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

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"?

Exactly. Well said.

Ughhhh drives me crazy how stupid and ignorant people can be!

Some people need leg braces to help them walk or a pace maker to keep their heart going and nobody would get high & mighty on them about the things they need to survive or get around or live a normal life so why get high & mighty on us who need to have this surgery to keep us alive, healthy and eating right? That's my response to people when they're questioning my sanity when I've told them about my surgery and they assume it was purely elective or like I was taking the easy way out.

Here is an interesting thought: Humans are programmed by evolution to eat whenever and whatever nutrients are available. However, over the past century we no longer have to walk everywhere or expend energy hunting and preparing our food. Food is readily available and there is no reason to have to wait until we make our next kill to eat. What has happened is that human development has outpaced evolution. Also, there are currently studies being done that is showing modern food to actually cause addictions (sugars and preservatives). When feeding overweight vs. normal people small amounts of a milkshake while in an MRI, the overweight people had their addiction centers light up like a christmas tree. Did your mom ever have an addiction to anything? For example, if she was a smoker tell her to imagine that she could never just QUIT cigarettes. She needs a little bit every day to survive but she can't have too much. Our addictions to food are horrible to kick because we need a little bit every day, we can't just quit food and never go back.

Follow it up with... "and then what"?

and when they ask... "what do you mean"?

Say... "so I lose all my excess weight. How do I keep it off"?

The simple fact is anyone who is not heavy enough to need WLS will never know what it's like to be one of "us". I'm always going to be a Super Obese person on the inside, because I "get it". They never will.

Or you can simply just not respond at all and tell them they just don't understand.

I know I'm a bit late to this party but one of the first things my surgeon said to me is that obviously I can tell you to eat a tiny meal three times a day and if you did that you will lose weight but then eventually you are going to get hungry and gain the weight back. What surgery is about is to make me comfortable in that when I now eat those small meals, I will not have the desire nor the ability to eat anything more and I will not feel deprived

Well as my other sleevers have already mentioned - yes it's the dumbest thing a person can even think. The option to have this amazing surgery is a strong useful tool. True, it does help us detour from over eating but it also does one thing better. It teaches us to be more aware on how we eat, how we see food and why we need to learn what portion control really means. Having anyone tell you to stop doing wrong - put down that fork or better starve yourself is no better than you doing it on your own. Taking charge of your life is the most important thing you can do for yourself.

I had this conversation with my husband. He asked out of fear of loss of my life from surgery. Then I asked him to remember any meal we had togeather, if I ate a lot? He feels I ate like a bird before surgery ( he is a man that can eat what ever he wants and still has the 32 inch waist from high school ) . I told him that I was always hungry. I was always trying to keep the weight off and I thought of food as one should think of God. No one should be tortured like that. VSG takes away the desire to fill up. It's such a pleasure to wake up in the morning and not want to hunt and kill the refridgerator.