This question has been rolling around in my head for months. I've mentioned it once, but the thread was more interested in flaming IggyChic than having a real discussion. So here goes:

Do the veterans on here think that the sleeve is a good way to prevent obesity? Let's take away the danger part of it, let's say if it was 100% safe. (Just go with that idea for this question; we all know that no surgery can ever be 100% safe.)

From what I've been reading, I'd say it is NOT a good way to prevent obesity. It seems like the only thing that the sleeve is good for is relearning how and what to eat, and it does a great job of that. But if someone hasn't conquered their issues during the 'restriction stage' then how can this surgery help them in the long run?

I love my sleeve. I am in a 7 week stall and pre-sleeve I would have given up by now and regained the weight. I am so pleased with 4oz and I'm full! I am comforted in knowing that when this stall breaks, the weight will drop off. With that thought, I'm not saying 'screw it, i may as well pig out.' And at 5 months out, I can pig out. I was one of those people who would only eat once a day. Now I can't do that because I get that empty feeling. The sleeve has taught me HOW to eat. So for me, if I weren't conquering my food demons, I think this sleeve would be pretty worthless. I could easily graze on fattening & sugary foods all day and gain weight.

I am not bringing this up to judge people, or to start ANY arguments. In fact, if anyone flames me or this topic, I would ask that the thread gets shut down. I just want honest answers from veterans, and I hope that this is a safe environment to discuss this topic.

Thank you,

Judy

As a preventative measure I don't think so. More education on nutritional values is needed at earlier ages. Fast food and restaurants need to cut the sugars, fats, and salts in food along with appropriate portion control. This would be more of an ideal world.

This probably makes no sense. Ugh...I need to find other ways to work things out for myself! I used to journal but when you have half a dozen kids in the house you learn that you have no privacy, even in the places where you thought you had some!

~Cheri

Cheri, I just wanted to say I ALWAYS get value out of your posts, and I'm quite sure I'm not the only one who hopes you don't find other ways to work things out for yourself, or if you do, that it doesn't divert you from posting. I think there are so many complicated issues that all of us deal with, and there's no one right answer. The reasoning behind your answer is probably as valuable, if not more so, than the answer itself! You rock hon, don't apologize for it!

Personally, I think I would have blown the maintenance phase when I was 19. I have read so many times how maintenance is the hardest part. I never believed it till now.

I was a bereaved parent at nineteen and couldn't function at all - for me, now way would the sleeve have been my cure-all and I would have been that cheeseburger eating post op that exploded her stomach, I swear!

I say "preventative measure" but honestly I cannot see a good reason why anyone would really, really need the surgery before 21...19 at the very youngest, and even then, we're not talking fifty pounds overweight. I'd want to be sure that it was a big enough issue and that it wasn't easy to resolve on it's own. And certainly I'd never actually tell my kid surgery was even a thought in my head until I felt it might be a good choice or option. Because I remember being a teen/young adult and the easy way would have been my answer. No, the sleeve is not the easy way and I know that now. But at 29 when I was sleeved I was pretty darn sure it was, so I can only imagine if a teen knew that it was an actual option, she might not be as concerned about giving her all to Weight Watchers. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but between the two of us my husband and I have had ten children. My experience is that you have to be really careful about the incentive/motivation game.

In any case, I think that I would want to have the sleeve help my child sooner if I felt she/he needed it, but frankly, I can't see myself ever actually doing it. I mean, I almost didn't pierce my daughter's ears...I didn't want to do something she'd be unhappy about later in life. This surgery is drastic and it's forever. I'd hate for my child that's slightly overweight as a teen to have it done and then be unhappy with their choice. And even worse, for them to not achieve their goal anyway, or to have a difficult time because maintenance is such a long path.

I don't think I could ever talk to my daughter about her weight until she brings it up to me, anyway. I do not have a kid stuffing down Twinkies behind my back or refusing to eat anything but fries or pizza. My daughter is obese, true. But she is an active girl with a well balanced diet for the most part. The most damaging thing done to me as a kid was being told I wasn't good enough - that I was fat, that I wasn't smart enough, that I had a bad attitude, etc. I do not want my daughter to feel that my love for her is conditional in any way, and I think that no matter how I phrased it, that's exactly what she would feel. Deep down, do I wish she could have her Dad's metabolism (and my looks, naturally) well, sure I do. I do not want my kids to struggle in any way. Peer acceptance is the thing that stands out most in my memory as that thing that was hard about school, not the fact that I was terrible at math. We all want to fit in and there is no time where that's more difficult than the school years. It's also the time that shapes who you will become. So yeah, I've love for there to be an easy answer but in reality, this isn't a problem with my little girl - it's a problem with society and our emphasis on external beauty with impossibly high standards. When even the 110 pound models are photoshopped, nobody else stands a chance. And boys are growing into men that have no idea what real women actually look like. I saw comments on an article about mother's bodies the other day where men actually said things like, "Ugh, stretch marks are gross, I hope my wife never has kids."

This is the world my kids have to navigate, and it's heartbreaking. I just hope that between my husband and myself we can teach our kids to love themselves enough and be outspoken and honest enough to call people on that crap. I'd rather my daughter be more like the woman I am today than the desperately unhappy girl I was as a teen, that's for sure.

I suppose that sums up my pointless ramble of the day...carry on.

~Cheri

Very interesting topic. There is the precedent of having stomach removal for people who have a genetic likelihood of stomach cancer, some whole family did that.

I've wondered about this question in a different way, now that I think about it. I've wondered if our stomachs, our previous normal ones, weren't a bit behind the times from an evolution perspective. Meaning, clearly many of us don't need such big stomachs anymore (or such stretchy ones that can accommodate the feast-or-famine aspect of earlier times) with the wide availability of cheap and calorically dense food. Is there something about having a much smaller stomach that perhaps is more congruent with the world we actually live in?

No clear answers of course. I find it interesting as well that they HAVE done RnY here on non-obese individuals with severely intractable diabetes, and supplemented them with, e.g., high-calorie nutritional drinks and/or TPN so that they didn't get too thin post-op. And the national body that decides these things (not sure what it's called, just the health authorities of the country) changed the laws three years ago -- establishing 30 BMI + comorbids / 35 BMI without comorbids as the requirements for having WLS, with also a lot of leeway for exceptions too (these are what the insurance must cover, self-pay isn't really a thing here at all). So they are already doing WLS on smaller people here as part of their overall efforts to curb a huge diabetes problem in the population and a rising problem of overweight and obesity that hasn't historically been an issue. And I believe 16 years old is the minimum age apart from the aforementioned exceptional cases. When I was doing my pre-op course, there were several quite young women in my group, early 20s at most.

Preventative per se? Maybe with genetic predispositions? Or with thorough pre-screening to weed out people with eating disorders (in my earlier years I would've had a field day with a stomach of a sleeve size, in terms of being neurotic about calorie counting and restriction...). I would be willing to go to the Overweight BMI category (or maybe better would be a certain body comp fat percentage, as BMI is a blunt instrument at best) for this, but I would be loath to operate on a healthy, normal-weight individual on the off chance they MIGHT one day get fat and/or unhealthy. Not convinced on that one...

Do the veterans on here think that the sleeve is a good way to prevent obesity? At 5 months out, I can pig out. I was one of those people who would only eat once a day. Now I can't do that.The sleeve has taught me HOW to eat.

If I didn't think the sleeve was a good way to prevent obesity, what would be the point of having it done? I was also one of those once-a-day huge meal eaters. I could still pig out if I wanted to as well, but I don't want to do that any more; I want to PREVENT that type of eating, KWIM? My sleeve hasn't taught me how to eat, it prevents me from eating. I hope to hell it prevents obesity, because it is doing a fantastic job of preventing what caused it.