To diet or not to diet?

oh yeah, i forgot to mention the absolute worst part of the email was that i was compared to you and accused of being, this is the really really bad part... a friend of yours!!!! If offering my opinion gets me compared to someone as succesful at this weight loss thingie as you have been i say i've been complimented. And i hope one day if i meet you we are friends. I need friends in Michigan. Even if they are opinionated a-holes who don't drink pop.

Paraphrased from a surgery seminar. The surgery gets you there. Through both the restrictive capacity and through the bypass element you will lose weight. You do wrong and you get instant negative reinforcement. Especially with your procedure. Then you have the time to modify your eating habits. When you achieve your goal you have learned what works and what doesn't. You will have to eat small meals frequently nnot because of the restrictive element but because we no longer have a pyloric sphincter to regulate our intake/release of nutrients. We have to do that now with our eating habits. We chew to replace what our stomach does and we eat small and frequent to do the work of the ps. That is the diet portion of your surgery. If you don't learn to regulate your dietary habits you are doomed to regain your weight. kp @ goal

i don't think this is the easy way out. it is just soemthing that works. ypu still have to eat properly and exercise. you still have to get rid of the old habits. it is encouraging to loose the weight and keep it off. you need to exercise along with dieting and you will do better. good luck. this is the best thing that ever happened.

Terri, I agree with you 100%, I can look at myself in the mirror and admit that I am a failure when it came to sticking to a diet.. I could never keep the weight off and then when I stopped not only did i gain my weight backbut i gained enough for two people... So I am now 9 weeks into this post operative life, do I have limits? Heck yes and even though I know It will make me sick my brain still pushes me to just take one bite, thank goodness that i have this built in dumping pouch, because if I did not get ill after just one bite I would be oh just one more bite.. I can admit that Im a failure, But with this surgery I can be not only a Winner Finally but i can also be a loser... My brain os slowly letting go of the cravings and I am now craving things that are good for me, I drink 64+ ounces of water daily when before I wouldn't get 64 ounces of water with in a month.. I no longer look at Soda as a drink I see it as the beginning of a very painful episode. So am I still Dieting? My family says Yes, but I say no I am finally figuring out HOW to eat, its not a diet its a way of life and I am so excited that I have finally found my way to this life... (((HUGS))) Dori

Terri, I can't say I can add any insight to the insults or negative reactions. I feel exactly the same way you do. I now make realitively healthy food choices most times and most days. I do sometimes have fast food (including french fries), I do sometimes have a roll and I do drink soda everyday. I know that is why I can't loss my last 15-18 pounds and I don't care. I can't give up the little things I still allow myself. Since surgery, I have never measured, counted, dealt or portioned my food, grams of anything etc. My pouch dictates, when I am full, I am full. The only thing I do look at on labels is basically sugar. I know my threshold to not make me dump so I do read sugar grams. However, if my husband is eating cake, ice cream, etc. I will have a bite. So I find my life the exact same as yours. There are a lot of post-ops that would roll there eyes and insult me if they saw what I ate. So be it! Each person makes this work in a different way and those that can't see or understand that are narrow-minded. Love ya! ~Van

I love you Van!!!! I miss you. You have to call me this weekend. We will set a time and stick to it.

sounds to me like you are on a diet, do diet, can diet and just don't want to use the word. you watch what you eat. your motives might not be "i'm on a diet" but you do nonenetheless. you also can gain weight if you don't. and you can diet now because you have a tool that helps you. i'm not judging your or saying you're wrong to feel the way you do. but i think you diet, i think you can diet and i think it's a good idea or else you will make yourself sick and can also eventually wind up over eating. good luck with your continued success.

...but the difference is that now I do not have any choice in certain areas. I was critisized for responding to someone post op that was having issues over measuring her food and how much she should measure. I swear to you today, that I will never measure another morsel of food for as long as I live. I will never deal another meal. I will never assign another point to my spinach or broccoli. To me, that is dieting. I remember going to restaurants and having panick attacks because nothing they had fit into the diet I was on at the time or having to bow out of social events or eat before I went. You had to worry about every calorie or every fat gram you consumed. I remember the guilt for eating something I should not and hating myself for failing over and over again. That is the life I will never lead again. I am able to live as a normal person without that black cloud over my head or the guilt that makes you loathe who you are. Trust me, I an NOT on a diet. My guilt is gone forever.

diet does NOT equal guilt and most of us can eat things, and amounts that will make our surgery fail. i'm not sure what you're looking for here. i'll tell you this, if i want i can eat sugar and other things that are bad for me. i can eat certain foods in amounts that will make my surgery fail. i'm told that a lot of WLS people gain their weight back. I'm also told the surgery can account for us losing 75% of our excess weight and the rest is UP TO US. But hey we're all different and whatever works for you is fine. But i'm not so comfortable the word diet being treated like a bad word. To me it's vitally important to my success. you wanted opinions, mine is that dieting is not a bad word, guilt should not rule us and we shouldn't get hung up on words or what other people think. we should do what we know is right, take care of ourselves and listen to the professionals who we enlist to help us. i diet, and i don't feel guilty and i don't feel bad about it at all, mostly because i have had surgery to create a tool that helps me in my endeavors. I will not fail. I will NOT fail. That's all i care about. You can call it whatever you want, i'm not ever going to let myself get back to where i was before surgery. I didn't get this surgery so i can avoid diets, i got it so i can be healthy.

I have to disagree here. I do not diet, I eat healthy. Wikipedia defines Healthy Eating -- Healthy eating is the practice of making choices about what or how much one eats with the intention of improving or maintaining good health. I think we all choose a diet, in the sense of the way we eat. Everyone has different diets. A diet is VERY different from the act of dieting. We don't consider diabetics as dieters, they have certain way to eat but aren't dieting. We don't consider vegetarians dieters, but they choose a certain way to eat. I truly eat what I want. My body has adjusted to my eating and what my body wants, I eat. Of course there has been conditioning through negative reinforcement but no restriction. Here is the part everyone can start to flame away on...I aliken it to "(fill in the blank) Anonymous" programs or religion. Some people need a solid basis to adhere to for concrete grounding of their beliefs. Some people believe without said anonymous programs daily, they couldn't stay sober giving up the factor of choice. Some people believe without church you can't have a relationship with God. Regardless if they choose to or not because there is part of the population that would choose not to have that relationship without the reinforcement of church. Here is my point to dieting, you are right, some people need the very strictest of diets to succeed with WLS because the power to choose otherwise could lead them to bad choices. Making wise choices about what you eat is not adhering to a diet, it is a choice. I think we need to recognize that everyone will get there VERY different and I think Terri was just inquiring how everyone else was getting there, not that one was right and one way wrong. One works better for her but not everyone. ~Van