What hurdle has WLS NOT helped you with?

WLS gets us over so many hurdles, more than I can count. However, there are still some things that I struggle with that the surgery may have made a little easier, but just doesn't tackle and get you over it. For me, and I have mentioned it on the VSG menu board, it is mental health. That is still a struggle I am working on!

What about you all? What has your surgery not gotten you over?

I don't know.. would you have pursued the mental health program you're currently in if you hadn't had WLS? I know, for me, while WLS didn't solve any of my mental health issues, it definitely helped me to get to the point where I cared about myself enough to address them and I'm not sure I would have gotten there without WLS.

For me, WLS hasn't helped some of the challenging relationships in my life. In fact, I think it's made some of them more challenging because I care about myself more in general now and I'm less willing to put up with ****ty relationships. On the one hand, that's a good thing. On the other hand, I'd really like to improve some of those challenging relationships instead of just kicking them to the curb.

But, who knows.. wanting to invest the time and energy into improving the relationships because I care about myself more now might be yet another thing losing weight is helping me to do.

It is definitely connected! I think it's hard for it not to be connected to everything in our lives to a point, it changes us so much. It has made me love myself more, for sure. Though I think I more meant that it didn't get rid of the issue like it did for many other things.

I definitely agree with your comments on challenging relationships. I know a couple of relationships I had were based on the fact that I was both a loyal person and a push over unwilling to stand up for myself. They turned out to be rather toxic, but I never considered it before.

We are worthy of healthy, balanced, and meaningful relationships.

If we're talking about things that losing weight didn't fix.. it definitely didn't fix my BED! But, it made me care enough to seek help for my BED, so that's awesome. And I think it might have helped me get taken seriously? Since it wasn't just an obese person looking for some "easy fix" to justify their obesity. I was under my surgeon's goal and my PCP was asking me why I was still working on losing weight! I think that helped my eating disorder get treated seriously (by most of my medical team).

I think there are lots of life events that aren't weight-dependent and so aren't helped by WLS. I'm currently dealing with empty nest for example. And there are always things like death that I'm pretty sure I dealt with the same way I would have as a non-op.

But I agree with you and Gwen. To the extent that the surgery and keeping the weight off has helped my everyday existence I suppose it's also eased the physical cost of mourning and certainly of lesser troublesome things.

Good question and food for thought. Thanks Mersh =)

I can barely think of anything! I am much more confident about tackling every type of challenge in my life because I feel well enough to do it.

The only thing that continues to linger is my food addiction. For the few years I thought I kicked it, but every day, I can eat just a little more than I could the day before...and every day I find myself testing limits that I didn't try to test when I was newly post-op.

I know it will always be a struggle, but I am still incredibly grateful that the surgery gave me the confidence to tackle that challenge, too.

I find myself testing those limits too, that is where my hyper-focus on logging my food is so important. I enjoy my food logging, so I think that is a plus. I swear I could have been a nutritionist that works at a hospital, or wherever to just plan meals and calculate nutrition because I think it's so sang fun. (I may be a little crazy.)

Most of my life I have struggled with feeling like an outsider, like there is something "wrong" with me...I am not "normal." I blamed a lot of this feeling on my weight. Even though I had a lot of therapy before my VSG, I still had this glimmer of hope that loosing weight would take this feeling away, it has not. I am trying really hard to celebrate feeling different and being an outsider instead of making it something wrong with me. It has been a big breakthrough to know that it was never my weight, it is something deeper that that. Good question Mersh.

I have always felt like an outsider and thought it was my weight too. Losing it didn't fix that, I'm learning that I'm really just a tad different than a lot of others especially in my age group. Some of that might be that I was raised so differently, but I am trying to celebrate being different. I think we would be good outsiders together, Kristi!

That sounds like a good plan Mersh!