Successes and Disappointments, Need Some Boosting

KarenMoeller2 wrote: »

"CHANGE HAPPENS WHEN THE PAIN OF STAYING THE SAME EXCEEDS THAT OF MAKING A CHANGE"
You look amazing. You have already lost almost the entire amount I need to lose. That s so encouraging to me. Thanks you for sharing your journey!

Thank you! M'dear, you can do you!!! I'm not going to lie and say it's been an easy road and it has taken me nearly 3x as long as everyone said it should to even get this far, but just have to remind yourself that even if it *should* make sense a certain way, it doesn't always follow the path of logic. If our bodies were logic-driven, we would stop gaining/losing mass when we reached peak state, right?

I'm glad that it's encouraging... If anything comes of my struggles, giving others the confidence to not lose hope would be a pretty good one.

derbycitycat wrote: »

Awesome weight loss! If you have lost this much on your own, do you really need to go thru the pain of the surgery? I've read so many stories of the surgery not working long term, I'd be afraid to try it. I'd rather be able to eat what I want, in moderation of course.

The million dollar question... And I wrote out a whole thing, that by accident, got eliminated... Suffice it to say, I went through many options. I stalled out after 115lbs lost at the beginning of 2015. After a few months of being stuck, we started putting in changes... tried courses of phentermine to kickstart, changed routines, added/removed dietary supplements, etc etc etc. None of these things was showing more than a very very modest amount of progress, that was usually short-lived. Without other medical reasoning for the situation, there is potentially a viable explanation that my previous issues with "hold onto everything" during my hayday of eating disorder territory may be, well, stuck... and so I finally decided to reach out to the Med Center's medical weightloss program.

They are a research hospital, and very good at what they do... they program has both surgical and non-surgical medical weight loss. The non-surgical option is a VLCD that is structured around specific food sources that you prep at home and a plethora of support personnel, including personal trainers and psychologists. It is *very* expensive out of pocket... and guess what? Insurance rarely covers that option. My insurance, they will not cover any medical weight loss intervention, no professional consults, imaging, testing, none of it, unless it is directly associated with a surgery and thus considered preparation or support to guarantee the success of said surgery.

I have been debating this for a long time. I actually thought about doing surgery when I was at my heaviest, but because of my personality, I was defiant and said, I am going to do this as hard as I can on my own before I think about this option... But I had always told myself that if going the path alone showed that I still needed the help, I needed to let myself ask. And well, I decided to ask. Most WLS programs will require you to basically do what I did anyway, though they usually require only a 25lbs lost prior to surgery...

But the good thing about surgery is not just the weight loss initially. It's the fact that it gives you a tool that when used properly, guarantees a maintaining of that change. Unlike previous losses where maybe, I would get depressed and go straight into ice cream for dinner mode, I can't do that after this. The changes to my digestive system will be such that if I go into ice cream for dinner mode, it might taste nice, but it will give me such bad diarrhea that I will not want to do it again. Feel me? Not that I'm planning on this... but it's an example.

Everyone has to figure out their roads... and for me, I'm on year 4 of trying to lose weight. People who are on this path without complications would be nearing the home stretch of my initial need to lose 350+lbs. If I lost a steady 1-2lbs a week during all that time.. I'd be there and be talking about skin reduction. However, weight loss has caused me to be sick, it's caused me to have surgical fixes to non-digestive organs... and so ultimately, we're trying to make my last loss be quick and permanent, so that if I do get sick from the hormone changes and stuff again, I can at least only face one more setback from that, instead of another 5-10 years of the 1 step forward .5 step back.

#longanswers lol

rldeclercq4 wrote: »

It seems to me like you know the answer, that you don't need the surgery. Certainly it's up to you, ultimately, but it just seems you're trying to convince yourself you NEED the surgery, but you know in your heart how far you've made it and how you can have success without surgery. You're currently at 420. I started at 370. You're 3 inches taller than I. In 2016 I've lost 128 lbs and am clocking in under 240. Now, that not all apples to oranges, but it shows how possible it is, and it's so rewarding, but you already know that

On the contrary, I do need the surgery. The conflict in me is the giving up control, that I have to accept that *I don't have all the answers on my own* and I do need a professional team's help. It's taken you a whopping 9 months to accomplish what has taken me 48+ months of disasters, surgeries and near death to accomplish. At a certain point, you have to stop bringing people down and dissing their choices, and start recognizing that some of us really do come to the point I'm at because the "logical" calories in vs calories out isn't cutting it... the weight loss stall is over a year going now. The only thing that has made ANY impact has been medically guided VLCD so far. So yeah, I'm going to do the surgery.