What I wish I'd known before surgery...

Folks always ask this and I give an answer, but there's a deeper answer I could never seem to get to. Today I was thinking about it and here's what I think is what I have always wanted to say.

Before surgery, I wish I'd known that the surgery, and the losing of the weight, would not be the end of the fight. I had surgery mainly because I was tired. Tired of being fat. Tired of hating myself. Tired of existing instead of living.

I had this crazy misconception that once I arrived at a reasonable weight the fight would be over. I'd be healthy and free to pursue happiness (thank goodness I never thought losing weight = happiness, but I did know that if I lost the weight I'd have a better shot at it).

But keeping the weight off is HARD. My body doesn't want to be smaller, it seems. Keeping my food demons at bay is HARD. I understand the demons. Healthy attitudes toward food confuse the living hell out of me. Staying motivated to move my body is HARD. Some days I just don't want to do it.

Truth be told, some aspects of this (paying attention to what's in my food, vitamins, protein first) come naturally because they are habitual. But the parts of this that are instinctual - the just living, the existing in the same room with food and not being hyper aware of it, the not overfilling my plate - those don't come naturally to me. I ALWAYS have to be aware of what I'm doing, thinking. There is no room for "zoning out." That's hard. And I wish I'd thought about that before surgery.

I don't think it would have prevented me from having surgery but maybe, just maybe, if my expectations had been a bit more realistic, I wouldn't feel what I often find myself feeling now - resentment at the fact that it really never ends. You don't have to be quite so rigid after a while but it doesn't end. The fight is for the rest of my life. And if I was tired before surgery, oh do I get down right EXHAUSTED some days now.

And I wish I would have known that.

Thanks for sharing and for your honesty Nik!  I can relate to that and I'm still in the learning stages. Here are a couple things I wish I would have known:

1) I wouldn't be able to sleep without medication
2) As my body changes, thankful as I am that it IS changing, my entire body aches all the time.  Particularly my hips and shoulders.
3) Stalls happen

I totally agree.  It's almost 2 years out for me.  Keeping it off is much harder than taking it off.  The weight loss is the fun part.  Now I have the daily struggle trying to stay this way.  I'm hungry all the time.  I do pretty good on my diet and eat what I should.  I never had the "I'm always full" part.  I've learned most of what I know from this board and other people who had been through it.  The pre surgery classes were all about normal diet, exercise and psych.  They had 1.5 hrs of diet training for the surgery out of 6 months of classes.  The whole thing should have been about post surgery.  I thank God everyday for the surgery.  It saved my life.  I actually can live my life now.  It's just all mental from here.

What I wish I knew before my first WLS, that I figured out the hard way, was that WLS doesn't cure obesity.  That XX amount of weight lost forever isn't always the case.  The losing weight doesn't mean I lose my eating issues.
I know I probably heard these things before hand but I didn't listen.  I wanted to believe that I would never be obese again, that I would never have any issues with food again, that I was fixed.  
I know people may not believe me but this was in 2002 and I know I wasn't the only one who thought my obese days were over.  My sister called me up right after my revision and said to me something like "I have to do something that you don't have to worry about, something I never thought I would have to do again.  I have to diet".  She had her surgery a few months before I did in 2002 and we both somehow (wishful thinking?) got the idea that the days of watching what you eat were over.  Boy was I delusional.
You are right, it is never over.  For me, WLS just helped my odds a bit.  Instead o****% chance of failing at keeping my weight off maybe it's 50% or thereabouts.  Now if I had cancer and the doctors said I had a 50% chance of recovery it wouldn't look that good, but if I were told I had a 95% chance of not recovering I would be checking out plots.  I'll take whatever help I can get.

Because of my background, I knew that the psychological part of this would be difficult... that the food demons would not just magically go away after surgery (they just hide for a little while), that not all of my life problems/challenges would be solved just because I was no longer obese, that there was no guarantee of "xxx pounds gone forever", and that I would always have big boobs and muscular thighs (since I had both of those even in Jr High school before I started gaining serious weight).  I even knew that it might take my brian a while to "see" the smaller verison of me (I just didn't know how long it would take, LOL).

What I did NOT know, however, was how hard the struggle would be to accept my new body.  I knew that excess skin would definitely be an issue because I was so big (BMI of 57) before surgery, but after being over 300 pounds for a dozen years, I honestly thought that just getting back into "misses" size clothes (

Well Nik, your timing is amazing. I just got home from having my revision surgery and this is something that I think is a good thing to be thinking about and working on as I lose.

I am so appreciative of all of you here who are here to seek support, vent, look for info, and to me one of the most important is to grow emotionally and physically.

And can I just say that I am so freakin' happy to be HOME??!!! Yay!

I totally agree with everything everyone said. It is a battle and we have to fight every day, but damn it was worth it, especially when I see bones I haven’t seen in years. Someone wrote this, (sorry I don’t know who, but I love it and have it sitting next to my computer).
I might have chosen to have WLS, but I still have to choose what goes in my mount. I can make good choices, or bad ones, but regardless it is all up to me. I am the one in control of my life.

Beautiful topic!

The surgery has given me a "do over". I was tired of the obesity and it's co-morbidities. Those are the problems I would have been fighting the rest of my life were it not for the RNY. Better that I am now able to fight from a healthier standpoint. The view from my new battlefield is much more pleasant,

Hattie

OMG, this thread made me cry. I don't know what to think anymore, and I've been so so scared the last few days, reading through this forum and all the posts about the hellish things people have been through. Everywhere I look, people are talking about how difficult their lives became after this surgery.

Aside from being fat and fighting the ever-present yo-yo diet, I have it pretty damn good right now. Good marriage, good kids, great job. I don't have any comorbidities, no real mental health issues, and the only depression in my life is situational--the fact that my husband has been gone SO long and I'm raising the kids alone. That gets stressful, and I think that would bum even the healthiest girl out a bit. I don't eat emotionally, and I'm not a food addict. I just tend to eat way too big a portion of the things that are bad for me because they taste good. There's really not a lot of psychology behind my food issues, just a lack of self control. I thought WLS would be an ideal way to rewire my habits, I'm in a really good place in my life right now, and I chose now as the perfect time to do this.

But everyone keeps talking about how much they struggle after WLS.
I don't want that to happen to me. I think I'd rather be fat and relatively happy than slim, but emotionally exhausted, anxious, depressed, self conscious about skin, and in constant battle with myself. I always figured that since I don't really have any problems that I'm looking for WLS to solve (except my capacity to eat the way I currently do, of course), it would be relatively smooth sailing. But that doesn't sound like the case, the more I read and hear what people say.

So maybe I should rethink this.

Well before you rethink — and you have every right to — I ask that you consider a few things.

 

Firstly, I honestly don’t think this information would have stopped me from getting surgery. I always say I was “driven" to do this by some power greater than myself. I was told things that, at the time, would have seemed far scarier to me than “this is a lifelong battle" and did not relent because I felt that pull.

 

But consider this. I did not come onto OH before surgery to ask questions. I didn’t even know OH existed. I didn’t attend support groups or talk to other post-ops. Hell, my self-esteem at that point was so low that I didn’t even research my surgeon OR the surgery I was having. Let’s think about that a moment. Can you imagine how low I must have been in my life to not do ANY research on a man that was going to put me under, cut me open and rearrange my guts?

 

What the surgery gave me is a strong sense of self-worth. NOT because I’m smaller, but because I’ve had to fight so hard for myself. In short, we don’t fight for things that are worth nothing. In time I came to realize that I had been living a half-life before surgery. Yes, it’s hard now to maintain and yes I get resentful but I put that 100% on me. I didn’t do the homework. I didn’t vet this process, so I got the surprises commensurate with that level of dysfunction I was participating in at that time.

 

By virtue of the fact that you are here, now, as a pre-op, puts you light years ahead of where I was at that time.

 

Whether you have surgery or not is up to YOU. My words, in your life, are immaterial. My experience will not be yours (because each of us has our own experience). I can’t promise you your experience will be without complications, worries, drama or headaches. It really comes down to where you think you’ll be down the line if you don’t do it versus where you think you’ll be if you do.

For what it’s worth, I’m damn healthy. I’m muscular and toned. I’m fit. I think I’m gorgeous. I smile a lot. I let people smile at me and hug me. I did none of these things pre-op. So my life has completely changed.

But yes, I wish I had more realistic expectations at the outset. I get angry with myself for my resentments because I know I’m responsible for them and conversely I know that for the level of work I’ve put in, I don’t deserve to have to feel this way. BUT…we all must account for our behavior (or lack thereof) at some point.

Hope that puts things more into perspective for you.