summerset

Damn, now I want banana ice cream! ? (but it's 22:06 here, time for bed and no frozen bananas in the house)

In Germany we have a proverb that fits this situation perfectly: "Ist der Ruf erst ruiniert, lebt es sich ganz ungeniert." ? "Once your reputation's gone, you can boldly carry on."

And this is exactly why I abhor the "advice" that does boil down to "TRY HARDER!!!!!1".

You're indeed not that far out but it doesn't matter anyway, people will continue being mad at you (or continue laughing at you) at 15 + years out as long as you're not preaching to the choir, lol.

Haha, this. In the end it's so sad that you can only look at it with a grim sense of humor.

It's more the nitrates and antibiotics and whatever else there might be in some questionable processed meat or dairy products I worry about.

Highly processed cheeses and meats like e. g. luncheon meats, many cold cuts, sausages etc.

Not only when it comes to carbohydrates. Think about the highly processed other products people seem to consume without even thinking about it. As long as these foods don't contain carbohydrates but protein everything seems to be fine.

I have to think about a post now in which a member compared a banana to a Mars bar. IIRC it was something like "could as well eat a Mars bar".

Don't even try. Usually people start to whine about how hard their life is the second you mention skinny priviledge to prove that it doesn't exist (which is only proof that they don't understand what skinny privilege is about).

.For some it seems to be an outrageous and impossible thing to do after WLS to eat fruit or ditching dairy or not doing the "protein first" thing, so I still think of Dr. Weiner's approach as "unusual advice" compared to the usual programs that most patients here seem to be on.

Rhetorical question only. We both know the answer. His approach is unusual in the WLS continuum. And this is exactly why I still view his approach as "unusual". When I say "unusual" it's in comparison to what usually seems to be recommended to WLS patients. Come on, how many patients seem to get the advice to eat four portions of fruit a day, to stock up on the pulses and to limit dairy to a bare minimum?

Nothing unusual? How many people on this board alone are chanting the mantra "lean protein first"? He also recommends e. g. eating at least four servings of fruit a day, dig into lentils and beans and to drastically limit dairy and to limit animal protein in general. That's quite different from the standard WLS diet that seems to be recommended.

How much would you have to lose to get to your goal weight (whose goal weight exactly)? I'm asking because results regarding weight loss seem to be quite mixed when it comes to revisions.

Interestingly enough this seems to be a common fear. It makes me sad and also a bit angry at the same time.

Oops, someone said Jehovah carbs.

That's why I always cringe when people call a diet high in animal protein "healthy".

I never drove a car. Never. Ever in my life. Not for 18 years. And then there was the day when I drove a car for the first time. I never stented a carotid artery. Never. Ever in my life. Not for 41 years. And then there was the day when I did it for the first time. So the answer to your question is: If you never learnt good food habits in the fist place - learn to have them now! This is not about magic! This is about learning new skills by practicing them! Practicing them over and over and over and OVER again, until they feel like second nature to your brain. Honestly? Some people have to learn the hard way that this particular way didn't work for them. You can provide help/guidance along the way but in the end people choose their own way and that is not always the way that works out fine. Some people need a second chance because they messed up first. If these people are honest with themselves they should realize that they made mistakes along the way and now they have a chance to do it in another way. If they choose to make the same mistakes... well, not everyone will be successful. In the end it's just as simple as that. What rubs me the wrong way is that so many people seem to come back with a regain after they were quite successful and are on their way to make the same mistakes again, fueled by the "advice" to "go back to basics" and to "try harder". And because they were so successfully losing once they try to do the same thing they did back then - not realizing that they're making the same mistakes by going back to these same old strategies that didn't work in the first place for them. You're gung-ho about it, you eat low carb/lowfat/keto/lowcalorie/whateverrocksyourboat, you go to the gym five times a week, you follow all these fancy rules, you do this, you do that and more and then... something happens, whatever that something might be for this person and BOOM - things go down the drain. And what are you going to do then? Trying again to live a lifestyle that's obviously not going to make you happy? Or are you taking a leap of faith and try something different?

It's still awfully slow.

Still doesn't work for me. (Sorry Fluff, you have to wait for an answer, lol)

Yeah, doesn't work so far.

Not sure what more information I'm able to provide. In the end it's just some thoughts and opinions based on personal experience. As for changes I believe that when hard times are coming your way you need your energy for something different than the food/exercise/self-control world. And there seems to be a lot of proof that this is true. Just look at the posts on this board in which people talk about regain and when the regain started to happen. There usually seems to be a stressful event that started the "old habits" again. I also believe that a lot boils down to trust issues in the end. Do you trust yourself with food now? Do you think that you can e. g. ever eat something "bad" at a party or bring "bad" food home and eat it without blowing the whole WLS thing because you're afraid that you will want MORE tomorrow, next week, next month? Do you trust yourself enough that you will take up exercising again after you paused for a week or two because you had a cold? Do you think that without an arbitrary set of strict rules somebody else set for you, you will gain back all the weight and more within the blink of an eye? It might raise your heart rate significantly if you only think about that someone actually suggested that you should "trust yourself" when it comes to issues that have something to do with your body after the whole world told you for decades that you "cannot be trusted". It will definitely throw you out of your comfort zone to trust yourself with body/food issues. Learning to have a certain level of trust in yourself takes work and a big step out of the comfort zone. It's like beginning a new job and acquiring the new skills needed to do that job properly. However, I firmly hold the opinion that it's worth the hassle.

I personally think that you need to put some work into the whole thing before you can relax, e. g. you might have to work on a certain point of view first to make maintenance easier in the long run (or more "effortless" so to say). I'm struggling a bit to find an example regarding this as these things are highly individual but I have to think about a conversation I had today: It's cold and rainy at the moment. I still go to work by bike, so does a colleague of mine. All the nice weather cyclists in our department stopped going by bike. They say "Oh, it's so cold and rainy - we rather go by car or bus or tram." We say: "Oh, we don't want to be crammed into a tram or bus with lots of people in wet coats and wet umbrellas and we don't want to endure the stop-and-go traffic sitting in the car and hunting for a parking lot. Going by bike is the fastest way to get from home to work at rush hour." The problem here is: you really seem to have to believe the things you think about something so telling yourself that plain green salad with cucumber infused water is the yummiest thing in the world and tracking every morsel of food for the rest of your life on MFP is the leisure time activity to do might not work.

Not really sure what to write here. Thing is there is quite a lot of talk about complications from time to time, quite a few people converted from band to bypass, either because of regain or reflux or migration or all these things. Same with the sleeve. Lots of reflux talk from time to time. Everything seems to come in waves somehow. The board is quite litte, not a lot of people writing. The high times of German WLS boards seem to be gone with the wind since a whole while. However, on the German board I sometimes read the dynamic is about the same as here. A lot of judgment about regain, usually coming from successfully losing people a few months out. A lot of fear about regain, the usual struggles with the little gains and the talk about food and exercise and how to "stay motivated in harder times". The everlasting little fights between the "clean eaters" and the "more relaxed eaters". The exercise freaks and the couch potatoes. How to cope with hunger? How to cope with appetite or emotional eating?

Thing is, quite a few people change gears after a couple of years. If they happen to hang around for a time span of several years (I'm talking 5 or more years, even more than 10 years) you can notice how people might change their point of view on several things. Even if they were gone in between for a year or two, some hang around for quite a long time but they're very, very rare. Some gained, some gained significant, some had revisions out of various reasons, some maintained, some struggle with a change of eating disorder... Typical life changers seem to be new partners, having kids, transitioning from university to working, changing over from the working force into retirement. These "big things", you know.