Regain

Today I am feeling just blah.  I am approaching 6yrs. post op and I am feeling like such a failure.  I have regained about 60 lbs.  About 20 of those pounds have been in the last few months.  Yes there have been many challenges - personal, family and professional.  It was like the bottom has just fallen out.  I know that going cold turkey to eliminate sugar, starches, etc will not work for me.  Has anyone out there had the same challenge?  What did you do to get back on track and start losing again?  I do not want to have a revision surgery.

Hi macktrac,

You are not alone.  Please check out this group as they are all there helping each other with regain.

Back On Track Together

Regards,

Cathy & Kathy

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Eliminate sugars and carbs cold turkey. And replace that with proteins, veggies and more proteins. 

Our surgeries are about six months apart and I can totally understand how you are feeling. 

I had about a 20lb "bounceback" weight that I was actually comfortable with and maintained  until about four years out.  Then the real weight started coming back on with a vengeance.  I was so shocked by this (I don't know why - I'd seen the warnings from other vets here on the boards) that I didn't even address it until it got up to 40+lbs.

Last November the scale hit a certain number.  I knew without a doubt that if I allowed myself to go over that number, I'd gain back everything.

My first step was concentrating on stopping the re-gain.  I made sure that I didn't see that particular number again. I didn't even work much on trying to lose at that point, only concentrating on not letting my weight get any higher.

After I had stayed within about a five pound range for two or three weeks, I began to look at calories.  I dump severely and have awful RH so I can't eat much sugar at one time.  But I didn't need to - I  could eat a whole bag of caramels, two or three pieces at a time.  When I found out that those caramels were a whopping 50 calories apiece, my eyes were opened.

I'm not gonna lie - I never got into counting calories, but I did educate myself so that I had a more realistic picture of what my intake was per day.  I returned to my immediate post op diet:  protein first, produce, and a few bites of a carb (not candy or sweet carbs) if I had room.  I didn't go on a "diet".  My goal was to find a way of eating that would work for me for the rest of my life.  It took a few months, but I eventually lost more than 50lbs and am close to where I was at my lowest postop weight.  I don't journal my food.  I don't count  calories, carbs or anything else.  My kind of loosy-goosy method won't work for everyone, but I only needed to find what worked for me.

A revision would have never helped me. My surgery wasn't "broken", my pouch is still tiny and in excellent condition, my stoma has not stretched.  I know these things for sure because I had some intestinal trouble and all of the tests run to try and determine what was wrong confirmed that my surgery was still in excellent working order.

You will get lots of advice.  Consider all of it, bearing in mind that you need to find a way to eat for the rest of your life.  Diets don't work on a long term basis or none of us would be here.  Same with the latest weight loss drug or supplement.   

Once you've considered all of your options, make a decision on how you're going to tackle this.  And then put your plan in motion.  You CAN do it.  You can lose the re-gain.  Lots and lots of us  have.   It will not happen overnite, just as your regain did not happen overnite.  Concentrate on the way you want to eat for the rest of your life.

Best of luck to you on your journey,

amy

Amy - Thanks for your post and what you wrote.  It is one of the best I've seen about how to handle regain.  Saving it for myself too. 

Thank YOU Cathy for the compliment.  I  just hope it helps encourage someone.

=)