Lifestyle Change To Lose Weight vs Surgery To Lose Weight

Pros & Cons on these two plans
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Replies

  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
    Both you will have to change the amount of calories you consume to lose weight and maintain your loss.

    Non-surgical weight loss is simple calorie reduction. You don't have to eat a particular list of foods or do particular exercise. You can find what suits you. You can choose to lose faster or slower. It is up to you to figure out what you will do and stick to it. You don't have to spend a bunch of money.

    Surgery is expensive and has risks and long term consequences should be discussed with your doctor and researched thoroughly. I personally would choose it as a last resort. I think some weight loss surgery involves counseling and such support but not necessarily all. You may have to change more about your life permanently. You can regain weight you lose after surgery and will be judged even more harshly because you had surgery from my observation.
  • HoneyBadger302
    HoneyBadger302 Posts: 1,981 Member
    I've only known one person IRL who had the surgery. It was successful in that she went from obese to healthy, and she found it to be easy to maintain - UNTIL she started having complications (she had the band).

    She had to go through a couple more surgeries, and they had to remove the band for a time. Despite 6 years of eating less, she almost immediately went back to eating too much, and in less than a year was back to being obese again. She's back to losing now that they've put the band back in, but if she ever needs to have it removed, it seems like the changes never really did take hold - she still ate until she felt "full" and without the band, full meant far too much food almost immediately.
  • dragon_girl26
    dragon_girl26 Posts: 2,187 Member
    Both require a lifestyle change.
    I have a lovely family member who is learning this now, unfortunately, two years post surgery. She got down to a healthy weight less than a year afterwards, losing about 120 lbs or so. As of today, she has regained 70 of it because she didn’t make long term changes. She is not the only person I know that has done this, either.
    I would certainly never call this surgery ‘the easy way out’. If anything, I think it’s actually harder, based on what I have seen.
  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    Pros & Cons on these two plans

    Well surgery forces you into a drastic lifestyle change and then of course there are all the complications associated with the surgery. Now not everyone will stick to these new changes long term, because it's a huge overhall all at once. This can lead to regain and even further complications depending on the WLS.


    Just making small lifestyle changes that you can sustain will (In my opinion) be easier and the risks are minimal.


    WLS works great for some people and it's just what they need to get them going in the right direction. It's not for everyone and it certainly isn't the "easy" route.


    I personally lost weight (over 100 lbs) just by making lifestyle changes.