wow!

i just discovered this board - i usually just hang around the plastic surgery board since i chose not to have WLS and didn't know there was a place for those individuals until today. cool. my story - i decided to give dieting one last shot through a diet program at duke. while i was there i met with a doctor to talk about WLS and he pretty much talked me out of it saying that i was young and shouldn't make such a life altering decision without giving the whole diet/exercise thing an honest shot. long story very short, i started at 280 in 2001 and got down to 160 by summer 2005. recently though, i have been having a lot of issues. i am now about 167 - gained weight over christmas w/ the holidays, a cruise, my birthday etc and can't seen to get anything to move! work out everyday, personal trainer 2x week, try to keep calories under 1500 in general. i know that 160 is sustainable for me, yet i can't seem to get back down there. i have had a few reconstrutive surgeries and am very scared that i will regain the weight and ruin those results. i would really appreciate any kind of suggestions and/or support. thanks, andrea

Hi Andrea! Welcome to the non-op board!!! This is an awesome place to be... I'm happy for you that you've found us! Go ahead and check out profiles and see everyones journey... it's such an awesome feeling to be amongst others who have/are going through the exact same things that you are. I hope you find this place to be as supportive and inspirational as I do!!! -CJ 250/163/140

Hi Andrea, Welcome! I'm glad you found us. I don't have any suggestions, because I am right in the middle of the hell you are in too. I can't get back on track after losing 100 pounds without WLS. I have gained 20 pounds back so far and I'm so scared. But I wanted you to know that you are not alone, and somehow knowing I am not alone may possibly help me too Good luck, keep us posted on how you are doing. Ann

I have also chosen not to have the operation, simply because it is much too dangerous, it doesnt work in the long run if you dont change your lifestyle, and frankly we dont even know what happens to people in the long run post-op. I got to be a whopping 403 lbs in january 2006 and now I am down to 331 lbs, so I am loosing about 14 lbs every month. I eat according to a diet plan that focuses on getting the body to burn more energy by eating food in big amounts. What I have found out about loosing weight is really astonishing, because it contradicts our normal ideas of what works to loose weight. The thing I found out is: - You have to eat fat to loose fat. I eat everyday a minimum 0.7 oz of fat besides the fat I get from the food, and believe me, if I dont eat my fat I dont loose weight. Believe me, it took me some frustrating weeks where I didnt eat my portion of fat to understand fully that I had to eat the fat. VERY VERY IMPORTANT to eat fat to loose fat. - I had to eat the whole portions to loose weight. If I started to eat less food then I was supposed to, then I didnt loose weight. - Fish with a high fat content really helps you to loose weight. I know, another contradiction, but it is my experience (and many others) that if I eat fat fish (sardines, salmon, makrel etc) as often as I can then I literally melt away. - Sugar slows the energy burn in the body and messess up with your bloodsugar, so it is best to avoid all sugar in every form. I havent eaten sugar since 2. january and I dont even miss it. My candy is now the fruits I eat, and they taste much sweeter, because my taste has changed when I stopped eating sweets. - It is not necessary to exercise, it can even make you gain weight. I know this sounds absurd, but the fact is that I havent exercised at all this time I have been loosing weight. I dont even go out to have walks. I have a job, but its in a petshop and is not hard at all. - You have to drink water to loose weight. I drink a lot of water and it seems to help flush the fat out. Well those are the things I have found out. You can also read more on my blog. http://kilokiller.blogspot.com/ Hugs and kissess from Iceland, Heidrun

Hello Heidrun and welcome to the non-op board. I read your post on the Main Board. I agree with much of what you said. Having been working on my own journey since July of 2005, I have found many things as well about my body and the way it reacts to food. I agree that we have to eat in order to lose. I know my weight loss slows down when I don't eat enough, as if often my problem. I used to be a compulsive over eater, my weight skyrocketing at some point in the past 16 years to almost 400 pounds. These days I am content with eating perhaps 1/4 of what I ate in the past. It's astonishing. Like you I don't eat sugar at all. More of a problem for me though are the simple carbohydrates. I haven't touched either in over 10 months and I have no desire or plan to. I do eat some complex carbohydrates like oat bran bread and oatmeal, and of course fruits and vegetables. So few foods are completely devoid of carbohydrates. But of course if we aim for the ones that don't spike our sugar, we are good to go. I keep my intake between 1100-1300 calories a day, drink 125 ounces of water and take multi-vitamins and calcium daily, and a B-12 supplement once a week. I have to chime in and disagree with you wholeheartedly on your stance on exercise. I started exercising after I had lost 60 pounds. That was in October of 2005. I have steadily worked out now 3-4 times a week since that time. I combine 45 minutes of cardio with strength training. At 222 pounds I am hard pressed to convince people that I weigh that much. Exercise does NOT make you gain weight. It makes you stronger and leaner. Muscle does NOT weigh more than fat, much to the amazement of some people that have been taught this. Muscle is denser then fat so it takes up less space than fat. Exercise is necessary for so many reasons. It helps with joints and lung capacity as well as overall making the body healthier. Please don't tell people that they don't need to exercise and even that it is counter productive. There are people out there with many many issues with their health that only "diet" and exercise are helping. As with everything in this world, nothing works the same for one as it does for another. What might work for you would be the exact opposite experience for another person. A lot of people will mirror another persons program in a desire for success. Everyone has to find what works best for them and continue on with it. I wish you much luck in your journey, and again welcome to the non-op board. Donna

I understand why you dont think I shouldnt say that you dont have to exercise. Of course it is neccessary in every healthy lifestyle to exercise in some way. But what I am trying to get through is that you dont need to exercise when you start to diet. I can only imagine how many people dealing with obesity dont have the courage to do something about it (except for surgery) because they think that they cant loose weight if they dont exercise. And its a fact when you are a certain size, then you simply cant exercise. It is a fact that people can even damage their joints, back and knee if they would exercise, being so extremely overweight. I begun my weightloss as a 403 lbs, and I cant imagine to have been able to exercise at the same time, simply because the change of the diet takes a lot of time. Instead of eating something out of a packet I nearly always make food from fresh vegetables and meat, and that takes time, and it even takes time to eat all the food I have to eat, and to have to exercise a 1-2 hours a day would simply have been too much. I work fulltime and I have a home to take care of, so I simply wouldnt have the time or energy to exercise. Now I am about 331 and I know that even now I cant exercise yet, because I am so heavy still and I have very bad knees, so I want to wait untill I loose more weight to start exercising instead of risking of making irreverseable damage to my joints. Dont get me wrong, I am no couch potato. I work as a sales clerk at a pet shop and that includes lifting some heavy things, and I walk a lot at work. In fact I am in amazingly good shape considering that I dont work out. I can run up stairs and it doesnt take my breath away, and after the diet change I have been getting some really big muscles on my arms. I guess its from the lifting at work, but it really surprises me, because I worked exactly the same job for half year, and i didnt get any muscles and now I have been working 5 months and I start to get muscles. Could it be the change in diet? It has always been my goal to make exercise a part of my everyday life, but it will be a little bit later when my weight has gone down so it wont damage my health to exercise. I am in fact a very strongly built person and I have been working through my life some extremely hard work in the fish industry, slaughterhouses, and I even went to 3 times 14 days constant work at a fishing vessel, that used nets. There I worked 6 hours, ate and slept 6 hours, and then worked 6 hours, ate and slept 6 hours, all the time, total 14 days. Plus in the first trip because of accidents we were too few so for a week we worked 20 hours and ate and slept 4 hours. We were pulling nets the whole 24 hours and we didnt come to harbor for 2 weeks. It is like really hard work, but you are rolling because of the waves the whole time, making things twice as hard. And yes I was the only woman on board. Take care, hugs and kissess from Iceland from the "viking" Heidrun :)

Welcome to the non-op board Andrea........... Phyllis

Hi Andrea, Welcome to the non-op board. I saw you post a few times over on the PS board. Your story sounds similar to mine in that my doctor said no to WLS because he wanted me to try it one last time. I started in July of 2005 at 352 and yesterday at the offical weigh-in for this board, I weighed in at 222. I truly do not know what to tell you about how to get back on track. Your words send fear through me because I can't begin to accept that one day this might plague me. I used to be petrified that I'd gain my weight back, then I realized deep down that I really am not going to. But I remember vividly the fear of starting and stopping a diet, and not knowing why I stopped or how to get back on track. All I can say is, remember what made you start to lose, and adopt the whole program as a lifestyle change instead of a one time deal. You lost it over 4 years, so you remember how hard you worked. Especially with a few plastic surgeries under your belt, think of how you are going to undo all that!!! Do you want to go through them again, I'm thinking not!! Just put one foot in front of the other and take small steps, regaining all the things you learned over the four years that you lost. I'm sure you can do it, and come back here for some valuable support! Donna