Did we take the "easy way out" with WLS?

After watching the first episode of Biggest Loser earlier this week and watching them bust their asses, I reckin' we did. If so, are we will be less likely to take advantage of our WLS "gift" over the long haul since we had to "pay less" than those who had to "earn" their weight loss? In other words, are we more likely to take for granted our initial weight loss and be less successful in maintaining our weight over the long haul? 

Any thoughts?

Boner 

I personally think the folks on "Biggest Loser" take the "easy" way out.  If I took several weeks off from work, had personal trainer, nutritionist, and medical staff at my disposal...plus had ONLY the weight loss/exercise to worry about, I'd probably lose a few pounds also.  BUT, most of us don't have that luxury.  I'm sorry, but it really gets on my nerves when someone tells me (yeah, it's happened..to my face) that I took the easy way out.  Ok, first and foremost, I don't consider having your stomach sliced off, stapled and reconfigured followed by months of readjustment and nausea "easy", but that's just me.  But EVEN IF IT WAS, who gives a damn?!  As long as I am healthy, have overcome a lifetime of obesity, and feel better about myself who cares how I got there?  If I had a friend who was obese (and I do) and he was able to lose the weight by going to a third world country and having an ancient spell placed on him that involed goat's blood, yak hair, and bullfrog legs, I would STILL be happy for him regardless of how he got there.  I actually had a 300+ pound coworker tell me that she'd NEVER consider WLS because it's not "God's way", I almost fell out! 

You gotta be pretty committed to your own obesity in order to put words in God's mouth in order to justify it's continuation. By the same rationalle you'd have to refuse chemo and radiation treatments if you found a huge lump under your jawbone.

 So I guess in her eyes "God's" way was to make her ass as big as it is then? HAHHAHAH

I would hardly call what they do on Biggest Loser easy in any way. If you watch the show you should know that the ones that aren't committed get voted off pretty quickly.

The grass ain't always greener on the other side...you, as a post-op, should know that very well.

I think what everyone needs to remember is that the Biggest Loser and any other show on TV is made for ENTERTAINMENT, pure and simple.  Creative camera angles, only broadcasting the most "stressful" moments during exercise, scripting the emotional stuff, right on down the line.  Give me 12 weeks away from work, home, kids, and give me the chance to win huge amounts of money for (probably) short term weight loss and I could dump the pounds too.  I'd just be really interested to see these folks a few months after getting back into the swing of things at home. 

I'm also not real clear on your "grass" comment.  What should I know very well?  That I'm just as healthy as those idiiots on TV who took thier shirts off in front of millions of people and cried on the scale?  The grass looks great where I stand, bud!

You're saying that the contestants on the show have it easy because they have full access to trainers and a gym and all they have to worry about is losing weight for 12 weeks and anyone can do that right?

Well, isn't that similar to what people that haven't gone through the journey of WLS say about us? "Surgery's the easy way out", "I could drop weight if I had my stomach cut in half" or "they have it easy because they CAN'T eat even if they wanted to...".

The other day someone told my wife, "He's lucky because he is just dropping weight like crazy. I go walking twice a week and I can't lose any weight at all...". WTF!!! I mean, I may have had surgery but I am in the gym 3-5 days a week working my ass off. Surgery or not, I would still have lost at least some weight with all the exercise I get in. I lost 35 pounds within 3 months prior to surgery on my own by eating right and exercising every single day. Yes, the surgery took it in to overdrive but I still had to work for every single pound I dropped. I never once just sat back and said, "let me just sit here and eat my 3 ozs of tuna and watch the weight just fall off..."

My point is that we shouldn't judge others unless we've gone through what they've been through. It's always easy to say that someone else has it easier than you do because you see it that way. It isn't until you actually go through what someone else is going through that you begin to realize it's not all fun and games, or in this case a TV show.

One thing that I would find very hard to do if I were on that show would be to be away from my kids for that long. That alone would be very stressful for me...

Ok, I can agree that we shouldn't judge unless we have been through what they've been through.  But, given the fact that they lay thier lives on the line for 12 weeks giving intimate details about what they are doing, eating, etc.  I feel like I (and everyone who watches) has a little bit more information than the average dumbass who waddles up to me smacking on a Mcmuffin and tells me I've taken the damned "easy" way out!  I still stand by my assertion that if put before a national audience, given all of the resources that they have, not to mention the financial incentive the average person will easily lose a good amount of weight as evidenced by the VAST majority of their contestants. 

Here's the way I look at it, Boner. Let's say there's a mountain I want to climb. There is a tiny subset of the population that can climb that mountain without any equipment. But I've tried to climb that mountain a dozen times and never made it to the top. And not only that, I got tired of clinging to the side where I was at and eventually slid back down. Only I slid further down than where I started every time. WLS is like getting some ropes and pullies and stakes to drive in to the side of the mountain so that that large subset of the population that I belong to can find a way to get to successfully get to the top of the mountain also.

When I was 455 I knew in my heart that I could lose 50 lbs. Which is a great accomplishment for most people. But so ******' what? I'd still weigh over 400 lbs so why bother? I wasn't much more miserable at 455 then I would've been at 400. I also knew in my heart that I could never lose 200+ lbs to get to where I really needed to be. I had no track record of being that strong willed for that long of a period of time and no reason to believe that I'd develop it at age 47. The first question I asked my WLS surgeon on the first visit was, "Is it within the realm of possibility that I could at some point weight 250 lbs." I wasn't even willing to consider the possibility of weighing less than that. He answered in the affirmative so quickly and so enthusiastically that it set off my bull**** detector immedietly. But it gave me a faint glimpse of hope that maybe there was a way to do something through surgery that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I couldn't do without surgery.

So now I'm getting close to the top of the mountain. I'm less than 50 lbs from goal. My journey's been amazingly complication free so far. I'm one of those guys who can say, "It's been easy." I certainly understand the concept that anything acquired without sacrifice is easily lost. Back when I was coaching, I preached it daily to those kids. But I also know that I've been given an incredible gift, the gift of gettin my life back when it was well on the way towards being lost. As we get older, I think we get wiser about squandering precious gifts. I say all of that and then I'll say this: Eating and overeating has never been about knowledge or intelligence, rather it's always been about feelings and emotions. But I've been given an opportunity to get in control of those feelings and emotions as they relate to consumption and I've got to find a way to do it.

I don't guess I've definitively taken one side or the other on this, but I'm leaning towards taking the stand that we (WLSers) have a great chance for lifetime maintenance even though our sacrifices might not have been as intense as those who do it the old fashioned way.