Finsternis’s Posts
As many of you will I'm sure be glad to hear, I am giving up and leaving. The one thing we agree on it that I will never convince you. You'll all made your decisions already and they can't be reversed, which is very sad to me but can't be changed now. I was hoping to reach some pre-surgical people, but sadly again, there aren't any. I'm sad that so many of you are rude and insulting to people who say things you disagree with even when they're true. I'm sad that there is such a clear lack of knowledge about important issues. I'm sad that there are so many myths and incorrect information about fasting out there.
Mostly I'm sad that so many people today choose to remain immune to any opinion or knowledge that they don't already agree with and refuse to consider new things. Clinging blindly to your old way of thinking in the face of new evidence is really bad. But, once again, I'm not going to solve that problem here either, so I bid you adieu.
I'm sure many of you will want to write extended rants defending your positions. Save your time. I won't see them. I'm unsubscribing from this thread and not returning to this site (waits for cheers to subside). Have fun discussing issues only with people who already agree with you. Write all you want, but I'll never see it.
Adieu!
Funny you should mention that book. I read it when I was 16 and many times since. Great book and very helpful all through my life. However, it is a book about just what the title says. Sometimes making friends and getting people to like you isn't the best thing to do. People often don't like you when you tell them true things that they don't want to hear, but they need to hear them anyways. I'm sorry that the truths I'm speaking have to be painful to you, but it's still important.
I don't think you're shills or dupes or anything. I think you were manipulated by a greedy industry for its own profit, and unfortunately the news about better ways hasn't yet gotten nearly as far as it needs to go. That isn't your fault.
I'm glad you've finally found something that works for you and you are satisfied with it. I guess I'm just not as easily satisfied.
It's too bad you never tried IF, because you can do it at any age, from 15 to 95. And it's easy to keep up long term. It amuses me that so many people seem to think that amount of time has anything to do with it. I mean, yes, the true test is to keep weight off long term, but it's also dumb to say "I started earlier than you have so I've been doing X longer. because you have been doing Y for less time, that means it can't work long term."
And, yes, I have in fact done, or tried, it all - all except surgery. Not an option, and not necessary. For anyone. But since what's done is done and can't be reversed, I'm glad it at least worked out well for you.
I'm curious, can you say what you have in mind when you say that someone can lose weight on a high-carb diet?
Donna, sorry, but you are simply wrong. There are better ways. It's not an assumption. It's a cold, hard, fact. Just because you say so doesn't make it true.
Of course not all thinks work exactly the same for everyone. But you are mentioning people with very rare conditions for the most part - there will always be exceptions. There are plenty of people who can't have WLS, too - does that make it less effective? I was assuming we are taking it as a given that people who are medically precluded from doing a certain thing aren't taken into account when discussing the thing in general. You need to let got of your attachment to WLS and put aside your reluctance to realize that fasting is every bit as effective in every way. Maybe (*MAYBE!*) WLS is a little faster at first - I haven't looked into that.
You are also not considering the many, many people who are either too poor or too uninsured to get WLS. It certainly does them no good. You do them no service by pushing WLS.
You know as well as I do that so far there aren't any 10-year longitudinal studies about fasting because it's only been fairly recently that people have finally realized (once again) that it's by far the best method of weight loss and health. There's plenty of data on animal testing, though if you're skeptical o0w well it transfers to humans, well, I agree that it's definitely not a direct relationship. Mice are not humans. But it's interesting. But I sure don't buy the argument that "people have not studied X as much as Y, so X must not work, or be inferior". That's nonsense. I certainly hope they do more studies, and I bet some are underway, but who knows when they will be released.
I also submit that there are fewer studies because there's no money to be made on fasting. WLS has a huge medical-industrial complex behind it who are happy to fund expensive long term studies so they can get more people under the knife and profit more. There's no money in fasting - you can't sell that many books on it, it doesn't require supplements, or surgery, or expensive foods, or classes, or anything like that. So no one has any incentive to fund extended study.
I'm not making assumptions, you are. I understand the underlying mechanisms as well as you do, or better.
Why do people still turn to surgery? because it gives them an "out". Even though it isn't, it's seen as a Magic Bullet. I strongly bout many of them have seriously tried IF and given it a real chance. Do you ever counsel them to do that before surgery? I doubt it. They also have a huge industry of doctors, nutritionists, counselors, and hospital dog-and-pony shows trying to convince them to get surgery, falsely claiming it's the only option.
Donna, thank you for your information and a calm response. I, too, have read literally thousands of articles about obesity, weight loss, bariatric surgery, and fasting (plus many books).
I never said that fasting was superior to WLS in any way other than "you don't need to have surgery to get the same results". In that way, I do consider it superior - vastly superior. They do have the same metabolic changes.
However, you say "fasting is not permanent", and you are very wrong about that. It['s absolutely permanent for me and zillions of others. I love it, and not just because it makes me lose lots of weight, cures my diabetes, and be healthier in general. I love all the time it saves me meal planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning up. I love not having to worry about "what's for dinner?" every night because often the answer is "nothing". I love planning far fewer meals because I can plan whatever I want without counting calories or fat or anything else, really (though I do generally try to stay pretty low carb). So, in many practical ways, fasting is far superior. I get the same results and my guts stay where they belong. I consider that to be a huge win.
If you think "the difference between fasting and surgery are night and day", then you should say why. I don't just take your word for it. Prove it. The articles you posted only prove that WLS does cause metabolic changes, which I already agreed with here many times. It does. So does fasting. None of the links you posted say that fasting does not have those same changes.
I also definitely dispute your claim that 95% of WLS patients keep the weight off. I'm sure that 95% keep some off, but it's almost never their lowest weight. Most people lose a whole lot of weight initially, and it very often creeps back up. Maybe it doesn't get back to where it was, but some weight regain is very common. So, yes, maybe they stay lower weight than when they started, but frequently it ends up being not very much lower over the long run.
The changes form fasting are permanent as long as you keep eating right, which is the case for just about anything, including WLS. The only way WLS changes are "permanent" is because it's irreversible and you can never take it back - you are "permanently" forced to eat the same restricted diet. That's like saying that having your toes amputated makes them permanently immune to frostbite. It may be true, but I'd rather just wear warm socks all the time.
As of speed of changes, I haven't looked at data about that, so I will reserve judgment. Maybe WLS is a little bit faster. But I doubt by very much, if at all. Just a few weeks after I started IF, my blood sugars have all been well within the "normal" range and I am going to soon ask my doctor to gradually start taking me off my diabetes meds. So I doubt that is much faster. As for losing weight, you say it is faster with WLS, and I haven't looked at that. But I'd be surprised if it were true, unless you can explain to me how one can lose weight faster by eating something rather than nothing.
Anyways, thanks for an interesting and well-informed answer.
I am wondering why people seem to think that length of time has anything to do with anything. So you started earlier, big effing deal. That means nothing.
Congrats on your loss, though!
You should have posted your long rely, it might have contained some useful information instead of the stupid insult-filled rant you did post.
You can rant and pretend to be all smug and condescending all you want, but you are no more knowledgeable or experienced than I am. You're just mad that you got your body seriously modified when you didn't have to. Your hostility is amusing to me. So smug and superior. Hey, darlin'? You ain't the only one who's been dealing with obesity for a lifetime. You have no special skill or experience that everyone else here doesn't have, so spare me the absurd sneering.
You impress me not at all, either. You clearly don't know what the hell you're talking about. So you got some surgery that FORCES you to eat minuscule amounts and restricts you from many things you used to be able to eat - you want a medal? You didn't "stick to" anything, my dear. That's like someone who is in prison bragging that they didn't spend any money on travel or vacations. It gives you zero credibility in my eyes. So don't act like you're some kind of God Of Obesity Knowledge. All that had to have the knowledge to do was pay a lot of money to a surgeon - they did all the work. You had zero choice after that, you were stuck with it. So your vaunted "SEVEN YEARS!" means nada. I'm on the other hand, am doing it myself, and succeeding just as well as you with my guts intact.
Well, you have more guts than "SparkleKitty", who did block me. I, like you, never block anyone. If I disagree with them I either just ignore them and don't reply or say why I disagree. You're right, you can learn things even from people you disagree with.
I AM concerned with having a productive discussion. It's the people here who jumped up here and shouted me down when I tried to do that. I did NOT come here to **** people off -I can here to deliver helpful information. It was taken in an extremely negative and abusive way. It's not my approach that was the problem, it was the reaction here. It seems people have so much emotional baggage around WLS that they can't really talk rationally about it. I answered all questions clamly, even the abusive ones, and provided a lot of information.
I was hoping to reach people who had not already had the surgery, but there don't appear to be many here.
Sorry about your dad. I'm sure he was a great guy. But his aphorism was wrong, sorry. That doesn't mean he was a bad guy. My dad died about 3 years ago. It really sucks.
Ah, I see SparkleKitty gave up, took her ball, and went home. She clearly couldn't handle the truth, so she banned me from replying to her. It's sad when people are so wrapped up emotionally in a mistake that they refuse to admit they made it.
I had to lost at least 200lbs. So far I've lost about 40 in about 3.5 months. No surgery, no "diets", no killing myself on the treadmill, no cost, no hassle, no giving up the things I like to eat forever.
Questioning assumptions in a mean, nasty, hateful way , like almost everyone did, is reacting like a child. And you are the only one who posted any scientific links. The ones that were valid weren't applicable to the discussion.
You posted links and arguments that show WLS works, but you were responding to an argument that I wasn't making. I never said it didn't work. I said there are other, nonsurgical ways to get the exact same results.
Because "WLShelp.com" was created in 2002 and not available for the site's founders to use? 
https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=wlshelp.com
Too bad they weren't creative enough to find some other variation. Clearly, "WLShelp" and "Obesityhelp" are the ONLY two POSSIBLE ways to express the concept of "assistance for WLS patients".
The post-WLS diet is "miserable?" News to me.
I think it is. At least the examples I was given
But you would know more about it than I do. After WLS, can you eat whatever you want, however much you want, any time you want, with no restrictions?
I can (I just often choose not to for varying periods).
You're telling me that post-WLS people can just go right back to eating the same things as always?
A single case is not sufficient proof in the medical/scientific world :)
I quite agree. Anecdote != data. Unfortunately for you, I am just one of many thousands who prove it every day. Feel free to google it.
You said: "Bariatric surgery causes lasting metabolic changes that aren't seen with IF."
The links you posted prove no such thing. I didn't say WLS did not have metabolic effects. The changes mentioned are all also seen with IF. You're the one who needs to educate yourself about something you clearly are completely uninformed about.
It's a public forum. If YOU don't like what I'm saying, then don't read it. Why don'y you leave ME out of your "personal process"? Go on and do your thing, I'm not stopping you. We can all be here together. You are free to not read or repsond to what I say at all. If you disike it, why are you even wasting time reading this thread?
Believe me, hearing from people like you IS "licking the spoon". Your father is clearly another person who want to maintain the staus quo. My response to him is "those who DON'T stir the pot should be forced to live in a world where no one does." By his logic, the people who founded the country would be bad guys. If you don't stir the pot, the food doesn't cook right, and it burns on the bottom. So his aphorism is pretty moronic.
And why did you put "you" in quotations?
Yes, there is absolutely a risk of regaining weight after surgery. But the likelihood to regain, as well as the amount gained back, is significantly lower after WLS versus with diet-modification only,
The point is (and this is the reason I opted out) that you CAN still regain weight. You have to maintain a special diet, not just immediately post-surgically, but for life. If you don't, you regain the weight.
So I asked myself: "If I have to eat that way even after the surgery, for the rest of my life, why do I need the surgery? I could just eat that way anyways without it." If, after surgery, I could eat all the great stuff I eat now and STILL lose weight, it might be a consideration for me. But I'd never be able to eat the way I eat now (which is not the way I used to eat, to be sure) if I had WLS. And I like enjoying food. I just do it differently, and a lot smarter now. I don't feel deprived when I'm fasting because I know I will be able to eat delicious stuff again soon. Knowing that I would never be able to eat whatever I want again, and was stuck for life with the miserable diet WLS requires, I'd be really unhappy. Now I get the best of both worlds, yay - eating what I want AND getting super healthy.
The fact is that if you ate the exact post-surgical diet even without having the surgery, you would see the same results. The fact is that WLS still requires you to have lots of discipline in your eating even afterwards. The only actual difference is that, post-surgery, it's actually painful/unpleasant to eat too much.
We all agree that in ALL cases, life changes are required to be successful. I find the life changes required by fasting to be far, far easier and better than the ones required by WLS.
Bariatric surgery causes lasting metabolic changes that aren't seen with IF.
Welcome back to your argument, BTW, we've missed you!
Really? And what do you imagine they are? Proof, please.
I'm not a hater, I'm a helper. I'm here to warn people who haven't already cut up their bodies that there are better ways to get the same results. There's certainly nothing here for me to "learn", other than what I already knew - people are so scared that they might have been wrong that they take it personally when they find out they are and react like children.
They don't "openly state" it until you're already here. People come here looking for general obesity help, not just one method. It's deceptive.
It's nice to see someone else who has been successful with keto and fasting - in fact, the first person here who knws anything at all about fasting. So for me, I do both IF and eating keto when I'm not fasting. I'm also a Buddhist!
It seems like you initially had a problem with fasting because you were "eating calories lower than many of us do after surgery, which caused me severe issues". There's actually a big difference between "super low calorie" and "no calories at all". An odd thing about fasting is that while sever calorie restriction (like eating only a few hundred calories a day) doesn't work and is in fact counter-productive, while eating NO calories for periods doesn't have those bad effects. I've never talked to someone who weighed as much as you did - I'm not sure if there are any metabolic difference between morbidly obese and superobese (or whatever it's called).
Without responding to your message line-by-line, I have one general question. You said things like "there are stark differences", "the changes are significantly greater with surgery", "fasting and such does not cause a permanent alteration to glucose metabolism" (and I assume you are implying WLS does), "Surgery also works faster and the changes are stronger and more resilient. It immediately begins to reverse insulin resistance by permanently changing the enteroendocrine hormones that regulate obesity".
I am wondering on what you base those statements. Di you have any proof/studies that this is the case? If you believe this, then why do you think it is? What's the difference between fasting and surgery? what magical benefit do you think surgery has that fasting does not?
Thanks for the first intelligent, non-abusive response. You are a good buddhist! :-)
Like many of you, and as I've said, I, also, tried every diet and method for 40 years. They didn't work for me, either. Like you, I know all about the dreaded plateaus and all the other issues with the recommended "eat less and exercise" method. The problem si that as you lose more weight, your BMR gets slower and you burn fewer calories. But interestingly, that doesn't happen when fasting.
I completely agree with you that ANY serious weight loss HAS to be accompanied by some sort of lifestyle change. In my case, it's "only eat once every 24 hours, and sometimes fast for 3-4 days". It's not 100% perfect, but after everything I've tried, it's SO much easier than trying to get on the treadmill, or count calories, or whatever. I can absolutely say that after trying everything, like most of us have, intermittent fasting has been by far both the most successful and the easiest to do.
I didn't say people who get WLS are weak or stupid or anything. I feel sorry for them because they weren't informed of better ways. And, to be fair, even doctors and nutritionists were teaching what they THOUGHT was the best way. They just happened to be wrong. Only now is it finally starting to get out how bad traditional "diets" are.
So, in desperation just like you, I considered surgery. Even went to classes for it. There I learned a lot, and it scared the crap out of me. Your problem is that you consider anything new and popular to be a "fad" and therefore useless. But intermittent fasting is hardly new, LOL. It's been around as long as humans have existed, except now we have a choice top do it or not which our ancestors didn't have. It's popular because it DOES work. You can try to ignore it as a "fad" like all the others, but you're wrong. I'm living proof. If you never tried it, then you actually have not tried "every non-surgical option known to man".
I'm glad things worked out for you but sorry you had to pick such an unnecessarily drastic method.
People had a lower life expectancy because modern medical science is WAY better than it has ever been. These days you won't die from a broken leg or a simple infection the way we used to. It has nothing to do with the way we eat. In fact, these days as well all know it's the way we eat that is killing us.
It always amuses me that people call anything a "fad" when it is 1) new and 2) popular. First of all, intermittent fasting is hardly new, it's been practiced for thousands of years, especially in religious communities. In fact, it's been practiced ever since human beings existed, since there was no choice: sometimes there was food available, sometimes there wasn't. So, 50,000 years of evolution have designed us specifically to eat that way. Theat's WHY we gain weight in the fist place: because your body wants to store energy during good times for the times there isn't any food.
It's WLS that is the fad, my friend. It's only been around for a few short decades. Fasting has been tested for the whole length of human existence. It's been tested and proven billions and billions of times over by mother nature.
And hopefully YOU won't be one of the people who got surgery and STILL gained a bunch of weight back!
Do you trust the Journal of the American Medical Association?
"There was a significant weight regain and a decrease in remission rates of diabetes and, to a lesser extent, other comorbidities over time."
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/bariatric-surgery-patients-see-weight-gain-after-honeymoon-period-080515#modal-close
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/242 2341 (the whole article)
Or the Mayo clinic?
"You'll always be at risk of regaining weight, even years later."
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/bariatric-surgery/expert-answers/gastric-bypass-surgery/faq-20057845
