Question for those of you that are 2 or more years out.

I was just sleeved so take this for what it is worth. My best friend is a nutritionist and trainer (she does ironman's). If you build lean muscle mass on your small figure, I think and my friend thinks that you will probably have to eat more to not lose more weight (the opposite will happen). The more lean muscle mass you build from exercise, the more calories your body will burn while sleeping! :) Exercise has so many benefits and luckily you are at your goal weight and you can grab all of those benefits up if you want to take advantage of them!

Hugs,
Jenni

I've been complaining since Christmas about how hard it was for me to lose the 8 lbs I gained.

I know exactly what you'r e talking about. It used to be so easy to just be good again for a few days and it would fall back off.

I finally lost it but now I am afraid I am going to gain it back. I had my face lift on Wed. and I am not allowed outside at all. There is nothing to do but eat. I am trying really hard not to snack but
I do tend to eat when I am bored.

Try Zumba! if you like dancing, you'll love Zumba. It's really fun. It takes a few times to learn the routines, but once you have gone several times, you will love it!

Sad to say, but it's true.  The further out you get the harder it is to take off the weight.

At 2 years it was just a couple of lbs.  At 3 is was a couple more.  Now at 4 years, I'm 17 lbs more that what I'd like to be and 20 lbs over my lowest weight (which was too low for me anyway).  I don't like it and I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do about it.  I have started Pilates again, but that isn't helping as of yet.  I'm doing it more for general health but I was hoping that it would also help my weight.  Grrrrr....

I'm so very thankful that I cannot eat the volume that I could prior to surgery.  If I could, I would have gained all of my weight back and then some!

~Rana

Rana, thank you for your honesty.  It really helps me to hear stories like yours to stay motivated and to have realistic expectations for myself.  Do you think you are eating more calories than you did earlier out, say at two years?  Can you pin point what has changed?  Do you think it is just a slower metabolism, greater capacity, less attention to calories?  What would you attribute this gain too?

"Do you think you are eating more calories than you did earlier out, say at two years?  Can you pin point what has changed?  Do you think it is just a slower metabolism, greater capacity, less attention to calories?"

Um, all of the above.  I know I'm eating more calories (more junk) and I have a slightly greater capacity.  And I don't pay as much attention to the calories.  I still don't eat certain things, like donuts and milkshakes.  But I do consume too many calories and could stand to exercise more.

This is just a quick thought Love, as I am only 8 months out.  But any person, even animals, seem to get paunchier as they age.  I'm looking at my old kitty who is twice the size she used to be, poor thing.  I think nearly everyone, sleeved or unsleeved, really has to battle the weight after about 40 years, and it gets worse as we get older.  So while the sleeve "got you there", we now have the same battle to wage as any other person.  The sleeve just helped level the playing field for us.  So my guess is that after a few years of joyous weight loss, we rejoin the reality of the general population.  So I say tracking calories and exercise are key now.  I know your determination, Elina, and have no doubt you'll slay this dragon.  Thanks for the thread, it serves as a great lesson for all of us!
Marie

Marie, you make a really good point.  It's something I've been thinking about lately as well.  A few years back  my mom and dad were sharing a personal pan pizza and I remarked on how tiny it was and how could it possibly feed both of them.  They gave me a long dissertation about how they require very few calories compared to a person my age to maintain their weight.  They talked about HAVING to eat small portions to stay healthy and fit.  They are in their 70's.  Over the course of my visit, my mom continued to show and tell examples of what they can eat.  It was an eye opener.  Honestly, I thought dad was just being a stingy tightwad by making my mom share such a tiny meal.  I was wrong.  I was kind of busting his chops about it, so that is why they spent considerable time educating me on the nutritional needs of the elderly.  So, I guess it's true, we need less food as we get older.  My mom isn't starved, neither is my dad. (obviously, this was way before surgery when I could eat anything that didn't eat me first).

Elina-I have nothing more to add.  as you know I'm only 7 months out.

I don't really think it's harder. I have days when I don't feel like eating still. So in theory I should be able to take weight off easily. The problem is: I don't really want to. I like my life the way it is and I'm not willing to do what I need to do to maintain a weight 5 pounds lower than where I am now. (Which is the number I *want* to see on the scale even though I am happy with how I look and feel now.)

There is a concept I learned on OH at some point. It's Attainable vs. Sustainable.

I got down to about 112-113 (with occasional dips down to 109) so that weight is clearly *attainable* for me. But it wasn't *sustainable*. At that weight, I can't indulge in my favorite foods as much as I want and I have to go hungry more often than I want to. And for what? I actually look better naked now than when I was at that weight.

This is my experience with dieting:

When you are going down in weight, you are in a routine. Your body is used to not getting those calories and it stops trying to make you eat them. But once you start maintaining, your body "wakes up" (for lack of a better term) and then it starts trying to get you to eat what it thinks you should eat to be the weight it thinks you should be. (Your body's set point.)

Pre-op, I had dieted myself up 225 pounds because of this phenomena. But WLS has re-set my set point. This time, instead of my body trying to go back up to 225 pounds and then add on an extra 10 pounds for "spare change", it just tried to add on an extra 10 pounds. I fought it for a while but recently I decided to let it. Instead of trying to fruitlessly control the number, I am trying to control the composition of those 10 pounds and make as much of them be muscle as possible. As a results, my clothes all still fit the same as they did at 112-113 and I look better than I did at that lower weight.

So, the only unhappiness is that the crazy part of me wants to see a lower number on the scale. But the non-crazy part of me sees that I am happier, healthier and better looking now than I was before. I try to tamp down Crazy Girl as much as I can. I figure eventually she'll get over the weight gain.

MacMadam, you are a wise, wise woman. I hope to be you when I grow up. My fear is not so much that I will gain the ten pounds, because believe it or not, I could live with that, it is that the first ten pounds will turn to twenty and so on. I have lost and regained so many times in my life, that it is hard to believe that this is different. My husband agrees with you and has said the same thing to me. He thinks that the way I eat now, I would never go back to being obese, but I might gain a few pounds and stabilize. It might take me a few more nervous breakdowns to believe it though. :) The regain terrifies me. I get images of myself back at 196 lbs. or more and I know I would give up permanently at that point. I would never want that to happen. If I thought I could keep it at 10 lbs. I would be totally OK with it.

I just decided to let go anyway in spite of the fear. I want to live my life fully and being obsessed with the scale was cutting into that.

Which is not to say I'm all zen about it now. But I'm working on it.