One more: Vets and others who flag possible "problem" eating choices

I, personally, learn better from tough love than soft words. Everyone is different, but I know early on, and I will never forget it, I posted "NSV, I had just ONE cookie!" A thread about how I had been able to just eat one and feel satisfied. The vets told me how I should be making better choices. Some comments were abrupt and ofc I had my feelings hurt (I'm a fairly sensitive person, so that's not a surprise for me). In the end though, all of those vets telling me to make smarter choices to form good habits have helped me pick up some of the most invaluable tools I'll ever have. Being honest with my choices whether they are good, or bad, and making sure those choices are logged and accounted for.

Edited "touch love" to "tough love". Touch love is not quite fitting.

I've been on OH for awhile, and while I check in most days, I rarely post any longer. The "reward" is generally not worth the time. It seems either posters never respond or acknowledge the time/effort people put into helping them or they become defensive and angry at your advice.

People need to remember that members here hail from a variety of cultures/nationalities/educations. Just because something isn't coached in "soft" language or doesn't have an attached smiley face emoji, doesn't mean the writer wishes you harm. Many people here have a direct writing style. Taking personal offense because it wasn't written in your style is plain obnoxious. It's an open forum, which means you'll get a variety of opinions. If posters can't handle that, they need to find another forum that better suits their needs.

To answer your question Amy, I participate when I feel I have something of value to contribute that hasn't been shared as of yet. If I can help someone based on issues I've personally faced, I do.

I stick around and try to give good advice and information because I know how useful the good advice and information I've gotten here has been for me. I also know that I've had experiences that aren't easy to open up about and I hope that, by being open, I can help someone else to seek help.

When people tell me I suck, in whatever form they've chosen to tell me that, I try to first consider if they're right. Sometimes they are and I've offered apologies as appropriate. Sometimes they're not, so I shrug and move on with my life.

But I don't consider myself a vet and I'm certainly not one by the definitions OH has created. I might never reach my ultimate weight loss goal. I'm okay with those things and I'll probably always enjoy trying to pay it forward here when I've got the time to do so.

I try (not always successfully) to follow the advice I give people re: email -- just read the words on the page! I don't really find anything here more abrasive than in a non virtual world. In the real world, I sometimes cringe at what comes out of people's mouth (heck, sometimes even at what comes out of mine), but it's rare to think it's malicious intent.

There's a varied community here and people communicate different ways - some are abrupt, some are gentle, some like to stir the pot, some like to calm things down, a very few are judgemental, there's at least one who is very sensitive about generalizations, but with few exceptions, every one here is trying to help! They want to answer questions, provide data, give positive and critical feedback (and receive it).

Feedback is a gift, sometimes it's a gift you want and sometimes it's a gift you'd rather return.

I joined these forums just after the beginning of the year, but I have found so much knowledge, so much support and I look forward to being able do the ame for new people coming on here.

Although I was very active here for years (from early 2007 until about 2 years ago), I had to take a HUGE step back and it has only been in the last 6 months that I have posted much of anything.

When I was still contributing a lot, I continued to do it for a couple of reasons: 1) I wanted to pay it forward because I was grateful for the people who came before me who helped me out 2) I saw that so many surgeons weren't giving their patients anywhere near the great amount of information that I got from my surgeon and I realized how overwhelmed, confused, and frustrated I would have been without that information... so I wanted to help people who had good cutters but lousy educators 3) some of my experience was different and I thought it was important for people to know that there ARE different experiences and different ways to be successful (e.g., I had open RNY surgery in 2007 rather than laparoscopic; my surgeon had her patients back on soft foods 4 days after surgery and we were allowed to eat fish and moist baked chicken by 3 weeks out (because my surgeon's experience was that people had far more trouble reintroducing food when they "babied" their pouch with several weeks of liquids and purees) and VERY few of her patients had any trouble eating soft foods very early).

I took a break -- and, having had that break, I would be lying if I said that I will ever contribute as much as I did for 8 years -- partly because I was weary of seeing the same questions over and over and OVER again (even if I didn't even open the posts let alone answer them). More than that, though, I got tired of 1) trying to help, only to have someone bite my head off because they didn't like being called out for something that was, IMO, clearly going to lead them down a path of difficulty or failure, or 2) to have someone who was just a couple of months post-op tell me that their surgeon said something different (and their surgeon was infallible, of course), or 3) to have someone not even acknowledge, let alone thank me for, a lengthy response. (It wasn't like I expected a response to even most things I posted, but if I took a lot of time to provide someone with a significant amount of information or to point them to a couple of medical or other legitimate information sources, a quick "thanks" to acknowledge my time would have been nice... and it was happening less and less)

Mostly, though, I stopped participating because people seemed far more interested in taking the "advice" of someone who wasn't even finished losing (let alone maintaining their weight loss) but would just pat them on the hand and say "you got this" even when they clearly were in trouble or headed for trouble. I got tired of wasting my time on people who preferred cheerleaders who would cheer them on as they floated towards a waterfall rather than paying attention to,people who would wave a big warning sign that there is a waterfall down river but that there is a place to dock your canoe just ahead.

When the negatives outweighed the positives of being here, I called it quits for a while. We will see whether or not I regain the feeling that I am offering help/info that is being appreciated and/or utilized. I will say that the name calling and personal attacks seem to have increased. I think it is a symptom of society in general, especially here in the US. I haven't been feeling well recently and am appalled at the number of promos for reality television shows that are fillegal with nothing but meanness and drama.

Lora