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....

I think a diet is going to put you in a bad place and it sounds like you already know that. Maybe just adding in an extra walk or something will help you pick up some speed on the loss. Although I do think there is a huge focus on "goal" and that isn't always a good thing maybe? Maybe your bod likes where it is for now and just needs some time to be convinced of changing more.

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.

Crosswind... I can TOTALLY relate to this statement. I turned 40 last year and decided I was done torturing myself with dieting. It has been a lifelong career like you said. That is exactly why I got weight loss surgery.

You have done so well and I really appreciate your balanced approach. I can totally understand wanting to do a last ditch effort to get to the end. I might contemplate something similar. I would think that you could do that and go right back to the way you have been eating all year. Just be careful that it doesn't start the "cycle" again. Only you can know if it will.