"Weight Loss May Be Fleeting With Lap Sleeve Gastrectomy"

What cappy said! 

psychoticparrot

I have been gone for so long didn't know we had a like button now! Still for old times sake LIKE  LIKE LIKE :)

Weight Loss May Be Fleeting Without... IMHO...

Building a support team and staying connected with them (Dr, dietitian, therapists/psychiatrist/psychologist, supportive family and friends, online and real world support groups) I consider my obesity a war and I would never go into battle alone... I want people that have my back when the you know what hits the fan... because... life happens.

Speaking of life... working on any neck up stuff... No more avoiding, pushing stuff under the carpet, self medicating with food, people, or anything else. Work on your why's. When the weight is gone, there will be no more blaming that.

and... considering this WLS opportunity as a DO BETTER not a do over...  finding healthy foods you enjoy, planning meals, setting yourself up for a great week, don't just wing it. Finding ways to move your body that you dare I say it look forward to. Getting rid of the diet mentality that you can suffer through something till a # on the scale appears or a clothing size is hanging in your closet... creating a lifestyle that you can repeat FOREVER and EVER AMEN ;) 

Just one post-ops 2 cents ;) Best wishes and speedy healing! ~Shelly

These studies and the stock people put put into them always make me laugh.

The bottom line is ..... the sleeve is not magic.  

The sleeve will help you change your lifestyle if you are completely committed to doing so.  It won't do it for you, but it will be the thing that has been missing every time you tried to do it yourself and failed or did it and then gained it all back plus ten more over and over again.

You still have to be the one who keeps making good choices, exercises and retrains your brain .... but the sleeve will make it easier.

There really won't be anything stopping you from drinking Sonic shakes and eating potato chips all day long except for you.  This is one procedure where how well you do is completely up to you.  No one but YOU puts food in your mouth.

It's pretty easy to tell who is going to be a regainer and who isn't.  I'm not talking about people who have a treat, a special snack or a really special meal now and then.  It's the people who don't want to do any work besides letting the sleeve do the work, and they take every chance they can get to eat like they used to.  

This post and it's replies is really an eye opener for me. Jerseycitygirl put the icing on the cake for me. I've always heard that WLS was just a tool but never really thought about what that meant. I've tried over and over do it on my own w/o success. I removed the lap band 11 months ago and thinking "SLEEVE". I've realized now that this is all up to me and not the surgery. I'm ready to start and by realizing what I do now, I can get my diabetes back into control/remission. If I start to regain too much, Then I know that it's my own doing and I need to do what someone else just said, and that's to immed. get back to plan. 

It will be interesting to see what the research indicates after another 10 years. For example, my A1c is creeping up again, my fasting glucose is again over 100 (106) and I am back in the prediabetic stage. True, I am 5 pounds over goal weight and they say even a 10-15 pound loss can pull you out of prediabeticness, but I have to wonder if some of the metabolic benefit first experienced immediately preop has since declined. In other words, 1 day out of surgury I was no longer diabetic. A few years later my diet is still reasonable responsible and such, but I am creeping back toward it. This is similar to hunger as well. I have noticed more hunger, but this was expected. I also know for me that acid issues mimic hunger, and for sure acid has been a problem as of late, so perhaps I am not more hungry but just more prone to acid now? At anyrate, it was not like that for the first year. I suspect metabolically we do lose some advantages over time in other words, much like our Rny counterparts eventually lose the malabsorption. Time will tell. 

2 years out!

I was having acid issues, too, and mistaking them for hunger. The generic Prilosec, even at 40mg a day, was no longer effective. I went to the doctor this week and had that rx changed to Protonix generic (pantoprazole) and so far so good! It really, really made a difference.  

As others have mentioned on here, the sleeve is just a tool. A really, really great tool. I started to do some emotional eating in the last 6 months. I decided that I "deserved" to have that dark chocolate or dipped cone from McD's because I was going through some very adult, stressful situations. 

The upshot was I gained back about 15lbs over the last 6 months. It made the stressful situations that much harder by rewarding my angst because now my damn clothes don't fit and there I go, off to the dungeon for some self hate torture time.  The weird thing was, I looked like I gained more than I did because it all went straight to fat, not muscle, thanks to my non-exercising program.  I'm mostly back on track now, but I had to go back to basics. And by basics I mean SF jello, protein pudding/shake, low sodium boullion and get really conscious about my fluid intake. I was afraid I had lost my restriction and stretched my sleeve. *face palm* The good news is, I still have my restriction, going back to a liquid diet for a few days then slowly bumping up to soft foods really made a difference, when combined with the new RX for acid reduction.

To all of you *****ad this, take heart. We sometimes stumble, but we always have the ability to pick ourselves back up, remember what it was like being morbidly obese( sleep apnea, unable to bend over and tie the laces on our shoes, being out of breath walking from the car to the store, maybe some urine retention problems)...and using this really, really awesome tool we have to get back on track and work our way down.

Peace be with you!

Colleen 

Thought you might find this interesting... 3 year study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23470577

and a great blog I read: http://conscienhealth.org/2015/09/more-evidence-what-to-expe ct-from-bariatric-surgery/ 

:)