liquidl
I'll be glad to tell you my whole story. It's not that hard to understand, but because I'm a lightweight, sometimes the people on the board who are MO or SMO have a hard time understanding my concern over my post op gains. If someone hasn't lived much as a small person they can easily minimize a gain or twenty, thirty, even forty pounds!! Trust me, normal people stress out over gains of 5 pounds and start joining the gym and Jenny Craig, and what not! For me, my entire life has been lived on the edge of the normal weight range. Since I was 18 I have been overweight, but not terribly so, and as I moved through the overweight range and into the obese range at the end of my thirties I decided to pursue WLS. At that time it was pretty new. I was in the obese for my height (5'4') but just barely, and I spent most of my days using sheer willpower, extensive food management, battling with my constant hunger and lots and lots of exercise just to stay there. My weight dominated my life. If I didn't focus on it relentlessly I gained weight quickly and abnormally, sometimes as much as 10 lbs a month. This abnormal weight gain is due to the obesity gene. It runs in my family. For example, my sisters gave up their weight management efforts in their 20's and gained, and gained, and gained, and gained -- about a hundred pounds a decade. Now they are both over 300 pounds. Watching them change, I could see what was in store for me and I opted to have WLS before I got that big. I've had my thyroids checked but I didn't need to put my mind and body through an enormous gain to know I had an obesity problem. So, I addressed it as I turned 40. I believed, and still do, that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (literally!) I chose a procedure and a surgeon in 2000 and had the surgery in 2001. DS is a great procedure and Dr. K is a fabulous surgeon. I think I was one of his 100 patients and his practice has exploded since then. My BMI was low when I got "switched" but I can't remember the exact number, nor my exact weight, (in reality, I just wanted to forget about it!) but it was over 200 lbs, and my surgery qualified for insurance coverage, but just barely. I had sleep apnea and severe joint pains in my knees and hips. Since the WLS I have had two hernia surgeries -- one in 2003 and one in 2006. I have kept in touch with Dr. K's office over the years, but I live 7 hrs away and cannot do too much follow up. I have been back twice to weigh in and visit. I had my last set of labs done last summer and all was normal. I have suffered from severe anemia in the past but I am ok now. I take 2 women's multi's with calcium, two iron pills, Devrom and extra calcium if I need it. I try to get the rest of my nutrients through a balanced DS diet. I eat a lot of raw food and veggies. I don't eat that many fruits, except bananas for potassium. For example, a half of a bunch of grapes and two apples will last me a week. But I do eat a lot of veggies and protein bars because I like them. I do eat some foods that are not so good for me, and that I have to be careful of, but I generally eat a standard DS diet -- high protein, low carbs. After my surgery I happily ate steaks, cheeseburgers, omelettes, egg salad, avocado, bacon, pork chops, etc. i never had to diet and I lost 70 lbs easily because I never had to deal with hunger after my surgery !!! But, please note I was only able to eat half of a regular restaurant portion. My lowest weight was 129 lbs but I bounced back to 135, where I happily stayed from 2003 to 2006. One day, after my second hernia surgery in 2006, I stepped onto the scale and realized I had ballooned up to 160 and couldn't fit into my skinny clothes anymore. When I had talked to Dr. K's office in the past because I had noticed I was eating more and was worried that my stomach was stretching, I was told that my increased food intake was due to my hernias, and that they had created extra space for food just below my stomach. This seemed like a reasonable explanation, but I don't have a hernia anymore, so that's when I figured out it must my stomach that has stretched this time. I went on a serious diet last summer because I wanted fit into my skinny clothes again. But since October, however, I have gained almost all of that weight back! Why?!! Because I'm hungry all the time and i can eat the entire restaurant portion, whereas before, I could only eat half. This weight gain and lack of satiation is my current concern and the topic of many of my posts but it is very unpopular, especially on the DS board. No one wants to believe that they could ever gain weight with a DS, except a bounceback gain of 20 or 30 pounds, which is an unacceptable amount in my world. Plus, I'm farther out than a lot of DSer are and I'm not the only one who has said these things. So I see people start to panic when they hear me talk about stretch and gain, and they start to attack me because I'm telling them something they don't want to hear. That's about it. The fact that I'm still quite small in some people's eyes makes it very easy for them to minimize my weight gain. They argue that I'm sick in the head for wanting to maintain a weight in the "normal" range instead of the low "overweight" range. For some of the larger people, maybe low overweight is just fine. But it's not what I want. The forum is supposed to be about sharing information, so I encourage all posters to be polite, non judgmental and reasonable. One size doesn't fit all! Thanks! Lili
