Not Sure What To Expect, Not Sure If Goals Are Attainable, Kinda Freaking Out.

[Renagade 4]

Next week I have my nutritionist and psych eval. So I assume I will be able to have surgery sometime either late Dec. or early Jan. This really isn’t what has been bugging me, so bear with me.

I have been overweight probably the last 20 years of my life. Through all the obvious hardships, and ridicule, I have maintained the "I don’t care what people think attitude". During vacations, I have tried to act as if I wasn’t hurt by the fact there were many things I could not do because of my weight.

About a year and a half ago, I attempted a very radical self diet/exercise program. I would eat less than 1300 calories and work out very rigorously to near 600-800 calories burned. I lost 105 lbs in 7 months before hitting a big stall. I was CONSTANTLY and painfully hungry all the time. I had light headedness, and at times felt very weak. About this time my life and career took a turn for the worse, I got slightly depressed with all the failures. Since then I have gained all the weight back + 15 pounds for my troubles.

This is when I decided I needed more help. If you go by BMI, I should weigh 179 lbs. I am quite skeptical of this number, mainly because I cannot even imagine myself at that weight, let alone close to it. But during all of my research and whatnot, I have come across this little calculator that once I input all of my stats into, claims that I will only lose 65% of my excess body weight. Well, doing the math... that only puts me 5 pounds lower than when I tried the "old fashioned way". I would consider this a monumental failure, and it is quite discouraging to hear. In all reality, I think I would be most happy around 200-210. The exercise portion of the "new lifestyle" doesn’t really faze me, and the diet... well, I'd lie if I said I wasn’t a bit concerned. But I assume I will adapt and learn to live with it.

I guess during all my rambling, I am mainly concerned on whether or not losing near 200 pounds is even possible for me, and if I am making the right choice. I'm just really getting desperate to escape a body that I feel isn’t mine, and I don’t to live like this anymore.

[Lissa 2,631]

Renegade, I'm assuming you're a guy from your profile picture, please forgive me if I'm wrong. I think 200 pounds is eminently doable for you. You lost 105 pounds without surgery, following diet and exercise alone. What WLS will do is give you a tool to help you prevent regain. It's not a magic bullet. You will have to do the diet and exercise portion, but staying at your new lower weight will be so much easier because you will have restriction on how much you can eat. Sadly for us ladies, you'll probably lose your weight much faster than any of us simply because you're male!

Most of us here are going to say that you are making the right choice. I know I made the right choice for me. Above my picture to the left it says "Life Saved By VSG" and that is the truth! I've lost 123 pounds from my highest weight and now feel like I have a new lease on life. It's possible and it's doable, as long as you use the tool to your own advantage.

Good luck on your journey!!

[altagirl 127]

One thing I can say is taht I have had no hunger at all since I have had the sleeve.

Will you give a link to the calculator you found. I am curious what it says for me.

I am glad i have the sleeve. I still have problems eating when I am bored or stressed but with the sleeve I can't eat too much - I was sleeved 9/10 and have lost 24 lbs so far.

Good luck

[Delena2/11 59]

Hello Renagade,

I also have a lot to lose. I also feel trapped in my own body and am missing a lot of things that I would wish to be doing in/with my life. I am going to have surgery about the same time as you (I hope). So, If you want a sleeve buddy I am available. Feel free to add me as a friend.

I try not to get stuck on the numbers right now. I feel like it would be better for you to set smaller goals. 200 lbs is a good chunk of change. I have met people on this site that have lost 125 lbs or so in 6 months! We can do this Renagade! We will do this because there is too much we are missing now.

From all of my reading I have learned that the medical professionals want us to lose the majority of our wt in about 18mths. Totally doable and you will likely lose a lot faster than I will. I'll try not to hold that against you;). In any case, what choice do you have? You can continue on the path you are on or you can try! Put everything you have into this and invest in yourself. You are so worth it. So am I and so are the many, many other friends I have met on this site. We are here for you too so hitch up your britches and live up to your name. You got this man! Dee

[Ms skinniness 3,003]

Hey this something that is a miracle in a sense. This gives u a tool to help u rid ur self of the weight. It is just a tool. The rest of the journey is ur responsibility to eat healthy and exercise. This is a period to work on changing your thoughts about food. You can do this.

[tinydancer 19]

hello renegade, just want you to know that you can totally do it! how awesome that you lost 115 lbs. before on your own. i m feeling better after losing only 37 lbs. it is not always easy, and i still get hungrier than most other people say they do. My confidence to keep trying is that i KNOW i wont regain my weight again and again like i have done ALL of my life. You still have so much life to live and it is going to pass by whether you are losing or not, so man just go for it.

[Renagade 4]

One thing I can say is taht I have had no hunger at all since I have had the sleeve.

Will you give a link to the calculator you found. I am curious what it says for me.

I am glad i have the sleeve. I still have problems eating when I am bored or stressed but with the sleeve I can't eat too much - I was sleeved 9/10 and have lost 24 lbs so far.

Good luck

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/post+op+planner.php

[CCCross 31]

http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/post+op+planner.php

Omg...that should not be allowed. Showing averages and what you should hope to lose each month is setting people up for failure. I'm 4ft 8in and I started at 260 the day of surgery. I'm almost 4 weeks post op and according to the chart should have lost 32. Well I've lost a whopping 13...do I wish it was more? Yes but I'm a part of the slow losers club so far. I will get there but it may take longer. Please kick this chart out of your head at least for comparison purposes.

[Ailly 32]

I know it's difficult to do, but try not to focus on the numbers. This surgery, this journey is about being healthy and living a healthy life style. Don't base your success on the number on the scale or bmi. Judge your success on how you feel. Set your goals based on what your comfortable with, not what some calculator or website tells you. Best of luck to you!

[RickM 1,753]

The onlne charts and calculators are a gross (very gross...) approximation at best. The 65% suggestion that they supply probably comes from their overall OH community, which given the relative popularity of the different procedures, will include a lot of band patients who averag 40-50%EWL, which brings down the average quite a bit. The other mainstream procedures - RNY, VSG and DS have averages in the 75-90% range; 80% is a good planning number for the VSG, and 100% is quite do-able even with 200lb to lose.

Another point to consider is the basis for establishing one's goal weight - BMI, while having good validity for population studies, is a poor indicator of an individual's health. One can be a normal BMI (20-25, though most docs use 24 or 25 as their basis for their EWL figures) and still be overly fat if one's lean muscle mass is too low, and conversly, one can be very lean, fit and healthy and be "overweight" on the BMI chart. I set my goal to be in the mid teens on body fat %, which is on the lean side of normal for men, but that leaves me at just under an overweight 27 BMI - a normal BMI for me would be excessively skinny and I would have to lose too much lean muscle mass to attain that number. Not good. So, don't worry too much about the numbers at this point, but rest assured that you can attain a healthy weight with the VSG.

Goal setting the way I did it does involve a bit of a moving target as we do tend to lose some muscle mass as we lose weight (we don't have all that fat to heft around anymore,) and no matter how much strength training we may do as we go through our weightloss, some musclulature is going to get lost as things redistribute. My original scale weight goal was 200lb based upon the gross assumption of losing only fat was readjusted down to 190 as my overall weight went down and my body comp shifted some. I've been maintaining 185-190 since January.

Hunger post-op is something of a variable - some will experience little or no hunger while others will still have hunger. Our body's feedback systems for telling us that we are hungry get disturbed by the surgery (beyond the loss of the grehlin hormone production from the sleeve) so some may experience some phantom or head hunger for a while - I would sometimes get hungry shortly after a filling meal (and it doesn't take much to get filled up) but I knew that I wasn't really hungry. But that passes (if it happens at all to you,) and now my hunger is pretty much normal - I get hungry at meal time, if I am distracted and busy at that time, it will pass even if I skip the meal (which then means that I need to catch up to meet my nutrition and calorie goals for the day.) It is not unusual for me to have a snack or something without being particularly hungry for it, but I need to do six meal/snacks a day to get what I need (though I could easily get the 2000 calories per day that I need in three meals if I have mostly junk!) I maintain a healthy, balanced diet that fuels a fairly active lifestyle (swimming, hiking, chasing the puppy, racing cars, etc.) with minimal supplementation and no particular symptoms of deprivation (the weakness and light-headedness that you mention) nor did I experience any of that during the loss phase (at least after the initial couple weeks of surgical recovery.

As to whether the VSG is the right choice, that is a personal decision and is dependant upon many factors. If you have regain concerns from your past history (who here doesn't?) the VSG by all accounts is similar in that regard to the RNY; the duodenal switch is the only one of the mainstream procedures that offers demonstrably better regain resistance over the other WLS. Whether that is worth the added supplemention discipline is a personal matter, but it is something that is worth having on the radar. My wife is 7+ years out on a DS, lost 200lb to normal weight and has maintained that so far, despite many of the classic emotional/psych issues that often accompany morbid obesity.

We all have doubts going into this, but the vast majority of us ultimately find it to be a worthwhile journey with the positives far outweighing (so to speak,) the negatives.

[Renagade 4]

Wow... thank you so much RickM for technical side of all of this. Actually really puts my mind at ease. Thank you again