crosswind

. Thanks Me, thanks all. I can't believe it's been a year. I had several thoughts about how I was going to approach my weight loss. I thought maybe I would start a blog. I thought I would have celebrations as I went down sizes and get all excited about it. But I just didn't have the energy for it. My goal all along was to *not* make my weight loss the center of my life. I've spent a lifetime doing that and this time what I realized I wanted was a normal life, normal eating habits, and a balanced outlook. Instead of *dieting* I've been paying close attention to my nutrition. I didn't go on excessive exercise kick but the job I got requires me to walk about ten minutes each way to the building from the parking lot and I committed to Pilates three times a week. Balanced, you know? Normal and over time. Nothing insane. Now that I'm here I realize that it's the *obsession* with all this that partially kept me fat. When I was lowcarbing, I would get all wound up over whether there was any sugar in my ketchup; beat myself up endlessly if I touched a slice of cake. In my dieting days I would *make* myself walk for an *hour* a day, every day and be furious with myself if I missed one -- plus the additional workouts, one a day. I had a serious emotional problem and I did not realize it or know how to stop. But over time, eating normally, knowing my calories are always in deficit --- has probably been the best thing for me and a virtual guarantee that I won't ever gain it back this time. I have *never* -- probably since I was a kid, been more balanced, steady and normal with food. No binging and starving. No severe deprivation followed by massive calorie overload. Just eating. My calories, in the past year, have never been in such severe deficit that I started starving. I'm now still losing on 15-1700 calories a day. I overeat sometimes but I can't do this like I used to so I just don't worry about it. I'm thinner, sure, but the real benefit is that my metabolism is no longer taking the beating I was giving it for most of my life. I'm just a lot healthier. It's not the weight loss that's the best part, you know? The best part is that I'm erasing a really bad relationship with food and with my body. And like a lot of people have said, I wish I would have done this ten years ago -- although ten years ago this surgery did not exist.

I got on the scale this morning and it said: 183.4. On April 1 it was my one year surgiversary. I knew I wouldn't be at my ultimate goal then, and I want to tell you the truth: I actually never believed I ever would be at goal. I really didn't think my body would go there. I thought I would always be a little fat -- in fact here's the weird thing -- the thinner I get, the more I don't remember being this fat at this weight. I remember feeling really thin at this weight. I thought around 180 would be satisfactory but it's not. That's the first thing. The second thing is I only have 28 pounds to go before I weigh what I weighed in high school. About two months ago I remember getting on the scale and seeing 196. Below 200 for the first time since 2007. Got off the scale, shrugged and figured it I was around done losing. Now it's 183. Which means that I am less than 30 pounds away from something I really never believed I would have again. And -- if I have lost 13 pounds in less than two months -- actually I've lost 26 pounds since January -- that means it's getting more and more likely to happen. I think that's so amazing I just don't even know what to make of it.

BBJ -- if you saw this woman you would know that that is exactly the truth. There is just no way this woman will ever get relief without medical intervention. None of my business, in a way, but...well, I would rather the woman in the changing room had given me some real information instead of basically telling me I looked like ****.

The reason I didn't - and would never -- think about RNY is because of the rerouting of the intestines. That actually *did* sound drastic to me because you process most of your nutrition *after* the stomach and there is a lot we don't know yet about how that truly affects health. I didn't like the lap band because I didn't want some kind of cap you could open on my belly to inject air and saline. That was just too Matrix for me. The VS is pretty tame in comparison, and quite honestly I am confused about how anyone could possibly get back to their prior weight after it. You might bounce back up five or ten pounds, but there is just not enough time in the day to really get those calories in unless you decided to eat butter every hour on the hour. I mean it can be *done*, but you you would really have to try.

yes, of course. I would never say anything -- except that once and it was only in the context of sharing my own experience. I remember once I was trying on winter coats at some department store. I had a few I was trying on, one was a 16 and one was a 1X....and the 16 was cute, but really tight. And then I tried on this other one, and this *woman* who was in the changing rooms there with me started telling me oh, the larger one looks *so much better on you*...with this look on her face which was basically saying I was too fat to even think about the smaller one. I didn't ask for her opinion, you know? I mean who was this person? As a fat person was I also suddenly too stupid to tell when something didn't fit me? MAN that was rude. You do have to be careful with this stuff.

I know. I did share this with one woman at work who was telling me her knees hurt. I said something innocuous I guess -- and she said, no; I know it's because I'm overweight. And this woman really is --- I'm thinking she's 350 or more. Nicest person. So I told her the whole story of my journey -- I had probably gotten down to 220 or so by then, and she said, " Well, I'd never do anything that drastic." Which I guess I understand. The thing is....you know....drastic? You're dying. You can't *walk*. Come on....

Yesterday I was getting out of my car and going to the rental office and this lady was walking towards me to her car. She was very overweight, wearing a sackish kind of dress and she looked...just miserable. I mean *miserable*. I am not saying you can't be fat and happy or anything else -- not passing judgment at all certainly since I used to be her -- but she truly looked like she hated every waking minute of being in her body. And I know that feeling. I wanted to tell her all about weight loss surgery. I wanted to stop her in the parking lot and say, hey, you know what you should do? You should really try this, i'm not kidding... How RUDE, right? So I don't say anything . But boy do I want to. How about you?

As soon as your incisions are healed, it's fine. I think it was okay for me within one month.

. I'm two weeks off from my surgiversary and this morning I weighed 189.9. Broke 190 and that means I have lost an official hundred pounds since my surgery. It took a full year. I keep waiting for the stall that tells me I have to increase my exercise or cut calories, but it hasn't come yet. It's just gone very slowly since the fast fifty or so I lost last march. Back when I weighed 222 in November I thought it was over. Back when I weighed 209 in January, I thought it was over. When I weighed 222, I thought okay,, that's it, that's fine. Back when I weighed 209 I thought wait, what? I want to break 160 and at 5'10" I'll be at GOAL, I think. And the best part is there won't be any fear in it. I'll know it's going to stay off, doing what I normally do, exercising at a level I can reasonably handle. Thirty pounds to go. Can't imagine what it's going to be like to be thin again. But I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to have a good summer

I keep thinking I'm at the end of my loss and i keep being wrong. I'm at a new low today of 192.2 pounds and I have four weeks to go to my surgiversary. I was contemplating doing a "real diet" with Medifast or cottage cheese and pot roast, but I was resisting it too because of the sheer panic involved in all that starving and watching the scale and so on. Now I'm thinking it might not be necessary, at least not yet. I'm not near my published goal of 155, but I have lost seventeen pounds since January and it's possible i could keep dropping down, slowly, for a while. Eight pounds a month is a pretty good rate of loss, especially this far into my surgery year. I haven't been this slim since....2006. You know I'm going to do pics for you guys in April, right? . Just an update.

This is what I'm finding out about anemia. First of all, the proton pump inhibitors also slow Iron absorption. Most people who are anemic who are taking one take their iron very far apart from their prilosec. If you're taking a drugstore variety iron pill, chances are you're not going to be able to absorb it, Plus there is really not enough of it in one pill to make a difference, You have to take three or four of them a day and that can get cumbersome if you're also taking other meds. food with iron pills slows absorption. Huge chelator of iron is BLACK TEA, Studies have shown it blocks 65 percent of the iron you take in -- and that's from one cup. coffee is different. It will slow absorption if you drink caffeine with your iron or after it, but not if you have a cup of coffee one hour beforehand. The most bioavailable iron is in liquid form. Get some Floradix, stop drinking tea, and if you take a Prevacid, etc; in the morning, take your floradix at night with a couple of c chewables.

Last month I got a full blood panel done and found out I was iron-deficient. The lab value was 9.3 outside of the "normal" values of 12-15. So I started taking a bunch of Iron and B 12 and I thought I was actually feeling better. However, when I got a recheck yesterday the thing was still going down -- now it's 8.7. It's weird. I do feel better. I'm not so tired, and I don't have any of the symptoms they talk about online like chewing ice or eating dirt or extreme pallor and etcetera. What I'm wondering is if maybe my serum iron *is* improving even though my levels appear to be going down. Is that possible? I just don't feel that bad. Anybody with any experience with this?

Hi minaleigh -- at 22 don't even think about the knife. Your body knows better than any cosmetic surgeon, and none of them have any idea how gorgeous you could turn out to be. Give yourself at least til you turn 24 and then decide. In the meantime -- the neck lift, once I remembered, worked wonders within four days. And i'm 47.

A long time ago I was thinking I might start a VSG blog. I thought I'd write about my experiences and my amusing every little thing I thought about while losing weight, but over the months I changed my mind. First of all, I'd probably be banned by the vsg doctors for my stubborn insistence on refusing to eat 800 calories of pure Protein per day and second of all, I've got lots of emotional baggage other people may or may not have; which makes me like a really bad cheerleader and mostly sore loser -- even though I am at a new low today of 194.5. When I thought I would start this blog, I had something in mind to write about because I knew it would get people to come -- because everyone wants to know something I already know about one particular thing. I know how to lose lots of weight and not have your skin sagging off your body like a spent balloon. The reason I know is because I did intense research on this when I lost 135 pounds on a lowcarb diet. I actually lost that weight *faster* than I'm losing this time around -- I have *already* done the nine hundred calorie pure protein anorectic diet and it took me...let's see...about half the time it took me this time to take off a hundred pounds. Anyway, problem was that after going through all of that I had a stomach that actually looked like a second butt. You who have lost a hundred pounds really fast and have checked out what your belly button looks like lately know what I am talking about. There was no way I was getting a tummy tuck back then -- I couldn't afford it and it seemed hugely drastic to me at the time. To tell you the truth, getting your skin razored off your body for some reasonstill seems drastic to me, and I have had my stomach cut out. So this is what I know about attacking your saggy bits. I know it works; I'm doing it myself, and even though my skin is a little loose in places I don't have serious problems. I don't have a dreaded "pannus"; my arm skin is not falling down like a saggy stocking. So if you don't want a second surgery, can't afford a second surgery, and are willing to spend a little time and some money, here are my suggestions. 1. Dry skin brushing. There are several published methods on the internet that you can buy that will tell you how to do this. If you don't want to buy them, then this is the upshot. You need a good skin brush with tough natural bristles that are going to hold up. This one is my favorite because it's got a nice paddle action to it and a good strong handle and no this is not an amazon affiliate link: http://www.amazon.co...30481589&sr=1-2 You do this before your shower or at night or whenever but once a day, no more, no less. Again, there are programs you can buy with DVD's and stuff, but the basic way to brush is: Start at the bottom of you. Brush upwards, thirty times; each side of your calf, each side of your thigh, etc.; each butt cheek, and the dreaded stomach area -- firm upward strokes. Then go to the top of you and brush downwards; each side of your arm and your chest area. The point is to "brush all toxins towards your heart." The reason you do this is because you're stimulating the lymph in your body through the lymphatic system which has to go through your heart to get processed and eliminated. 2. If you want more help, look into Carole Maggio's No-Lipo Lipo system, which costs some money but actually does work if you work it. Her program takes dry skin brushing to a higher level by incorporating a fat-busting self massage protocol and skin conditioning system. 3. Topical exfoliation. You can do this several ways, but the easiest is to go to Skinbiology.com and buy their "skin tightening" protocol which includes several choices of natural acids to take off the top layer of skin so you can work through to the lower layers. 4. Copper Peptides. Skinbiology.com. After you do your dry skin brushing and take your shower; apply an appropriate strength copper peptide to the affected area. You can do this with extreme success at the lower belly and on the insides of your upper arms especially. 5. Pilates When cosmetic surgeons do tummy tucks, one of their primary concerns is the fact that the recti muscle -- the one that holds the lower girdle of your organs in place -- has split apart due to the extreme pressure of obesity on those muscles. That's why it's major surgery -- they're not just slicing some skin out and stretching it back into place; they're actually repairing the muscle by stitching it back together across the expanse of your lower abdomen. Pilates can repair that muscle. It's not because Pilates emphasizes "core work" -- it's because it realigns the whole body and *then* works the core -- in time, just like physical therapy, these muscles strengthen and move back into position. 6. Dot Laser Therapy ( or Fraxel, with reservations) The basic strategy behind skin rejuvenation through laser is controlled injury. When the skin is injured, it makes new collagen; this increases elasticity and you snap back. I know dot laser works because I've had it -- but the issue here is really the expense. Treating your belly is a *large* area and you could run into about the same money as your tummy tuck with varying results. But if you're not interested in getting cut open, you will see a result from either of these. 7. Exercise the wattle. Here is an exercise I've been doing to minimize the wattle where my double chin used to be: Lie on your bed backwards with your head hanging off the edge, Lift your head so it is parallel to the floor. Hold for twenty counts. Drop your head. Lift again for another twenty count. Do that three times. On the last one -- lift for twenty, turn to the right for twenty, then to the left for twenty. Do this once or twice a day. 8. DMAE for small areas. DMAE tightens skin, but it's expensive and there is a whole issue -- listen to me now, don't get the stuff from Walgreens -- with making sure that the DMAE is *active* and deliverable to your skin. Perricone makes one and Skinbiology does too. Another option is to make your own -- you can dissolve DMAE capsules in olive oil and slather it on your neck, under your arms, inner thighs -- etc -- and get a therapeutic result. If it's not fresh or deliverable,though, what you're going to get is sort of forty dollars you spent on a nicely scented type of Vaseline. 9. Slow down. If you're very overweight and you've just gotten weight loss surgery, chances are the first one hundred pounds are going to run screaming off of you and you will be left with the aftermath. But after that -- slow down. *Most* people have great elasticity in their skin even into their late fifties, and your skin needs time to adjust. If you're in your first year of a massive weight loss, don't assume that hangy stuff is going to be there forever. It probably won't be. What it needs is time. The rule of thumb is one year per one hundred pounds. 10. Lose more weight. A lot of people complaining about saggy skin are really complaining about extra fat. Let me put it this way: At 175 -- a reasonable amount for my 5 foot 10 frame -- I was still bothered by bits of myself that had shapeless, untaut attributes. At 158 this was not the case at all. You might still need to drop another ten or twenty pounds for the "skin" you're upset about to go away. Fat will fill out the least taut parts of you and that might be part of the problem. 11. Time and time again. If you are not 100 years old, and you have lost somewhere near 100 pounds, your skin is actively trying to contain your internal catastrophe. It is spending 24 hours a day calculating and responding, trying accommodate and contain you. If you have lost 100 pounds and you have had weight loss surgery, that is one hundred pounds that is never coming back and that means your outermost layer has to adjust to this new reality. Six months is all it takes to convince it that there is a reason to shrink. One yea\r is enough to tell it you are now less massive perpetually than you used to be. In a year you might see straight up miracles you never expected. Don't go cutting on all this biological genius prematurely. What if you save ten thousand dollars by just hanging back and waiting to see how your brilliant body responds to being half of itself? Think about this logically. You are an amoeba, pretty much. Your skin is the membrane that separates you from the environment. If you take away certain stressors over time; the membrane is going to behave intelligently and differently. Don't underestimate it. Work with it. And wait.

First of all: No argument whatsoever from me. Medifast is wretched. But it's not any worse in my opinion than under a thousand calories of cottage cheese, pot roast and Protein shakes plus Vitamins. The difference is I don't have to cook, shop, or really think about it. The drawback is more that I don't know if I can manage it at work. There all kinds of powdery substances you have to mix with Water and I'd have to pack a small laboratory I think just to get that whole thing going. As to the emotional part -- actually that's what I've been writing about all along. I spent a year on the lowcarb boards about seven years ago having a lot of these celebratory discussions about jeans that fit and " finally getting control" and how great it felt to be thin. No doubt: it does feel great to be thin. But where I started was as an emotional dieter and recovering anorexic who spent at least one part of every hour of my life thinking about the appearance of my body. What I believe about the emotional portion of being severely overweight -- especially if it's hormonally related -- is that there is a physical component to the obsession. In particular I remember this cycle: I would be ten pounds overweight. I would look in the mirror and see a bit of extra padding around my chin; I would see my arms were thicker, I would see this huge creature that looked like an ogre and I would begin to withdraw from the social world. I would stay home, stay in my room, and then later stay on the internet. Ten pounds would go to twenty and I would be exhausted and have insomnia at the same time. I would start to eat more because I was both comforting myself and thinking I better eat whatever I wanted now that I was about to embark on a "big diet." Then I would spend three months starving myself and waiting until I was down at least twenty pounds before I would allow myself to be seen or go outside. Know when that started? I was fifteen years old. Now....what I think at this point is there was also something hormonal happening there. I can remember having no energy whatsoever, turning inward, becoming detached from the rest of the world. My periods were always heavy, nightmarish affairs. And the other day -- *just* the other day at 48 I had a bout of that same feeling and realized maybe for the first time in my life that it was connected to ovulation. But there are other possibilities for other people. Women have cranky reproductive systems but there is more to them than estrogen and progesterone. Hormonally; there's more than the thyroid; there's the pituitary, the adrenals....and *every single one of these glandular functions* effects mood and appetite. So what happens to you after twenty years of managing this? You're utterly messed up physically and in the head. However, in my nonmedical opinion I'm going with the old school on the diet and exercise thing. I think if you have an imbalance the answer is not to respond with more imbalance, but stability. I know that doesn't jibe with the new school, which recommends drastic reduction in carbohydrate or calories. The problem is that most of us with severe weight problems can't *manage* to stay at a minor deficit over a long period of time. Because we're compromised. Let me put it this way - -before this surgery there would have been no way I could have stayed at 1500 calories for one year because it was too easy for me to go nuts and eat 4000. Now I can't do that. it's close to impossible to overeat with a vsg. That's all, that's really the benefit to me. Before I got the surgery I spent a couple years trying to do it the old way. Severe carb restriction. You start over on induction. Then I gave up and decided at age 44 or so that I would just be fat. I decided to just eat what I wanted and give up and get old and be a fat middle aged person who made cakes and stuff. But after a year or two of that, I changed my mind again. I wanted to ride a horse and get on an airplane. I wanted to look good. But i didn't want to get on the rollercoaster again and I didn't want to start thinking that my life would start when I got under 200 pounds. I had a lot of changes to face that I could not face and be meticulously obsessing over my calories and water intake and exercise every single day. But -- I also didn't want to be fat. So this was my strategy, my decision, my investment. I'm not angry, really, and the pain I felt over this was probably more when I was in high school or somesuch. The pain I really feel is the regret that I spent my life on this. Dieting and weight and body obsession have basically been my career. The real reason I got a vsg was because I was 46 years old and I wanted a different job.

. Hi Amanda. Let me tell you what I was thinking about doing. Actually two things: I was going to give this until April 1 and then do one of two things, but I think I picked the one I'm going to do. One is the dreaded "sleeve reboot" for five days which starts out on clear Proteins and and then graduates you up the levels at a much faster pace. I can see the reasoning behind this because first of all, it's a fast drop and second of all, it *should* tighten up restriction just a little but and also shake up your metabolism just like any fast would. Second -- and I think I'm going to do this -- Medifast for one month. When I was a month out I asked Dr. Aceves about this and at their office they said they highly recommended it because of all the "mushies" available. This brings cals down to under a thousand for a short period of time -- about the same time I was under a thousand when I was recovering from surgery. It's expensive but there is *no* hunger and one month will take off twenty pounds pretty fast. It's also *not* lowcarb. There are fifteen carbs per serving in each of their meals -- times five meals plus your "lean and green" meal thing -- basically chicken and veggies -- you're still at about 100 carbs and Protein intake is spared. I've been on Medifast before. One thing I noted about it is that the weight I lost stayed off for a reasonable period of time. I believe it's because that's because carbs aren't too low, or low enough to cause hyperinsulinemia when you go off of it. Also, if you're at 1500 and you go down to say 1000 or under for four weeks -- when you go back to your baseline calories you're still going to be in a deficit so there would be less of a "bounce", theoretically. I'd say do this maybe even for two weeks. Then off for two weeks, then, back on. Then you're alternating between low and high but still staying at a deficit. Ancient bodybuilder secret. That's what I'm thinking I'm going to do, anyway

Yep, Derek, strict lowcarbing is a fantastic dietary intervention and there are some real advantages to it if you're severely overweight. Mostly: if you are severely overweight and somebody put you on a thousand calories a day of pure carbohydrate you would not lose weight because you wouldn't be able to stand it for longer than a half an hour. Initially lowcarb shuts down a totally out of control insulin feedback loop so it can return to baseline -- and if you're severely overweight that -- or surgery -- or both -- are basically the only options we've got right now. However, you should be looking towards the future. You're going to keep melting but you're also going to have to slowly reintroduce carbohydrate as an energy source and I am not kidding when I say slowly. No one really knows the reason that people become severely overweight. When hear someone say that "carb sensitivity" is genetic this is not true. There is no such thing in infants and at some point somethingorother gets turned on that changes the gut and rewires our hormonal feedback system. It could be any number of things and one thing researchers are finding out is that this kind of tendency is especially likely to develop in adolescence when hormonal changes in both genders can trip the switches for rapid gain. They're also finding out that there are three basic "types" of complex genetic traits that make up metabolism -- these are called "enterotypes" -- our genetic chemistry interacting with the environment. Anyway you don't talk in circles at all. But keep in mind later that the carbs have to come back. *That's* the really tricky part.

I don't know. I look a lot better. People comment on it occasionally. But I'm in a weird place with my clothes. This pair of jeans I bought a long time ago as my "under 200" jeans in a size 12 button and zip but it's still a serious muffin top proposition. I have a ton of stuff in my closet I can't wear yet. I'm thinking about summer, three months away. In roughly a month it will be a year since my surgery. When I started this I wasn't really even that fixated on "getting to goal". it was just too far away. I mostly just wanted to relax about my weight instead of being miserable either "eating what I wanted" OR going on some diet where I watched the scale for changes every six hours. I knew when I started there was a *lot* of metabolic benefit in losing slowly over time but that there was no *way* I could go the "slow" route without surgical assistance. I only have two modes: strict dieting and being a crazed foodaholic. Something like Weight Watchers used to drive me crazy with the point counting and the box-checking but I saw the major benefit in being able to eat an extremely varied diet. The major benefit being: no crash. Ever, or ever again. But boy oh boy do I want to be a size eight. In this lifetime.

Capt Darel: I haven't really seen much of this type of an argument on the boards here although they're certainly all over the internet. About ten years ago, I was a low carb dieter. I said a lot of the things that I hear people saying on these boards: " I'm carb sensitive," etc -- and I note that bariatric surgeons tend to prescribe this diet to get the weight off. There's a simple reason for this: it works. However how it works is as a dietary intervention to a host of problems arising from overexcretion of insulin -- which can be caused by obesity itself as well as the overconsumption of fast sugar. It's basically a hormone imbalance. Obesity could also be summed up as a hormone imbalance given the endocrinological differences between overweight and thin people. However, inside of that discovery is another one -- which is the role of gut microflora and dysbiosis which is another, even closer indicator of metabolic health than any hormone level you could measure including insulin and leptin. Back to carbs being the problem: this is not true. Overconsumption of energy either as a route from genetic tendency or familial patterns or emotional or physical imbalances -- or merely by accident because of a lack of exercise and high nutrient density over time -- that's the problem. And the other problem is the hormonal imblance and imbalance in the gut that's been modulated by diet and behavior. You can solve the *very same problem* by underconsumption of calories over time. Why? Because the less fat you are carrying on your body, the less dysbiosis/insulin feedback imblance you'll have, and you basically get to the finish line with exactly the same type of success as a lowcarb dieter. With one difference, though -- the lowcarb dieter, when they are done doing lowcarb, is going to experience rebound hypreinsulinemia when they crash off of that lowcarb diet. Believe me, I have done this at least ten times. When people say that type of restriction has to be a lifetime thing, they're really not kidding. And that's the problem with strictly limiting carbs over the long term. Carbs aren't bad for you. Limiting your total caloric intake has the same effect as counting carbs for the same reason -- if you're only eating a thousand calories a day, how many carbs can you eat? Theoretically: 250. However if you factor in even minimal Protein and fat, you'd still be pretty low when it came to carbs -- about 100 or so. And additionally, the lower caloric contect *also* raises insulin sensitivity and lowers secretion. You can't prove anything very easily with epidemiology. If you want to prove it's healthier to eat carbs, study the Japanese. If you want to prove it's healthier not to, study the inuit. There's a common denominator though in both; they both, on average, eat a thousand calories less a day than we do.

. Good luck to you too, Circa. Glad you're here to offer your seasoned advice to the group.

. Hi CASleeve: I'm writing to you this morning from my job at an academic research facility at a university. The department I work in exclusively studies the effect of nutrition on health. I did watch this movie last night and realized it was a video presentation of T. Colin Campbell's research in The China Study. I don't want to make tremendous waves here but that study was flawed in several ways -- most obviously in that there is more to liver cancer than the ingestion on one single animal Protein. The argument against *milk* in a non-western population because it has appeared to produce a tendency to liver cancer is also flawed. But then if one also expands this to include *all animal protein* to say that animal protein= cancer -- this is simply illogical. What we're going to get to in about ten years is the idea that tendency to all disease including obesity is a complex genetic trait that is influenced most strongly by an entire microscopic kingdom inside the gut. Epidemiological studies show the effect of indiginous micoflora on indiginous genetics. meat does not cause cancer. I'd be more concerned about sugar. . Thanks for your congratulations! It *is* just around the corner!

. I'm sorry circa but you seemed to have missed my point. I know how to do a lowcarb diet, I was on one for eight months and lost 130 pounds. Then I gained it all back plus ten. Then I got weight loss surgery and lost 92 pounds without dieting. At all. I'm glad to know you've lost 42 pounds in the 27 days you've been sleeved and that you're sure of your program, but I've been at this eleven months plus my whole life and I'm not sure I need to get anything out of my head except a response to lifelong dietary restriction. Living the way I do right now; at 13-1700 calories a day and a reasonable number of carbohydrates a day -- that is, over 100 -- I know that through caloric restriction alone I should end up at goal within the next year without dieting at all. What I am saying is that I think at 1700 calories a day -- a *true* 1700 - if your metabolism is running right -- over time you really don't have to pick the jeans over everything because they already fit you. What I'm saying is that I'm impatient and I know I could get it off faster than this. But I also know the *real* tradeoff, which is *lifetime* restriction -- a *lifetime* of picking the jeans when really the sleeve should be doing that for us. And carbs are not crap. Extruded corn products are crap, but low glycemic carbohydrates make insulin which is how your body makes muscle. If you are not making insulin you are not making fat but you're not making muscle either. Also low carbohydrate diets suppress dopamine and seratonin and over time this can wear you out emotionally not to mention hormonally. I've forgotten more about this than most people will ever learn. This has been my career, I know what I'm saying.

On March 1, it will be eleven months since my surgery. I've lost 92 pounds and I'm happy about it, but I'm forty pounds off of my goal weight of 155. I have not, since my surgery, ever succumbed to a real diet. I did not count carbs or calories except for getting a general number of calories I was staying under, just to make sure i wasn't really going crazy. The reasons for this are pretty complex -- mostly as a lifelong, seriously obsessive compulsive dieter I decided I really could not manage another diet emotionally. I know this sounds odd to some of you, who've been enthusiastically tracking your calories and carbs and weight loss and staying meticulously under a thousand calories per day, but for me that was just not possible and I will tell you why: 1. I have been able to stay under 900 calories a day for months and lose all kinds of fat only to gain it back. I was on a major roller coaster ride with my weight for most of my adult life and I saw this as an opportunity to lose weight *slowly* and non-obsessively without freaking out because I knew that the smaller calorie deficit over time would make the scale go down, not up, over time. That was a big luxury for me because before if I was not *dieting* I was gaining weight. Up and down. Up and down. The frustration and misery in all that is just indescribeable and it's also really bad for your metabolism. Mine was shredded. 2. Whatever I lost, I planned to never gain back. That meant learning to eat like a normal person. I don't think living on dollops of cottage cheese and Protein shakes comprise eating like a normal person. Eating like a normal person means eating everything and whatever you want in moderation, allowing your body and appetite to dictate your food intake and letting that entire feedback loop settle into a stable pattern over time. That's how you get to a stable weight comfortably. I knew that, or learned it, over the past twenty years of undereating severely, getting down to some satisfactory weight for fifteen seconds and then watching myself pack those pounds back on over time because the feedback loop never reached a stable place. I'm convinced this pattern is bad for everything. It's bad for your hormones, your sleep, your energy, your nutrition but most *especially* your mental health. I'm convinced that severely overweight people start off with a tiny problem that turns into a massively vicious circle as the rounds of dieting lead to bad health and low mood; lack of exercise leads to even worse lack of exercise due to partially physical and partially emotional factors; exhaustion and low self-esteem lead to addictive eating ( and drinking ) patterns and it's eventually almost unbeatable. 3. I don't want to live by the scale. I know I am overweight and do not want to be, but I have a tendency to overwatch, when I am watching. Dieting and weight loss for compulsive people adds up to a lifetime of terror of gaining weight back because of this cookie or that glass of wine. We become these horrendously abusive scientists who will start to experiment with all kinds of odd protocols and weigh and measure ourselves fanatically, hiding in the practice of weight loss instead of taking an overall view of what we're really doing. I knew I would do that if I started a diet; I knew I would probably get to goal in some amazing amount of time and be sitting here, right now possibly, worrying about whether that last cracker I ate was going to burst the golden bubble of my life at 155. 4. I don't care what the bariatricians say, I believe that if you go too low in your calories you set yourself up for a lifelong struggle. I've done this so many times and I don't believe it's possible to live on 900 calories a day, especially not for years; and if it was what you would get would be a body that learned that its stable metabolism was meant to stay at 900 calories a day, meaning basically you could never eat a single calorie more without rebounding. I've watched myself do it so many times. So I never, except for the first month maybe, was under a thousand calories the entire time since my surgery and most of the time I've been between 1300-1500 *or more*. As I've been paying attention, I know my metabolism might be a little slow BUT it seems to track pretty well with any online calorie calculator. 1700 calories a day is *still* a deficit. It's a slow one, but it's still there. But eating a thousand calories, walking an hour a day and weight training five times a week just to stay at a certain pants size? I could not, could not, ever live that way again. However. I still do have 40 pounds to go. I could go low carb and get under a thousand for a month or two and be done. The problem is adjusting to the monstrous deficit, managing my life in the meantime, and then the scary obsession afterwards as I watch the ten pound to twenty pound spike when I go back to eating my normal 15-1700 calories per day. I'm tempted and I'm tired of waiting. When I got the surgery last April I was 46 years old -- when it's all finished at the rate I'm going I'll be almost 48. I'm under 200, have 40 pounds to go and I'm tempted. For some reason I feel like I have to decide what to do now. I wake up every morning, look at my much thinner self and think...should I start a diet ? I could be a size six by summertime....

There can be weeks that I go without really thinking about food -- I kind of watch my calories and stay under 1500 without trying for the most part -- mostly I'm around 1300 on average. But then I'll have a day, or a couple of days where I am just starving. I'll suddenly jump 500 calories and my belly will feel completely empty. I'll feel very sharp hunger pangs, a little dizzy -- the low blood sugar feeling; hunger adrenaline. I'll eat something and it will come back pretty fast, within a couple hours. I've been trying to figure out what's happening when this happens. Is my body trying to stay at its set point? Is it hormones or what? Are you having hungry days and are you employing any tricks to combat them? Or do you just eat more on those days and not worry about it?

Thin One Day -- I know exactly about playing that game. I'll tell you how this started -- whole the whole thing started; actually how being insecure about my body turned into a heeeeeeuuuuggge emotional problem and it started out just like that. In about 2001, I was in a bad marriage and a crappy place in my life. I got up to about 278 and when I look back on it now I know the reason was that I was just a housewife with a little kid who didn't get enough exercise and then, you know, got depressed. Not an uncommon story. But I kept going on lowcarb and blowing it, and one day I gave up on that and just let myself get fat. There was something tied up with 911 in all this, in my little boy getting older...etc. Anyway, so then I decided I was going to get back on lowcarb and get really *serious* about it -- weighing about 280 -- and I lost it ALL and got down to 158. And in the course of that ended up getting a divorce from the husband, becoming a single mom and getting involved in a long distance relationship with someone who had never seen me fat. Now he was a really shallow person and also naturally very thin; and as time went on he began to get really pissed off at me because I "ate meat" and ingested caffeine. He told me my diet was terrible and I was killing myself with animal fat and all this, and because it was a long distance relationship this is what I started to do: I would see him for a week. I would diet like hell to stay under a certain weight ( though it was creeping up and the rest of my life when I wasn't on these stupid sex vacations with the guy my life was completely miserable) until the extended date with him was over and then I would just *fall apart* dietetically. I did things I had *never* done before, like go to the drugstore and stock up on like Swedish Fish and Licorice allsorts and chocolate cake, and kill bottles of white wine by myself because I had deprived myself for several months to be worthy of this person's affection. Then it would start over. I would have gained twenty pounds. He would want to see me again. I would calculate how much time it was going to take me to get back to Attractive and then..you know...one day I just got tired of that. I started not wanting to see him but also thinking I wasn't going to live like that anymore no matter what. I was working two jobs, my mother was dying and I had a teenager. So then there was this period where the long distance guy decided he really wanted to "help me" with my weight. So he would take me on these diet and fitness retreats and lecture me about eating salt and all this stuff. He would put me in these cooking classes to learn how to make milk out of almonds. The guy was just naturally thin and one inch shorter than me. Anyway, so then right after my mother died, he came to see me. I weighed 265. The entire time she was actually dying I was trying to eat lowcarb and it wasn't working at all because you know your sleep and stress schedule is outrageous when someone you love is dying of cancer. Well actually by the time he came I weighed 245 because I while I was burying my mother I was actually *on an even more stringent diet* because I knew he would show up eventually to "comfort" me. I sprung for Medifast. When he came he bitched instantly that I was eating "frankenfood" and the first night he was there when we were lying together in bed he said to me; " It's your job as my so to stay attractive for me. And you're failing." Lol. . Annnnnyyyyyyway.....THAT's how I got tired of dieting. And you know, the day our divorce was final -- the *very day* -- I was in Mexicali Mexico getting my stomach cut out. And I thought, that's enough already. I am done hurting myself over this. I got my stomach cut out, and that's enough pain now. But I still do it to myself. Try not to but I do. And here's something even weirder: This week, a couple days ago, I got down to 195.8. And I think I actually freaked out and started to *try* to slow it down. I bought a bottle of wine and killed it one night. I ate a whole bag of microwave popcorn. My calories jumped from about 1200 to 1700 a couple of those days. And the whole time I was doing that, I was thinking...okay just today, and then I'll get back on the train tomorrow. Just today with the popcorn, but then I gotta get serious, I'm 40 pounds overweight! 40 pounds, how long is that going to take, it'll be forever....etc... There is a freakin ghost in my head, man. I am serious.