How does everyone deal with the feelings of wishing you could've lost the weight and kept it off with diet & exercise alone..and achieve that?

I would obviously feel awesome if I could do it, but after a million times trying in 10+ years...it's not working!

I am in the process of getting wls, but I keep holding onto this feeling of failure or the feeling of wishing I could accomplish my weight loss goal with diet & exercise, I know getting wls is not taking the easy way out and it still takes work but I wish there was a way to not tell anyone about it...but close family & friends are going to know of course when I can't eat much for awhile & when they see me thru the recovery process.

At 67 and almost 385, oh how I wish I had taken the "easy way out"!! All these years of weighing almost 300 pounds (at my all time highest now), the pain, emotional and physical, embarrassment, wearing ugly clothes, physical limitations........everything. Even if I had it done 3 years ago when I was 85 pounds lighter. I can't believe I have been losing and gaining hundreds of pounds for so many years.

Take the steps now. It will NOT be easy for ANY of us young or old. It is far from taking the easy way out. It is taking necessary steps to improve and extend your life. DON'T miss out on those precious years that cannot be relived.

Louise

After surgery you will never think you took the easy way out again. None of this is easy. I'm 2 months out and it's still hard. I can't eat some things, I get upset stomach . Sometimes I cook something abd eat it and be fine the next day eat the leftovers and get sick. Everything depends on how my stomach feels. Sometimes I fake it till I make it and just throw some make up on and go on tho I feel like I might(and sometimes do) barf. None of this is easy

My surgery date is next Thursday...I am excited, nervous & emotional about it ..so even though this thread has provided so much support & information to me in my mixed feelings about the surgery, I want to reopen this thread because I think I need just a little more! Lol

I am 50-60 pounds overweight, but I have struggled with losing weight due to emotional eating, bad habits & yo yo dieting for 12years..I know I need this and I should think of it as a privilege to finally have a way to lose the weight and stop the depression it causes but there is still part of me beating myself up because I am having surgery to lose weight instead of being able to keep it off with diet and exercise

Ugh..I guess I need even more support in this decision.

Thanks everyone!

I hope to be on the other side of this issue soon! And providing the same for others :-)

I totally understand the guilt feeling, still dealing with it myself. It doesn't help when people say "oh you don't need surgery, you can do it on your own" and even my Primary Care doctor said "that's extreme, you haven't given traditional dieting a fair chance". Well I have been trying for over 20 years!! Come on people! If I could do it on my own I think I would have by now! I've tried everything, including prescription drugs! I'm not even sure this is gonna work but I gotta try!

Well this has certainly been an interesting read

Just my 2 cents worth....

When I had my fairly large babies, I had the option of having and epidural or not during delivery. Heck that made my deliveries so much easier and pleasant. When I asked my mother who was an undiagnosed type 2 diabetic, if she would have gotten epidurals during her deliveries ( she had 9 children and they got larger with each baby, one being 13 lbs, 9 oz delivered "naturally"), she said "of course!" Why go through that without help if it's there?

Same with wls. Why not?

I saw the article and photos of the woman who had WLS and a friend of hers took those clever before and after pictures that showed her as famous characters from TV and history. It's called 'The Beth Project'.

I also saw comments associated with this article and they were horrible. Alot of 'why not just diet' or 'just do it the right way'. Alot were even worse than that. It made me realize that so many people unknowingly think WLS is some type of cop-out. I didn't understand because my family and friends are so supportive but it seems that the vast majority of people have a very negative attitude about WSL...at least when it comes to comments online. My goodnes...such hatred out there for overweight people. It's very sad.

Check out her pictures by the way. They are really good.