Back After Regain

Hello All,

Hope everyone is having a happy Thanksgiving or whatever holiday you may celebrate in your parts.

I, sadly, have fallen victim to a tale as old as time. I lost my weight, I stopped keeping tack and being diligent, and now I have regained 25 pounds.

I believe my biggest struggle is accountability. Everyone in my family says I look fine and I still have all of my previous health issues under control. I just can't find the motivation.

Anything that has worked for others is welcome. Otherwise I will be participating in the menu thread and try and be as active as I can here.

Again, hope everyone is enjoying their holidays and is being their happiest and healthiest selves!

We are here for you! Looking forward to getting to know you on the menu thread. You can do it, you're worth it.

Your intestines are lined with hairlike appendages called villi. The villi grab onto the food as it passes through. They hold the food against the walls of the intestine so that the calories can be absorbed.

After RNY a lot of those villi are gone. So food goes right through and the calories do not get absorbed. But the body is smart. It knows that it is being fed food but still getting starved. So the body grows new villi. They are stronger than the old ones and can really grab the food and make sure the calories get absorbed.

By about month 30 after surgery the body is able to absorb calories and again and regain starts. This is called the bounce-back regain period. Most people gain 20 pounds very quickly. Some gain more. The only way to get around this and lose weight again is to eat a lot fewer calories and also to burn more calories.

Decide where you want your weight to stay for the rest of your life. Then multiply that number by 10. That is the amount of calories you will need to stay at that weight. To get back there you will need to subtract 500 from that number. That will result in one pound a week of weight loss. You can lose two pounds a week if you do enough exercise to burn an additional 500 calories.

Example, if you make 140 your goal weight. Commit to eating 1400 a day for life. Eat 900 a a day to lose one pound every week. In six months you will lose about 26 pounds. Exercise can speed that up even more.

There is no magic food and no more surgery honeymoon magic. The rest of your life is going to be a matter of being aware of what you eat and tracking your calories and exercise. Some of us do that with Weigh****chers. Others use Keto. Many use My Fitness Pal. You need to find what works for you. We are all in this struggle together.

Remember that about 50% of people regain 50% of their lost weight by year five. It keeps going up after that. I just accept the fact that I am on a diet for life. There is no maintenance phase with surgery. Your body will fight forever to get back to the weight where it started. You have to fight forever to keep from regaining.

Thank you!

Yes, the hardest part will be to accept that I am on a diet for life. There will never be any easing up or eating like a normal person again :( oh well, such is the price for maintaining a healthy weight lol

And thank you for the info, 800 calories it is then! God I use to do that so easily and now I balk at that number

the word "diet" has come to mean a terrible, depriving event. Try to think of it this way: a "diet" is what a species eats to stay alive. Each species has a "diet" of foods that they consume. Birds "diet"is seeds, nuts, berries, and small insects. Fish eat algae, other small water creatures, etc.

wild tigers etc eat other mammals flesh.
humans, at the top of the food chain can eat most of all of these " diets"

so our "diet"is everything. We can choose what our "diet", what we choose to eat to stay alive, will be,so

it takes the bad con station from the word " diet" if we can get there. It's a process but might help you to not think of " diet" as a bad thing.

How do you apply this to VSGers? Do you think they just don't lose as much weight to begin with (in general) and therefore start at a higher baseline? When do you think regain starts?

VSG was not an option with my surgeon in 2007. When he started doing VSG, in 2008, he told me that he thought I would have lost just as much weight with just VSG.

I am not an expert, but have watched people for a lot of years. My overall observation has been that RNY loses about 100 pounds in the first year after surgery. Then they have a bounceback regain of about 20 pounds, so their net loss in the third year is about 80.

With VGS, I see a first year loss of 80 pounds, then a 20 pound rebound and a net loss of 60 pounds. The malabsorption makes the initial weight loss more dramatic and losing malabsorption makes rebound more dramatic.

But I believe that the body will always find a way to get the weight back. That is why I tell myself that I will be on a diet for life. My regain started at exactly 30 months out. It was one pound a week regain for fourteen weeks. Then I joined Weigh****chers.

Have you ever heard of the concept of a super responder to WLS? I was discussing my own WL post VSG - I lost 112lbs in the first year, regained 10-12lbs (edited to add: on my low end and 20lbs on the upper end, right now I'm on the lower side) or so, but did so intentionally by adding calories due to low body fat. I'm 4 years out. The person I was talking to was saying that she has read that some people are metabolic super responders to WLS and essentially have faster loss and an easier time maintaining than other people. I can't really find an actual study to support this.

In my case, I'd been diabetic on a lot of insulin for a long time. I took over 200 units per day at my heaviest and over 300 per day when pregnant. I put on tons of weight during my pregnancies. I attribute some of my ease of maintenance to not taking insulin anymore. I was taking it before puberty after all which I imagine has to skew your adult weight (especially when you're not Type I, which comes with weight loss + high blood sugars).

My family in general doesn't have issues with obesity. I was always the "fat" one. My mom dieted herself into a tizzy my whole life but was never bigger than a size 12 at any point. My sister is a literal bean pole. Father has always been the same average weight. Aunts, Uncles, and cousins don't seem to present as "over weight" until later in life (post 60+). I actually don't know of another genetic family member who has had WLS. Sadly, my aunt talks about our "bad genes" related to weight, and she really has no idea.

I never heard of a super responder. My regain happened when I had to go back on insulin. My doctor told me that insulin increases fat storage. I accept the added weight more willingly because the tradeoff for me is better blood sugar control. But I am always trying to keep the blood sugar and weight as well controlled as possible. A lot of the key to that is exercise.

My mother, grandmothers on both sides, and other relatives had diabetes. They were all Type 2 and none of them was excessively heavy. I was diagnosed at 39. I had been getting extremely tired and thought it was thyroid related. But it was diabetes. I went through several years of control with diet and exercise, then started on pills. The weight gain happened with the insulin and I ended up with RNY in an attempt to get off of the insulin and put the diabetes into remission. I was OK for eight years and then it came back and I was back on insulin.

I take 30 units of Lantus at night and 6 to 8 units of Humalog before meals, depending on how many carbs I will be eating. The better my A1C is, the higher my weight is. I am always between ten and twenty pounds over my goal and accept that at the moment. But still will fight to make it better.

You are doing a fantastic job of controlling your weight with diabetes. The disease makes it a lot harder.

Right now I take Janumet which is a combo pill of Metformin and Januvia. I take it at lunch and dinner. I also stay active 4-5 days per week and manage my total carbs. It's a balance but fingers crossed it's working for now.