Would you advise your (adult) children to have WLS?

So this is an interesting thread as Insert Fitness said. I know 2 young people 20-22ish who have had the VSG, and they have been semi successful... both much heavier than your daughter. They have lost but aren't close to goal. My niece had RNY at about 26. She did amazing, is at least 10-12 years out. She did regain about 30 pounds with her pregnancy that she hasn't lost. But still maintaining over 100lb loss.

I know my Bariatric surgeon has a seperate support group just for young people. I have also seen many family situations in my hospital support group, and young people who have seen their parents go through it first, seem to do really well.

So a couple of thoughts. While in theory she is a 35 BMI .... if she is athletic and has more muscle her body fat might be lower than you think. At 5'11" tall and 35 BMI that puts her at about 250. As someone who is 5'11" tall I relate to that number. It is the cusp of feeling normal. I know at 220-225 while still overweight when I was young I felt normal... 250 I felt obese. What I am trying to say here is with therapy a small weight loss could be a significant change.

Her weight is important for her health and if she is making fitness her career. Therapy is a good start because she really needs to figure this out herself. If she wants the real data as to where she is physically maybe offer to pay for a bodyfat Dexascan and metabolism testing. It might be eye opening either way. You assume she has already ruined her metabolism- maybe she hasn't. And again if she is muscular she may not be as fat as you think.

Good Luck Mom, it's not easy to figure out how to help.

Thanks for the insight! Yes, she still felt "ok" until the last 25# or so. And she probably doesn't have as much body fat as she might if she wasn't active. With school and work and everything, she realizes that surgery isn't something she can feasibly do super soon. She agrees that therapy is a good first step, and work with our doctor to see if there's anything else she can do (and test her thyroid, we do have a family history and it would explain a few things) in the meantime, and also start getting documentation going if she ends up going the surgery route down the road. So it's not like she's going to go have surgery next week or next month.

This has been a very good conversation, I think. Nothing clarifies how you feel about something like projecting it onto your kids. :)

Maybe. It would have to be a last resort and only if he/she struggled with obesity for their entire life. If not, then I would not.

How long of an "entire life"? My kiddo has always been on the heavy side, and when I found out she'd been starving herself in high school I was shocked because she never got even remotely thin. So she was starving herself just to maintain being overweight, while in athletics so she was never sedentary. So I would say she's struggled with weight her entire life, but that life is only 20 years long, and the weight struggle has easily been going on since she was 14, and probably earlier than that and I'm just unaware.

Just off the top of my head, have you had her checked for PCOS? Cuz, if not, that is probably where I would start. If she has a dx of PCOS, then the earlier and more virulent you jump on trying to mediate the metabolic issue, the better for it. Sure it is also about fertility, but it's MOSTLY about metabolism that will lead to all sorts of big time Billy Badass diseases. :( (Sorry not to address your original post!)

I think Doc has checked on that, but I'll make sure. Thanks for the suggestion.

I was diagnosed as obese when I was 7. I could never get to a normal weight. I was obese my entire life. (Literally medically diagnosed as obese).

She maintained a normal weight.....she didn't get to eat as much as some people...that is the luck of the genetic draw. My sister has been a normal weight and has to eat like a bird, but she HAS been able to maintain a normal weight. She should get WLS just to eat more.

If you are "struggling" with weight and able to "win" by dieting...then you should not have WLS.

This is just my opinion. If your daughter wants to have WLS...and qualifies...and a doctor believes she needs it...that is her choice.

BUT WLS is a major life commitment. It has risks.

Scott

I see your point, and agree that it's a huge commitment.

She wasn't diagnosed as obese until after high school, but her weight has been on a steady increase ever since she hit her full growth, and she was always in the very top of the growth/weight charts.

When she was in high school and doing atheletics, she was exercising an hour or more a day and (I find out now) going weeks eating nothing but 1 or 2 salads a day, but was still in the high overweight category. Once she graduated, she has maintained a lot of activity but has not had the bullying and peer pressure from her teammates that contributed to the extreme dieting she was doing in high school. Without that, she's been eating whatever she feels like. She eats fruits and veggies and gets good nutrition, but she does eat large quantities of food and eats a lot of junk food. She complains of being hungry all the time, even when she's just eaten. Her weight has been on an upward trajectory since she was about 14, the trajectory has just increased significantly since graduating high school. So I wouldn't say that she's ever "won" with diet/exercise.

That being said, I believe she needs to have a good deal of therapy around her eating/food/body image issues before proceeding to WLS, and I think I've convinced her of that. Without therapy, I truly believe she would fail the WLS over time.

If she were 10 years older, I'd say WLS (with/after therapy) with no hesitation. It's that she's my kiddo and she's only 20 that makes me question where the line is.

I think the most radical and successful would be not to gain any weight. Stay at the weight she is. Do what it takes to maintain that weight and then slowly take away from that. Every drastic amount of weight I lost came back with friends.

Staying were she is and going to therapy could do amazing things.

My son is overweight and at risk for health problems...high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease. I do not want him to have WLS yet. He has not seriously tried to loose the weight. Now that he is out of grad school and into a regular work schedule, I would like to see him develop healthy eating patterns again.