The KEY to LONG TERM success?

Congrats on your surgery date!!! I am 6 1/2 years post op. I have managed to keep all my weight off. I went from 278 to 112 lbs. I was 138 when I had my daughter, but I've lost that. I don't drink any soda and I limit my carbs. I swear I had mt dew running through my veins before surgery. I loved potatoes. French fries, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato salad. Squash and potatoes. I was a lover of all things potato. Potato chips included. I do not eat French fries. I have very small portions of potatoes when I do eat them and it is rare when I do. Other than that I eat whatever I want. Just in moderation. If I want that doughnut I will eat it. I won't eat the entire box. All my portions are small. I still eat off a toddler plate because it helps with portion control. That was my weakness: soda, portion control and potatoes/carbs. I don't miss any of those because they actually make me sick. They just don't taste good anymore. 

I am over nine years post op and have lost over 150 lbs and kept them off, I weigh 130lbs at 5'5 and 49 years old.  I am not an exerciser but I don't like to sit around so I am typically on the go.  I eat 1000 calories 5 days a week and more on weekends.  I eat approx. 45-50 grams of protein per day and drink tons of water infused with fresh lemon.  I start each day with two twenty ounce cups of homemade iced tea with lemon and then continue filling the cups with water from the filtered water cooler at work.  I start eating during the week with dinner, I have RH and I don't like my blood sugar going up and down if I eat during the day so I don't.  I am a systems analyst so not a physical job and I need to be mentally sharp, not foggy like I would get if I ate during the day.  My blood sugar is typically 80 when I wake up and stays there all day, no change unless I actually eat.  This whole load of crap about having to eat every couple of hours only applies once you eat, if you don't eat at all there is no call for insulin and no need to eat again.  As I said with a physical job things would be different but for me this works very well.  Plus I get to work 1 less hour then everyone else everyday because I do not take lunch, the law states if you are the only one who does your job you do not have to take lunch, I use this little loophole to avoid having the work the extra hour everyone else has too.  It does pay to have a very specialized skill set and many deadlines to meet daily.

I eat two meals on the weekends and have some treats thrown in.  Monday is always back to business as far as eating is concerned.  I try to eat clean, lean and organic.  I am very anti GMO's, I avoid red meat and pretty much everything that I cannot identify where it came from.  What keeps me successful is I refuse to fail myself.

This pic was taken over Memorial Day weekend.

If you don't eat at all, there's no need to eat again? Wow, that's amazing news! Would you mind calling my doctor and letting him know? He says (in his expert, gone-to-med-school opinion) low blood sugar is why I've very nearly passed out a few times after forgetting to eat until dinner time after having surgery. More information is always better, I'm sure he would appreciate being corrected :)

My daughter  ( not and never been over-weight) has been told by her doctor (same sort of expert yours is, clearly also having misunderstood that part of the training) that her light-headed episodes where she almost faints are due to low blood sugar when she skips breakfast and doesn't eat till the evening. 

I said for me in my world, I am not a doctor nor did I say what happens to you.  I said what happens to MY blood sugar if I don't eat all day and what happens if I do.  I have lived it for nine years I could care less what my doctor said, I know my body and I am my advocate not you or anyone else.  She asked what made me successful and this is it.  If you check your blood sugar in the morning and have a sedentary job and do not eat all day where does your blood sugar go?  Mine stays the same the entire day, I will start at 75-80 and finish there, then I eat and my blood sugar will climb, call for insulin and return to normal, if I eat too many carbs or sugar too much insulin is called for too quickly and within an hour or so my blood sugar plummets.  I feel instantly the effects of too many carbs on my body, that doesn't mean I am not human and still want to eat a bagel.

It is amazing to me that people will tell me what happens to their blood sugar without testing to see what really happens.  You are speaking to an analyst who does in-depth analysis about everything including my blood sugar, trends, what causes what, what I eat and how long before I feel the effects of RH.  I can tell you with almost certainty exactly how a food will effect me and my blood sugar only because I have been so diligent in testing and wanting to know.  If you think doctors know everything, continue being a sheep I won't try to inform you differently. 

You are also speaking to a professional data analyst (who also works a sedentary computer job), how funny! I've got a blood sugar monitor and everything, and Excel is my best buddy. Neat-o, isn't it? You can learn so much from data!

And oddly enough, so the good folks at the NIH and others who publish in peer-review medical journals ALSO love data, so much so that they require large cohorts and high statistical reliability for any studies that make their way into scientific education!

If your pancreas is a statistical outlier, that's fabulous, and there's nothing wrong with making choices for your own body. But putting someone down and calling them a "sheep" for trusting studies considering over 500 participants, run by doctors who've seen thousands of patients in their careers and read hundreds of other studies (each involving another subsequent 100+ participants)? No, please don't try to inform me differently.

>> I said for me in my world...

Actually, you didn't. Your original comment said "once YOU eat, if YOU don't eat at all..." and was worded as advice to others rather than speaking to your personal biology and personal experience.

Why assume people don't test? My daughter's blood sugar was tested! 

No, actually, you DIDN'T just state what works for you.  You made it a general statement:

"This whole load of crap about having to eat every couple of hours only applies once you eat, if you don't eat at all there is no call for insulin and no need to eat again."

If I -- and this is just me speaking, although I know of several others in the same boat -- don't eat something small w/protein and carbs right before bedtime, I wake up shaky, and if I don't eat something (or have half a glass of milk even) within the first hour I am up, I am shaky as hell, so that "load of crap" is certainly NOT a load of crap for all of us. 

Most of us would probably have our surgeons wagging their fingers at us or sending us to mental health professionals if we followed the eating plan that you do.  

Lora