating.

Despite some overweight people's contentions that it's just a physical thing, or involves some kind of physiological problem, for them, there is almost always an emotional/psychological component to overeating.

That has to be handled to a good extent --usually with visits to a psychologist and/or nutritionist for anywhere from three to six months (or more, if you choose) before there is likely to be real success at weight loss. Losing highly excessive weight rarely will be done successfully over the long-term simply because someone wills it.

If that's what you did, and you have maintained it for a long time, then you are unusual, and you're fortunate to have been able to do it.

For me, it wasn't a matter of there being no chance that I could have lost weight without the surgery. Like most overweight people, I'd done it -- many times, losing 60 or more pounds on my own four times that I can remember clearly.

I simply chose not to waste any more time trying to lose, and then watching myself regain -- again...if I did, in fact, manage to lose the pounds again.

I'd grown tired of what was almost a lifelong fight; it had started to impact me enough physically, mentally and emotionally that I'd wanted to do something drastic-but-still-possible, and gastric bypass was an option, if I could get insurance approval.

Now, that wasn't easy. I tried three times in four years to get approval, going through pre-op processes and weight-loss efforts each time while the battles were going on. After the protracted fight, I eventually got approved after I finally brought a lawyer who specializes in weight-loss surgery cases into the picture.

It was amazing how fast and easily that worked. I spent $800 to have him on my side, and it was probably the best money I've ever spent.

 

OK, there is an emotional/psychological component. What is it? What is it like?

For me, as I've said before, it was all about changing habits. And replacing unhealthy habits with healthier ones. Simple things like six-inch subs and baked chips at Subway instead of a 12-inch sub and Doritos.

Another huge step was acknowledging to myself the toll that drinking a lot of beer in one setting, multiple nights a month, was taking. Having a child helped, because it was an easy excuse from social pressure - which was always my psychological weakness.

 

What are you -- some kind of actual brain-picker? I can't believe you really are so lacking in empathy that you need this explained to you in personal detail.

If all eating, or over-eating was to you was habits, then good for you. As I said, that is rarely the case. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so much difficulty with obesity, and diets would, you know, actually work at changing people for life.

For most people, it isn't just that. Sure, it's habits, but it's also knowledge/learning, it's socialization, it's emotions, it's time, it's thoughtfulness, it's self-awareness and self-caring and self-esteem, it's about finding strength, maturity and discipline, it involves physical and physiological issues...It's about...a lot of things, and often a complex issue -- not a simply a daily caloric formula, even if, at it's most basic level, that's what would be left.

Any number of the above components, or the lack thereof, or some combinations of them, comes into play.

Eating these days is rarely just about "survival", or, um, just eating. It's not, although changing habits and learning -- really learning -- a different lifestyle goes a long way toward changing the warped perspective and turning meals into just that again, so that food loses a lot of its power.

But you must know all this, so I 'm just assuming you're playing dumb in an disingenuous attempt at message-board intimacy. Geez, Dick, how purposely obtuse can you be?

Just to give you an answer that might satisfy you, though, the emotional/psychological component is that food is often a tool used in an attempt to cope, with something difficult, something personal, something unwanted, or the life. Or, it is, to an extent, the reverse of that: an expression of self-hate, or at least, a lack of self-care, and can be a weapon, sometimes used, even if unknowingly (but sometimes not) against yourself.

 

Nothing simple about making those food changes, Dick. Eating to live rather than living to eat: Those are two very different lifestyles.

 

I just dropped down below 200 for the first time in a year. Overall I've dropped 15 pounds since mid-December and feeling much better. I still have a long way to go to get to a normal weight but it's good to be out of the obese category.

 

Great job.

 

The breakthrough for me - I've lost over 50 pounds in the past year - was beginning to look at food as fuel. It has greatly changed my relationship with what kinds of things I eat.