Discouraged by lack of support from family & friends

Thank you all SO much for your encouragement! It means a great deal to have people understand what's it's like and where I'm coming from. All of the people in my life who are being so negative and hurtful have never been overweight. Right now (at 290.5 pounds) I am the smallest I've been my entire adult life. It's horrible being this big! I have calculated that if I stay on this diet and exercise regimen, I never cheat, and I never plateau, it will take me over 2.5 years to reach a healthy goal weight. I feel like if I add the surgery to the life changes I am trying to establish, I will be able to reach a healthy goal weight AND be able to maintain it for the rest of my life. Anyway, thank you all again for all of your support, I really can't tell you how much it means to me!  

Yes ignore them.

As you get closer and closer to your surgery, you might hear more of this. Much of it will come out of worry for you as many people have only heard bad things about WLS. So they will associate lots of bad things - remember, they haven't actually done any research so they are going to only be exposed to what they hear from the media. For example the last quote by Aretha Franklin who said that she'd never have gastric bypass because her "cousin turned green and died".

That's what the general public knows or they know a person who "gained their weight back".  They will worry about you. Neither of my parents were thrilled about my surgery. A year after my Dad said it was the best thing I'd ever done for me.  

I had a friend who had it and her Mother was doing everything to bribe her out of it for a year before surgery. Now she is the biggest cheerleader for having WLS.

Dawn

When you're a military spouse, you wind up surrounded by fitness buffs or people who believe themselves to be such. It gets annoying. THEY can diet and exercise off a few pounds and have some hope of keeping it off. It's different when you're morbidly obese. They are never going to get it, so you have to develop a very good set of mental earplugs for their stuff.

Yes, you're losing weight. What will happen if you slip up for even a few days? We all know what will happen. It'll come right back and bring friends. They don't get that.

You're not kidding about the weight coming back! Each week, I have been picking a different food that I will never be able to have again. I tell myself that this is the last time I will ever have it and I say goodbye. Last night was my last food I was really going to miss and it was Chinese food. I had a few bites of everything...and gained 3 pounds! When I was eating it, I told myself that it was totally worth all the work I would have to do to work it all off. Now, after seeing the damage it caused, I am SO mad at myself! It wasn't worth it at all. At least I'll learn from this and I won't let it happen again. I feel like I relapsed or something. I could just kick myself!