The musings of an Eighth Grader... or whatever you want to call me.

I guess I have been maintaining... between 136-138... but somehow that feels like I haven't accomplished my goal, since I really wanted to be 135 at one point...

See how I took it from maintaining to screwing up and not accomplishing a goal?!

Damn mind... I hate you some days!!!!

One of the things I find interesting is how this weight loss is so different from my experiences with simple calorie reduction diets. I had always found low-carb to work better for me than any other option, I love Mediterranean foods and chose them for my "normal" diet (just clearly too much). This is the first time I've ever had true carbohydrate cravings. In the past I WANTED bread with butter I desired it, but this past weekend I experienced a CRAVING that was just out of this world intense. I suspect it was triggered by my upping my carbs in the form of fresh fruit (berries) and some more veggies. I've dropped it back down again and I haven't had another episode but WOW was it crazy intense.

It's hard too because I'm just getting old, so what part is RNY dieting and what part is OLD LADY issues?

I look back at MFP from 2010 and I'm frustrated to see I'm losing at a slower rate this time while eating a 1/3 less calories AND having both a restricted volume and mal-absorbtion tools in place. As I jog I'm practically cheering myself on with a chant of "You can DO THIS" because I feel like I have zero fuel in my tank, that I'm exhausted beyond exhausted.

And I am in the EASY phase!!! EASY! Gah!

Great post Pam. You expressed perfectly what we all often feel. Maintenance is real, and my mind is a lying ***** She tries to convince me all the time that I can eat off plan, or that I am still fat and doomed to long term failure. I am learning when to listen to her and when to give her the middle finger. She does manage to get to me sometimes, tho (e.g., crackers for dinner yesterday).

Regard your friends as a cautionary tale. We can learn as much, or more, from those who make mistakes as from those who do it right.

Very true... we do learn from others both ways.

Middle fingers... I need to work on that for sure!

Great post! Thanks for sharing.

Look at your journey through my eyes...

1. You started out like me, trying to make this work in your life as best you could.
2. You see people lose weight in the first few months after an RYN regardless of their diet choices.
3. You found that as expected, low carb worked best for you.
4. You continued to cut out carbs as you realized their impact on your stalls.
5. You learned that you can NEVER stop measuring
6. You learned that you NEED to log your food, all of it, every damn day
7. You learned that success here isn't about knowledge (your friend the Bariatric nurse)
8. You learned that success isn't about living an active life style (same friend).
9. You've been far more successful than your friends due to the above lessons you've learned and changes you've made.
10. Your anxiety about regain has cause you to possibly lash out or at least get more ramped up than you might expect when faced with posters who are falling into the same trap that derailed your friends.
11. You fear you'll slip up and fall into the same trap as others and regain, and you're worried you haven't lost enough to create a "bounce back" pad.

Here are my thoughts after reading your post...

1. I can take a deep breath, and know I'll keep losing weight for another couple of months while I figure this out because I'm WAY more compliant to this low carb razor edge life than those who come back to report stalls or regain.
2. Confirmation that if I don't get the weight off in the first several months it will never come off (as a lightweight - 40+BMI have more like 18 mo as I understand?)
3. The temptation to "wing it" will grow the further out I get, maybe especially if I'm very successful initially (first 8-12 mo).
4. Nothing will offset a bad diet
5. Regain (or a long-term stalled weight loss) doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens when people stop working the plan, stop weighing and measuring, stop logging their food.
6. You are living in fear of failure while you're working the plan and finding wild success. Don't waste this moment of success and joy in a job well done imagining a horrific regain. The only thing that will cause that is a CHANGE in behavior where you failure to keep doing exactly what you ARE doing. YOU'RE DOING THIS! YOU'RE WINNING AT WLS! REJOICE! You can love yourself and what you're accomplishing without jinxing or derailing. You can celebrate your success without dropping your great behaviors!
7. Your goal weight- please think about your frame size when you look for your long term weight goal. Wrist size, shoe size, ring size, all can give you a general idea of your frame. I'm tiny, so at 5'4" the 145lbs goal my physician set is way too high, I need to be closer to 115lbs, maybe as high as 125 if I'm really fit. And yeah, factor in excess skin if you still have some as that weight isn't "real" and you can't diet it off.

Just my two cents...

Pammie can correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think she said #1, #2 or #7 in your second section. Those all sound like rationalizations to eat crap right now.

Implicit bias is a Bit@h so it's certainly possible I'm reading into her post and manufacturing a false message. As for "Those all sound like rationalizations to eat crap right now." part - I honestly don't see where you're getting that from my post. At all. I feel really defensive that this is your take-a-way from my response. Here is my "rationalizations" for the "my thoughts" part.

1.[I said]I can take a deep breath, and know I'll keep losing weight for another couple of months while I figure this out because I'm WAY more compliant to this low carb razor edge life than those who come back to report stalls or regain.

Based on pammieanne writing-

And while I know there are a lot of people here that don't like hearing what the VETS have to say, I gotta tell you, listen. The carbs early out are not going to stop your loss... they won't. You'll lose whether you eat the cream of wheat or not... you can have those mashed potatoes during your mushy food stage, and you'll still lose... but you know what? In 8 months, that spoonful of mashed potatoes, that only had 'a couple of carbs' will not satisfy you...

Thus when I wrote "I can take a deep breath, and know I'll keep losing weight for another couple of months while I figure this out" is based on this PLUS ALL THE GREAT ADVICE FROM VETS is that you can't trust the ease in which you lose weight the first few months because the weight will come off regardless of what you're doing. From what I read, I'm getting a lot more things right than I'm getting wrong. like Pammieanne, I'm making mistakes and figuring things out. Having not been on the boards when Pammieanne was in my stage, but seeing how well liked and respected she is, I'm going to guess that my problem is that I'm questioning and challenging everything that counters what I THOUGHT this process was going to be like because I NEED to understand the what's and why-fores of these things. (it's a curse).

2. [I said] Confirmation that if I don't get the weight off in the first several months it will never come off (as a lightweight - 40+BMI have more like 18 mo as I understand?)

based on the same as above- plus this part about the friend with VSG "My other friend had the VSG in October of this year... she is much shorter, 5'2", and started out at somewhere around 255... she is now around 160, but not thin. She called me the other day asking about diet pills, and could 'we' use them... when I told her I wasn't sure, but probably just portioning out meat and cheese and eating that - instead of donuts and cakes for breakfast, then skipping lunch, and just having ****tails for dinner - it might help. She didn't like my answer. Her goal had been 125, and now she's saying she doesn't want to be thin... I know she's lying to me and herself"

This is conclusion of mine is certainly less direct than number one, but between the first quote and the one above (Her friend is only 9 mo out and asking about diet pills!!!), PLUS the great advice here on OH, it sounds like the "WINDOW" of easy weight loss starts to close around 8-10 months for those under 40BMI while it seems like those over 40 BMI have a longer window to get all the excess weight off. Although for the VSG the friend she uses above was at a 46 ish BMI so that means her window would have been abnormally short! Maybe that's part of the VSG difference? I'm on the light weight side so I need to "Get-er-done" ASAP

7. [my thoughts] Your goal weight- please think about your frame size when you look for your long term weight goal. Wrist size, shoe size, ring size, all can give you a general idea of your frame. I'm tiny, so at 5'4" the 145lbs goal my physician set is way too high, I need to be closer to 115lbs, maybe as high as 125 if I'm really fit. And yeah, factor in excess skin if you still have some as that weight isn't "real" and you can't diet it off.

was based on her musings "My initial goal was 150, putting me at a 'normal' BMI, but I quickly lowered it down to 145, for comfort sake. As I got closer to goal, and after learning SO MUCH around here from the VETS, I pushed for 140, and attained that. I'm now looking at 133 as my next (final?) goal."

I'm not sure what you're objecting to here. I'm reading her anxiety, which I imagine we all feel to some degree, and encouraging her to take her frame size into account rather than just the scale number. My surgeon will consider my surgery a success when I drop below 150lbs. I'll be in the upper range of "normal" based on the very arbitrary BMI table. I know that much less of my body weight is made up of bone and lean tissue, so I know I need to lose significantly more to reach a "healthy for me" weight. But this isn't because of the NUMBER it's because of my small frame.

JB - I'm a huge fan of yours. I honestly don't understand why I seem to rub you and others the wrong way sooooo often. I'm hoping its just that print robs us of 80% of the communication's nuances and something is getting lost in translation. I swear to you I'm not a totally arrogant newb know-it-all.

The first one, yeah, you could apply the slipper slope theory, and dismiss the highlighted part and maybe say I'm advocating eating crap. Obviously you came to that conclusion. I don't see anything in the other two that suggests I or anyone else should eat crap.

I'll be in Boston at the end of the month, I'd love to meet and buy you a coffee if you'd let me. If you meet me IRL you'll probably still be irritated and impatient with my questions and observations and wish I'd post a lot less and listen a lot more, but you might also recognize I'm not quite the bad apple so many see when they read my posts.

I don't think you are a bad apple at all for questioning things and wanting to figure things out. That's why we are here...all of us!

I am thinking of it in this analogy: You give a kid a tricycle. He masters the tricycle. Go kid! But then you see him on a bunch of websites for Tour de France racers giving advice that works for the tricycle but doesn't work for the race. Then other people who have won the race multiple times start to say, "hey, that doesn't sound right..." but the kid gets defensive and swears he is right. And of course he IS right, but only for the tricycle. It's liking banging your head against a wall to explain to that kid that he is only seeing a part of the whole picture.

There are so many people on OH who are mastering the tricycle every day and thinking they are Tour de France racers. I have REAL faith in you and everyone else that you all can win the long race, but let's face the fact that there is science behind how it all works to succeed and very few people get to goal by doing it differently.

I am almost 10 years out from my original surgery, so I have the benefit of many years of hindsight plus a lot of trail and error. I know I get unduly frustrated sometimes but it is hard to watch the same posts year after year and not want to yell from the rooftops.

I would be more than happy to meet and we can both confirm that neither of us are monsters :) Feel free to PM me with details.

Nailed it.

I know you are more of an administrator now but you're clearly an excellent teacher.