I have been lurking here for a while. I am 6'2" - 325lbs. I have been thinking about the sleeve for a while and started the 90 day program my insurance requires. My wife is supportive of this, however I am still on the fence.

Today I went to the gym that I belong to but have not been there for a few months because of some back issues. The owner/trainer tried talking me out of the surgery. "You don't need it but you need to just change your lifestyle". I was down to 287lbs 2 years ago and here I am back up. Still down from the 360 I started at and have done it all through diet and exercise.

I am looking for some input from those of you who are considering surgery or have already done it.

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All I can say is that the stats indicate that only 5% of morbidly obese people who lose weight on their own actually keep it off. The issue is not losing - we've all lost weight over the years but we seem to find it rather quickly (and with a few more pounds along for the ride). I was thinking about WLS a few years back and didn't want anything that "drastic" because I could do it on my own. Well - I can't and will be getting the sleeve in a few months. If it were as easy to "change your lifestyle" and lose weight - we would have done it already. Unfortunately, I can't change without help from the tool of WLS. I have several more health problems than I had when I first starting looking into surgery.

Mate, the surgery is by far the best thing I've done...

But that's me...

I was a big boppa at 560+lb...

I lost a heap thru diet and exercise...

Then put it allll back on after I screwed my knee during a 24hr charity event...

So for me, the surgery was a no-brainer...

But for you?

Well, that's up to you...

Do you think you can make the change without the surgery?

If you think you can, why not have a crack at it?

But if you think surgery is what you want/need, then I completely reccommend it..

Keep lurking around here...

There's a plethora of information...

Use what you need to make your decision...

Keep us posted...

Good luck to you...

I'm pre surgery.. My thought is your not there yet, maybe you got it in you to try the excercise diet route one more time. I think each person who does this has the Aha moment.. For me I just can't continue the cycle of the gain/ lose going on any longer. I was scared of the surgery but after attending the meeting run by the surgeon that fear has subsided... I would suggest you find a pre-surgery meeting run by a surgeon and just gather info.

No harm in even having a consult with one if your insurance allows.

Better for you to make this decision based on being informed rather than deciding based on people's opinions who may or may not be informed about the surgery.

As you read on the threads here, finding support from others in our life isn't a given.

Those who haven't struggled with weight, just don't know.

Good luck

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Edited May 12, 201610 yr by nyteacher125

I am in the same boat! If we can follow the lifestyle advice after surgery, why not do it now and avoid it? That is the 100K question. If "all" we have to do is follow the advice, we would "all" be normal weight.

Carbs are addicting. Carbs beget carbs beget carbs. HFCS and MSG suck. IF we could *simply* avoid those foods we would be fine. Diet, as in what you eat, is 80% of it...yet, knowing this, here I am.

5 years ago this month, I was scheduled for insurance paid for gastric sleeve. I had lost a bit on the pre-diet and at a stressful outside job I had-(30 lbs?) I backed out of the surgery for various reasons.

I gained it back, then I lost & gained; then had an devastating break-up that about killed me. I lost 40 pounds in four months from not eating, crying all night, pacing in circles and finally going hiking to stomp myself into bone spurs. I was so despondent that I didn't even realize why my pants were falling off! The only good thing that came out of that breakup was the weight loss (I don't advise that route But, within 2 years I gained it all back and MORE! Life has lifed me..

So now at 46 years old, the discovery of my failed ACL knee surgery from years ago & arthritis in my knees (plus trying to date) what am I to do? Will this keep me more healthy or am I just borrowing time?

It is your body, you wake up in it and go to sleep with it. It has to be your choice and yours alone.

@@Anna Nim I had ACL replacement about 10 years ago.. I'm 45... I feel like I could have wrote this post... Curious why your ACL is failing?

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I am also considering sleeve surgery, I'm 42 254lbs and have struggled with weight loss my entire life. I am the heaviest I have ever been and about a year ago got put on blood pressure meds. I have been considering surgery for a year now and made the 1st step and went to a info seminar this week. Called my ins co and found I have coverage and meet all the prerequisites. I have a consultation appt on Tuesday with surgeon. I know it will be a long road until a surgery date. I keep looking at it like this, if it is so easy to just change your lifestyle without any tools then everyone would be skinny and healthy and there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic in the world today. What ever decision you make just make sure it is YOUR decision and YOURS alone. It's so easy for people to tell others what or how to do things when they are not on your shoes and have fought your battles. Whatever you decide good luck to you.

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I think the 40's cause you to lose the weight struggle until I hit them I was less obese and had more success with dieting

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@@Anna Nim I had ACL replacement about 10 years ago.. I'm 45... I feel like I could have wrote this post... Curious why your ACL is failing?

I I don't know. I just know it is 80% gone. I went to a doctor when I had knee pain that wouldn't go away. He said the arthritis is caused by ALC surgery (a common outcome). I had a MRI to see what the damage was & I was shocked! 80% gone! Doctor said the primary cause of the arthritis was my surgery and not my weight! (haha!). But, he does say that losing weight will help it immensely. I am going to PT twice a week, being a bit lazy on the home exercises. I plan on having "revision" surgery on my knee. Being a teacher, I think it is best to have it in the summer, but not this one. I debate if I should do it now or lose some weight/PT first. I do want the second surgery to take & need the best chance I can get. Course, if my knee felt good, I would be exercising more.. Round and Round we go..

As for failure, I had surgery 12 years ago and it never, ever felt right. I know the major reason for failure is in the surgery itself.. Sometimes over the past 12 years, especially after some hard work, it would swell, etc, but went away. I think every swelling was a micro-tear and then at some point it just gave too much away. Despite my weight, I was pretty active-but I could never squat or come close to it. Maybe some was not enough PT after surgery. I have NOT had a fall or anything! While the doctor doesn't exactly say this, having poor muscle strength and sheer pounds means that my muscles are not doing the job and it is falling heavily on the ACL to do the job.

Maybe for you, do some PT. It is the Butt, hamstrings then quad (in that order) they say I need. Shoring up those muscles will protect what ACL I have left, the rest of the damn knee and I know, make the re-surgery more likely to last. I just don't think I have it in me for the summer. I

Surgery sucks. I really, really, don't want to have it.

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By all means, make the lifestyle changes, as they will be essential to your long term weight stability and well being, even if they aren't likely to get your weight down to where you want it to be - once we get to the size where we are considering WLS. there are enough various factors stacked against us that we run into that 5% success rate noted above.

The way I approached this problem, when my wife and I got serious about our respective weight problems and started toward WLS was to start doing those lifestyle changes that would help to ensure my long term success. We know what we have to do - be more active (it seems like you already have that inclination), cut the junk out of our diets, improve the overall nutrition while reducing the calories to a level that will maintain us (if not leading to total weight loss to normal.) Most have already found that the various fad and "book" diets (any book entitled "The _____ Diet", most particularly if it also mentions "miracle" and is authored by a "Dr.") don't work in the long term. They may get your weight down to something approaching normal, but they teach you nothing about how to maintain that loss over the years, and the weight builds up again when trying to go back to a "normalish" maintenance diet. I avoided those diets, but worked on moving my diet as close to the ideal as I could sustain in the long term. It was not "perfect" by any book or nutritionists' standards, but it was what I could do within my tastes and it was something that I could do forever, and it was much better than the normal American crap diet that got most of us where we are/were when considering WLS. I kept tweaking things to carve out a few more calories where I could, and improve the overall nutrition of what I ate. That was almost 13 years ago, and I dropped about 50 lb over six months (335 - 285) or so and came to a halt. I could make small moves down and then back again. But I did maintain that loss for several years.

In the meantime, my wife had her WLS after the serial insurance denials and ultimately self paying for her DS, and we settled into a reasonable maintenance lifestyle, though I usually ate about twice what she did. Once our insurance started covering the sleeve, I went for it as it was clear that I was not going to lose the rest on my own in any sustainable manner. That was five years ago, and so far so good.

I also used that interim period to test my maintenance ability and help choose which surgery, if needed, was most appropriate for me. Had I regained what I had lost over those few years, that was a sign that I should go for the DS, with its better regain resistance. With the stability that I had managed over that time, the sleeve seemed like a good bet that I could avoid any revisions due to regain problems.

I'm going to send you a private message, not fair for us to take over this person's thread

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