I have been thinking of how to answer this question and cannot come up with an adequate response. People (i.e. my Mom) say "Just eat LIKE people who have had the surgery and you'll lose the same amount of weight". OR "If you can do the preop diet and lose weight, just keep that up".

How can I put in to words what I want to say? I cannot keep the preop diet up forever OR "pretend" like I had the surgery. I know I don't need to defend my choices and I am 100% sure in my decision, but if someone else has a good answer to this question I would LOVE to hear it.

Anne

Ask them if they can hold their breath for 30 seconds. Then when they say yes, ask if they can hold their breath for 50 years. Starvation has always been considered torture but people really believe that a lifetime of starving ourselves while feeing hungry should be a-OK and is just a matter of will power. Ain't gonna happen. Our biology works against it at every level. Only by altering our biology can the majority of us change the game. At least that's my current opinion.

I have been thinking of how to answer this question and cannot come up with an adequate response. People (i.e. my Mom) say "Just eat LIKE people who have had the surgery and you'll lose the same amount of weight". OR "If you can do the preop diet and lose weight, just keep that up".

How can I put in to words what I want to say? I cannot keep the preop diet up forever OR "pretend" like I had the surgery. I know I don't need to defend my choices and I am 100% sure in my decision, but if someone else has a good answer to this question I would LOVE to hear it.

Anne

Thank you Terry! We have the same surgery date. Best of luck

These well meaning people obviously don't have an obesity issue that we have. One of the best things about the surgery is that not only do you lose weight but it helps you keep it off. While some do gain back weight, I don't believe it would be as much as if they didn't have the sleeve. I know I have done liquid diets in the past that were similiar to the preop diet. I lost weight but it came back with a vengence. This time after the liquid diet, there was the sleeve surgery to keep me going. I have also had people think that I did not need the surgery to lose, but I think I know myself better than they know me. Glad I had the surgery.Good luck w/ your upcoming surgery.

Sorry, I tried this and failed REPEATEDLY, without something to PHYSICALLY restrict me I could NOT lose and maintain the loss. I do not have the will power and food is too cheap and easy to get. It is MY fault that I was fat, but there was just not enough willpower for me to overcome it.

On reflection of this question I also had the thought the YES, that SHOULD be the answer for nearly EVERYTHING - but it's NOT. Some examples I thought of:

• AIDS should be GONE by now if people would restrain themselves and NOT have unprotected sex. They can't control themselves and the infection spreads.
• SMOKING should not an issue, after all people should just THINK that they are NOT addicted and stop smoking.
• Same as DRINKING, just ACT sober!

We humans are a miserable lot, we just over do EVERYTHING and have the pay the price, in the case of over easting it's obesity with health issues and a limited life. I'd rather have the REAL surgery and KNOW it works.

Asking me to pretend to have surgery would have been just as successful for me as abstinence as a form of birth control. I could be successful for short stints, but not the rest of my life.

(that, of course, applied when I was young and had to worry about birth control - happily that worry is LONG past).

You know, it's funny... since I had the surgery I notice how many people are on diets, starting diets, talking about their next diet etc.. and now I think to myself.. Good GAWD.. why bother?!! You are just going to gain the weight back, if you lose it at all, and be right back to a NEW diet. Blech! I am not being negative.. it's a FACT! Good riddance to waking up one more day on a damn diet! If we all could lose weight just be eating like a skinny version of ourselves we wouldn't want surgery. No one wants it to come to this. You owe nothing to anyone and everything to yourself

I got asked this a lot because I did lose well before surgery. I always said that the surgery is my insurance that I'll never get fat again.

I've lost over 120 lbs. before and found myself now with all but 15 regained. I hate being fat and I will do anything to give myself the best chance to lose it and keep it off for good!

I had to tell someone that I wouldn't be having surgery if I could do it on my own. I wouldn't risk going under anesthesia for the first time and I wouldn't ask someone to remove the majority of my stomach if I was capable of doing it on my own.

The best thing that I have learned is to not care one way or the other what people think about it. I am doing it for my health and so I can live to see my kid grow up. If other people don't like it, they are entitled to their opinion, but it doesn't really matter to me.

You have gotten great responses.

What I have said to that (during my Weight Watchers failures) is "think of all the people you know and name 1 or 2 that have been overweight since childhood, lost over 75 pounds AND KEPT IT OFF FOR YEARS"

They couldn't come up with 1.

Exactly.. not ONE! Hugs to you!

I've said the same things to myself many times - exactly what your Mom has said to you. What I do know, from being thin until 6-7 years ago, is that appetite varies tremendously from person to person. I'm sure that I used to be as hungry as a "normal" person due to watching what I ate like most other people do and food not being a big deal, but now taking medications has affected me so much that I cannot seem to get full - no matter what I eat or how often. Before gaining 90lbs., I would have asked the same questions of those thinking about surgery too and never would have been capable of understanding the decision for a seemingly drastic measure. If I could be again who I was, the sleeve would never have been considered. BUT, I cannot behave like a "normal" eater even for ONE day now. The bottomline is that we are all different - our challenges are ours and so are the solutions - No one can live our lives for us and, thankfully for them, they won't really understand what it is like for us either.

Thank you for the post! Reading it and the responses here validate why I can't just "pretend." Wish pretending was the answer though.

I've lost over 120 lbs. before and found myself now with all but 15 regained. I hate being fat and I will do anything to give myself the best chance to lose it and keep it off for good!

Same here. Over the years I've lost and regained hundreds of pounds. I'm tired. I know one of my major issues is portion size, combined with feeling discouraged from time to time. I need something to catch me when I fall. I wish this surgery was an option for me 10 years ago.

It comes down to two things, restriction and will power. We have all been there, we lost the weight and gained it back on numerous diets. We like to think of ourselves as discipline people, we are not when it comes to food or we would not be in this position. The people that make the comments about just lose the weight on your own, they usually do not or have never had a weight issue. To me, the main key to the surgery is the restriction, even if I wanted to eat large portions, I could not. If you overeat once, you get that horrible feeling that you never want to do it again. That is what will keep me from ever gaining the extra weight again. I think what most people forget is the sleeve is a tool, it will do it's job but we still have to eat better and exercise to get the full effect and enjoy all of the benefits. I hate it when people say we took the easy way out, those people do not see me at the gym every day at 5:00am when they are sleeping.

LOL, that's gotta be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. How about, "Just pretend you had a quadruple bypass and you'll snap right out of that heart failure"?