Hello all. Thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Mary, I live in Wisconsin, run a dairy farm with my hubby and we have two grown children and two grandbabies. I had been a large gal my whole life, no doubt in part due to the fact that beer, brats and cheese are staples in any good Wisconsinite's diet . After climbing to a BMI of 50 and feeling quite useless due to my physical limitations, I finally decided to have WLS in 2010. I ended up going to Mexico since my insurance company would only pay for bypass or Lapband because they considered VSG experimental. Fortunately, my daughter is a gastroenterologist and she used her connections to hand pick me a surgeon who was renown in the international bariatric community.

My recovery and overall weight-loss journey was fairly easy and uneventful. Even though I had surgery in Mexico, I still attended local WLS support groups throughout the entire process. It was nice just to be around people going through the same thing. Over the years I saw dozens (probably hundreds) of patients come and go. Very few veterans stuck around. But for some reason I felt a certain level of responsibility to help those coming behind me. In addition to the group meetings, I saw a therapist on a regular basis for the first couple years. That, by far, has been the secret to my success.

About 6 months ago I quit attending the support group meetings. A new coordinator came on board and we didn't exactly see eye to eye on a number of things. Basically she felt threatened by my vast knowledge and experience and I thought she was a stupid twit (at least that's my take on it ). So I decided to leave "real" people behind and enter the world of cyber support. I've been lurking for quite awhile and finally decided to join up.

From what I've observed so far, the problems and issues I read about online are not dissimilar to what I heard in the support group. The biggest difference is there are a LOT more whiners and non-compliant patients online. Maybe being anonymous just makes folks more comfortable with complaining. Maybe the online patients left their support groups to seek justification for their bad behaviors from strangers (cause we never coddled them in our group sessions!) Or maybe they are trying their best but their programs did not properly prepare them or they don't have local support groups. Unfortunately the naivety of some of the people giving advice on here is a little scary to say the least. And then there are the delusional individuals like that organic milk chic. No one like that would ever pass the psych evaluation in a real bariatric program so I've missed out on that type of sparkling personality in group session. Of course I may have been a little biased by her username.....my husband always jokes, "we prefer our milk with a healthy dose of antibiotics".

Anyways, just tonight I realized my 6 year surgiversary was 2 days ago and I missed it. Oops. I guess that's a good thing, though.....means my new skinny life is so normal I forgot about my surgery! Either that or I'm just old and senile. In either case it's been fun and I hope I can continue to encourage people to take full advantage of their new lease on life after WLS.

@@LipstickLady

Good. Were you finally able to take Alex into banning her?

I didn't talk him into it. I just asked him to take a look.

• @Dairymary welcome back to the online group world! Glad to hear your positive experience and the importance of counselling. I am very much so a newbie - only 10 days post-op and praying this new tool will help me achieve a long life of good health and happiness.