Would you have self paid?

In your message is the key to it all....

With the proper education on the subject, it becomes a lifestyle and not a diet.  All diets fail.

I no longer count, or even care, how many calories I eat because I view all food in terms of insulin response.  Insulin is what made us all fat and is the key to a low carbohydrate lifestyle.  Once you understand fully that the only requirement for weight loss is the absence of elevated insulin, food choices become amazingly simple.

My day to day choices are simply a measured response to how much sugar I want to take in at any point.  I never crave food, can easily skip meals and "the last 10 pounds" are steadily migrating from fat to muscle.  It can be done without surgery, it just takes more patience (which is always the hardest part).

If all else fails, self pay is worth the investment.  Based on the feedback in the forum, the Mexico route in that case also seems viable, but you do need to do your research first and have a post-surgical plan laid out ahead of time.

About seven years ago I went the low-carb diet path. That, along with diet pills let me go from 355 to 215 in eight months. I lost 20lbs a month for six months straight and 10lbs a month for the last two. I went from a 4XL shirt to a L.

Gained all but 25lbs back.

Interestingly (or maybe not), that was my deal with myself. I was (and am!) very serious about HFLC. I read my Gary Taubes and Phinney & Volek, etc. But I gave it two serious, prolonged attempts over the course of 2 years and I just couldn't get there. I remember promising myself that it would be my last attempt before I turned to surgery. I did lose a good chunk of weight but not enough and not fast enough. I also think sometimes that with a full size stomach, you can do a LOT more damage if you fall off the wagon than with a sleeved stomach, especially with my particular vices (pizza, not ice cream for instance).

I view the sleeve as a commitment device for helping me stay on the low carb straight and narrow. The specter of recidivism haunts my dreams (literally! Last night I dreamed I gorged on lemon bars), but I don't think I could have achieved such rapid weight loss without surgery. My biological clock is ticking and time is of the essence. 

I would agree that the sleeve makes for an easier level of commitment to HFLC.  In my case, I've opted to boost my calories and let chemistry take it's toll.  But, by the time I eat the requisite fat, protein ,and veggies, there really isn't any space for stuff outside the parameters.

I haven't heard the siren's call of ice cream, M&Ms, or whatever, since I converted over fully to HFLC.  My biggest splurge is I save space in my day for some 85% dark chocolate.  However, even with that, my sugar is around 10-15g a day, and usually only 1-3G at any meal depending on options.

Your post is a prime example of "forgetting where you came from." You did it with surgery but now you are telling people that they could just do what you did in terms of eating like you eat and they could do it without surgery. Even though you couldn't do it without surgery and reams of scientific data says that pretty much no one else can either. Talk about "do what I say and not what I do!"

Statistics show that the vast majority of diets fail. Science tells us why. And it's NOT because we just weren't educated or dedicated enough. Or because we're not eating a low carb diet (or paleo or low fat or vegan or whatever diet mythology you believe in).

It's because obese bodies are broken and fight to keep the weight on. WLS repairs our bodies and curbs our hunger cravings and leptin resistance and insulin resistance and all the other things that are broken so that it's possible to loss the weight maintain our weight loss if we keep to the program. It's not the program alone. It's the two things together.

I'm not forgetting where I came from at all.  I'm saying point blank "I am better educated today than I was before".

I fell for the standard "calories in vs. calories out" because that is what everyone sold us.  I didn't learn that it was complete bull**** until this year.  Now I know and understand the situation much better.

I don't regret the surgery at all, and I did say "when all else fails" go for it.  What I believe is that the majority of obese people, whether they are here on the forums with us or not, are not given accurate information.

There is a lot of money tied up in making obesity a matter of personal responsibility and ignoring the underlying causes.  The simple fact is, many, if not most of us, could have followed the absolutely perfect diet "as prescribed by doctors and dietitians" and still ended up in our same position.

What's different today vs. when I had surgery is 700 hours of research.  What I'm saying specifically is, it's worth doing similar research and trying the LCHF route.  In the end, you need to be there anyway for the best benefit to your health.  It's simply a matter of our genic programming.

PS: You know how you repair leptin and insulin resistance?

You remove the causal agent....    Sugars and grains.

That only works if your body isn't broken. For example:

This past Oct., I participated in a 21 Day Challenge at our gym. We did 3 days a week of metcon workouts and had nutritional counseling from a nutritionist who preached the 'primal' lifestyle. And of course for all the non-obese people and me, who had WLS, it worked. But for the one obese gal and the one MO gal, it didn't. Surprise, surprise.

If eating some magic way was all it took, no one would be fat and diets would work. But they don't.

It makes me sad when people have years, often decades of failed diets behind them, get WLS, succeed in losing weight and keeping it off, and then going around preaching that they succeeded because of whatever diet it is that they followed and if only they knew before what they knew now they wouldn't have needed WLS, conveniently forgetting all the things they tried before and how absolutely nothing worked before. I know society absolutely hates WLS and is convinced that we don't need it, that if we were just dedicated enough or just found the right diet, we'd lose weight and keep it off. But anyone who has had WLS should know better.

As far as I'm concerned telling other people that, yeah, you lost weight with WLS but you could have without it is just a form of self-hatred.

Reading the ongoing post of healthy eating, cutting carbs and grains, it works for some people, those of us who have worked out and dieted and failed, myself for the last 10yrs, we get to certain point of ok, there is something else to help us. WLS is a tool, just as diet pills, jenny jones,weigh****chers,atkins all are diet plans,every plan have a potential to work as well as fail. I choose wls as a tool for myself for various health reasons.  To read or listen to someone go on and on about you can do it without wls GOOD for you,get off the soap box and preach about the gmo and additives in our foods, the sugars and corn syrups and other addictive additives in our food. I buy 80% organic, but would not be able to afford it if i was on a regular diet,wls allowed me to eat less to afford organic.

But can they keep it off? Because that is a big one for a lot of us. We can lose, but keeping it off is next to impossible.

And low carb high fat isn't for everyone, so I don't think telling someone they should do it for twelve months prior to surgery helps. It seems like just another way of telling people if only they tried just a bit harder, they could lose that pesky weight. Didn't we all hear that enough? Most of us, by the time we come to surgery, have tried pretty much everything.