Awesome post about regain

I responded to someone else's post about this but I think everyone should know about it. It was written a while ago by Andrea U., member of this board and self-taught vitamin guru. If you aren't reading her blog, you should be!

She had regain when she had kids after WLS and kept on keeping on. Her account is a testament to the tool we have and just plain inspiring (although I don't think  she intends to be anyone's hero, she is one of mine!)

http://wlsvitagarten.com/2010/05/24/regain/

Thank you for posting that link.  I was spellbound reading her story.  I was thinking about Andrea  the other day because I have not seen her for a while.  I guess I was off when she was on.  I have also not seen Susan for a while.  I miss both of their posts.

Thanks so much for the link!  I was struggling with about a 35 lb regain and was out of control for a while, but recently was able to make the decision to regain control of my eating and my body and am 13 lbs down so far!  Regain is hard.  Maintenance is hard!  The more pre-ops realize this, the more they arm themselves with knowledge, the better off they will be in the longrun. 

For me, I do not think the REALLY hard work began until I reached maintenance and have to keep it off.  The first year was a gift. 

That's a great article! I'm just starting my 6-month diet and hoping to convince my doctor to approve the surgery (he doesn't believe in it). Reading things like this help keep it real for me and prevent me from having unreasonable expectations.

Thanks for posting this, Nik, AndreaU and I had our surgery within a couple of weeks of each other and while I haven't had any pregnancies, I feel her pain on the regain and loss cycle!

I have been "questioned" a few times, not by pre-ops or newbies - but by those that are a couple of years out and haven't had to face regain yet, when I have said how difficult it gets the further out we are.    We get less mindful, we get older with the changes of metabolism that goes with that etc.   We don't acknowledge the whole change of lifestyle necessary to keep the weight off and because we can still have "just a bite" of pretty much anything at 2 or 3 years out and maintain our loss doesn't mean that we will be able to do that regularly when we are 5+ years out ****asional treats are usually possible).

Those pounds really can slip on easily - you don't have to pig out on thousands of calories extra (lbs doesn't equal 3500 calories for most of us formerly obese folks) - in fact you sometimes don't have to do much at all different to find that scale going up and up and that's where we get caught out.   What you can eat and do between years 1 and 3 may well result in significant weight gain in the years after that!   Our ability to eat more food, the loss of malaborbtion all impact our long term success if we don't acknowledge what we need to do in terms of eating and exercising!

Amen!  

I cringe when people say "xx pounds gone forever" or when early post-ops make comments about "never going back"... and I admit that sometimes I shake my head a bit when people early out -- and I was one of them myself 4 years ago --  talk about how hard it is to lose the weight even after surgery (yes, it is hard to adjust to post-op life, especially for those who have problems with nausea and food intolerances, but the weight pretty much DOES come off on its own for the first 9 months... but for many (most?) people, maintaining the loss is the truly hard work... it certainly requires more effort!)

Lora

I'd read that before, and just read it again. 

This is a scary and very real topic.  As I approach the 3rd anniversary of my surgery I notice that I can't get away with as much as I did before.  I also realize if I miss even a few workouts how quickly I can get out of a good habit.

Thank you, Andrea, for shedding realistic light on a very real issue.

Kim

I'm a very new reader of this forum. I'm finding it very interesting and I'm getting lots of information from all of your posts. Thank you.