Habits of highly succesful OH'ers

A few months ago, I conducted a survey of OH participants and asked them about their behavior, outcomes, and attitudes related to WLS. While I haven't gotten a chance to put together a full report, I thought it might be helpful to touch on some highlights of what successful people do.

In particular, I was interested in people who were over 2 years-post op, reached their goal, and kept regain to a minimum (under 20% EWL). Of the 118 respondents, 31 people (26.3%) met these criteria. And they overwhelmingly believe that they can maintain their weight, with 83.9% believing they are successful in maintenance.

Some interesting observations about these folks:

• Their maintenance calorie intake ranges between 900 - 2000/day, but averages 1400
• Most (67.7%) weigh themselves daily
• The majority track their food always (48.4%) or sometimes (38.7%)
• They're good about lab work, checking their numbers once (58.1%) or twice (25.8%) per year
• Alcohol is mostly off the table, with these respondents drinking never (41.9%) or a few times per year (29.0%)
• They are good with supplements, with 100% of respondents taking a daily multivitamin, and many taking iron (67.67%) and/or calcium (87.1%)

Bottom line: these successful people don't ease up on their good habits!

Thank you for this information - very helpful!

Thanks for the results! I'd forgotten you did this poll.

I missed your original post but if you want to add me...

3 Years 9 months out.

Regain less 10%

track food sometimes

weigh myself daily

Alcohol occasionally after the 2 year mark.

Blood work minimum 2x a year, always take supplements:multi, calcium, iron? B-12, magnesium and recently from blood work found out I was low in Thiamine. So thiamine.

Also would add activity or exercise daily

I can't remember, but did you define what "goal" was in the poll? I ask, because people seem to have such a weird wide range of goals. For some, it's just losing 100 pounds, regardless of where that puts them. For others it's "no longer obese/overweight BMI." My surgeon's goal for me, for example, was 180 which is completely arbitrary and would have put me still in the obese BMI range. On the other hand, my goal for myself is much more aggressive and puts me at the low side of the normal BMI range.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm actually a professional survey researcher with an MA, and I assure you that these fields were included in the original questionnaire. :)

Julie I ( and I'm sure many others ) missed your original questionnaire . Please consider posting a link again and receiving even more responses.

I'm already working through the analysis, and I'd have to throw it all out the window if I were to re-open data collection. Sorry!