anybody 2 and half years out is still trying to lose weight

I am two and half years out and I have stopped losing weight for quiete sometime I know the basics and everything that is needed to be done but I needed some encouragment and to see if anyone else out there is still trying and are in my shoes.
I also want to invite longterm vetrans to share their experience when they gain and try to lose again and how are your eating habits now

Hello, my name is Heather and I am a food addict, VSG did not change that. I am 3 years out and had a total regain of 29lbs. What happened? I stopped drinking protein shakes and paying attention to carbs, suddenly I was only eating cookies, cakes and crackers with diet coke for about a year.

Then my doctor informed me that my malnourishment was causing serious problems in my bone marrow/thyroid. I decided once again to rededicate myself to my health and start using my sleeve as it was meant to be used. For the last two months, I have been back on 3 shakes a day and 2 or 3 portions of dense protein. I have lost 12 lbs so far, so it is possible to lose more weight, but you need a very calculated plan, I keep my calories under 1000, protein over 100 and carbs about 30, I track it all on "my plate" on the livestrong website.

Thank you for posting this.  It's very encouraging, and let's me know I have the power to deal with the ups and downs.

 This is very helpful.  Good luck to you.  I have the same habits of crackers and peanut butter and cookies if in the house!  You are an inspiration! 

I'm only 16 months out, but I have been maintaining within a 2-3 lb range since mid-April. Since I am not in the losing phase, my carbs are up around 100-130 or so, but I do exercise 4-6 times/week, including weight training. During my losing phase I kept my carbs around 40-60/day and they came from dairy, veggies, and a little fruit. I don't eat much bread, no pasta, no rice, but I do eat some sweet potato and butternut squash a few times/week.

My tools for success from pre-op to today: food tracking, measuring my portions, staying within a specific caloric range, including certain nutrients. My protein is about 100-110/day. I weigh myself daily and take my weight on Sunday's for my weekly weight. I also attend face to face support groups twice/month.

I follow the advice of long term vets and the recommendations from the National Weight Control Registry of people who have lost significant amounts of weight and have kept it off for at least 5 years.  I also follow the recommendations from my bariatric program. They all overlap in their recommendations and guidelines for success.


Gail

I got to goal pretty fast and then I went down even lower but at 3.25  years out, I am not up 10 pounds from where I want to be (give or take). So I've been examining my eating and what I've found is:

-If I eat like I did at around 6-12 months, I am no hungrier than I was then and I can eat no more per meal, but if I eat like I have been eating, I'm much hungrier and I can eat more per serving.

-I eat from boredom sometimes

-A lot of my eating is from habit and not true desire

So I think that if we go back to our mindset in the first year, the weight will come off. For me, this means:

-logging all my food again
-not drinking until 45 min after a meal
-smaller portion sizes
-eat protein first
-eat more protein, less carbs
-drink more fluid

So far doing this has stopped my weight gain. As soon as I can start exercising again, I think it will stop coming off.

This is the same for me I have reached to this conclusion too I tend to eat more if I do not follow the rules of the vsg.this is why I wanted to go back to the mind set of the first year I guess there is a reason to it.
I do eat more but only when I graze and when I eat slider foods and less protein and fiber.

But what I have noticed as well that my body is now used to have less calories so my metabolisim is slow and the only way to raise my fat burning ability is to exercise.

It makes me wonder sometimes what is harder to have the ability to eat but your metabolisim is not slow , or to eat less graze more because your tummy empties so fast and your need for more nutrition sometimes as I would feel is just not met with the small portions I am only able to eat or instead of eating healthy food and because you only have small space for food at one time you replace the healthy with the kind of food you binge on instead and with a screwed metabolosim like mine this will make me gain weight but then I come around and say to myself that if it wasnot for the vsg I could have eaten more.

For weight loss even in the first year did not come easy or fast but I still do not wAnt to consider myself as a failure in weight loss I would like to prove to myself that I can do it again

Actually our tummies don't empty that much faster than they did before. So if the normal stomach emptying time is 20-30 mintues to start empting and 45 min. half life (half the contents gone by 45 minutes), then maybe ours start emptying in the 15-25 min range and our half life isn't that much slower either.

I am basing this on feel and my own experiences because no one has actually studied how much faster our tummies empty compared to pre-op.

As for metabolism, most of us have slowed ours down by yo-yo dieting before we got surgery. This last big of losing will also slow it down but it's the losing of the weight that does it for the most part, not the surgery per se.

Have you had your thyroid levels tested or do you possibly have insulin resistenace that is slowing down your weight loss?

I have tested my thyriod before and it turned out normal but when I went to a nutritionist he told me that my body fat burning is in the lower level . He said I needed to drink more water and eat healthier food to balance the ratio of water to fat in my body.... As I recall .

I am a bit over 2.5 yrs out - my three year aniversary is on April 20 and I havn't reached goal yet.  I have continued to loose weight but the whole process has been excruciatingly slow for me.  I'm sure its been slowed by medical issues (hypothyroid, PCOS, sleep apnea, fybromyalgia, anti-depressant medication,inappropriate thyroid medication and not enough Metformin).  Plus extremely stressful life due to my hubby's serious illness.

Add to the medical side of things, after the first year or so with minimal loss, I stopped being 100% compliant with my diet and excercise (why bother when it didn't work anyway?).  Last year I lost more weight by not being compliant than I did in the first year of being totally compliant.
It did show me that maintenance will be easier than I expected it to be as I still have good restriction (just have to make the right food choices and keep active).

In 2011 I came off anti-depressants (was having an ongoing reaction to them), my GP changed my Thyroid medication, as of December 2011 I have started an excercise regime and as of this week I am recording everything, have doen the 5 day pouch test, focusing on my protein, start a weight training program yesterday.

I have lost just over 7lbs in the last week - which is my biggest weight loss ever in my life:)

Would love to have some company along the road as I am sure the rest of the weight is not going to come off so quickly!