Hey all, this July will mark my 3rd year surgiversary and I stopped losing weight a year ago. I haven't made it to goal and in the past year I have gained about 25 lbs. If you read the recent threads I have begun you will see that this has been a shockingly terrible year for me and my family, not that it's an excuse but, there it is.

I still want to get to goal but I just don't know how to make my body lose weight. Everybody throws out these great suggestions, stuff that really works for almost everybody, but not me. Believe that whatever it is, I have tried it. One year ago I was very fit but losing at an unbelievable snail's pace. In July of 2011 I weighed 183 lbs, by January of 2012 I weighed 164, (starting weight at surgery in 2010 was 294), it took 6 MONTHS to lose 20 pounds, SIX. MONTHS. That is disgusting. And in those 6 months I was working out 5x a week, mixing cardio with strength training with fexibility, tracking my food, staying low carb.. 3 pounds a month is worse than even a non-op on a moderate diet! WTF!!

Yeah yeah, I know that as we have less left to lose that the losing process itself slows down and changes but, come ON!!

So, only the strictest of post-op diets works for me, if I eat a healthy balanced diet, leafy greens, lean Proteins, all that good stuff, if it is more than 850 calories, I GAIN. Yes, I really do. So, here I am, almost 3 years out, still pretty good restriction so long as i am not eating sliders, still pretty good lack of hunger, so long as I'm not believing the head hunger, but my effing body want to stay a fat miserable squashy unhealthy MESS blob. It makes me so angry, SO. ANGRY.

is it all a lie? Is there no such thing as losing weight without a gimmick?

I'm so sorry about your family's challenges and about this frustration. Your body sounds very metabolically efficient like mine is. So many people say that increasing calories works for them, and I have tried it, but my body rebels with immediate and sustained weight gain if I go over 800 calories or so. I am hypothyroid, but I think it's also bc of years of very low calorie diets and also just how my body is made (my mom says if there were a famine, we would be stepping over the dead bodies).

Your weight loss does give me hope. It sounds like you have done very well, though I know it must be incredibly frustrating to be in the home stretch and to be having so many issues with slow loss and easy regain.

I am 12 weeks out and have lost about 50 pounds--30 lbs since surgery and about 20 lbs during a 6-month pre-op diet. Have a long way to go so it's helpful to see what others who are farther out are doing.

I'm sorry that there don't seem to be any easy answers. Wishing you the best.

I agree, it does defy logic, and I think I have one of those super efficient bodies, too. I have a good friend who is a dietician, and just yesterday we discussed this. I asked her if she thought I should be eating 1200 calories, and she said for anyone else, she tells them 1200-1500 calories for weight reduction, but for me, no more than 1000. She said some people just need to eat a lot less to lose. It is discouraging because I also seem to have a sleeve that can hold more. I hate to admit it, but it's true. At less than 5 months out, I can hold 6-8 oz easily. If it stays like this I'll be fine, but I'm not sure what the future holds. Either way, I could NOT have lost this weight without the sleeve, and if I make even within 20-30 pounds of my goal, I will still be SO much better off than where I started.