Back last March, I got ESG (endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty). I had 6 weeks of a liquids only diet. I painstakingly tracked calories after that according to what doctors said to do -- a 1200 calorie/day diet. Yeah, I'm a short woman, but it sucks. But I soldiered on! I put myself on my home scale week after week, watching the number bounce around but generally trend down. I was so happy. I started at 251 post-colonoscopy-cleanse (since they have to remove all of everything in your gut before doing the procedure), and finally, after a year, I got to 215. I was so glad! And then I stepped on an actually accurate scale at work today, apparently. 238.

Are you f**king joking?

I said it had to be my clothes and stuff, so I went into the bathroom (single occupancy, thankfully), and stripped. Hopped on. 235. Dammit.

Well, maybe it's not accurate. We have some weights around the office, I said. Let's put one on, I said. It claims to be 45 lbs. Scale says...45.2 lbs. Augh.

So my bathroom scale is either 15 pounds off, the very concept of which is destroying me, or I've gained a whole ton of water weight for no reason. But I've taken tape measurements -- my waist is down 4 inches and my hips are down 5. I'm eating less in general. I really do think I'm making my calorie counts. My arms and stomach look more defined. That's got to be significant, right? ...Right?

If all this adds up, I have not lost 14% of my body weight. I have lost 6%. And that means I am a severe outlier and a failure at the procedure. This was the last ditch effort for me after more than a decade of trying everything I could figure. Most weight loss meds haven't worked for me. Saxenda worked for a while and then stopped.

Was the doctor's office scale wrong? It agreed with my bathroom scale at the time. Has my bathroom scale broken and I'm just fucked? Did I just gain a whole shitload of water weight? I don't have my period due to an IUD, so I can't imagine it's that.

Please give me something that isn't "you failed." Please. Please.

1 hour ago, BypassingMyPhatAss♡ said:

I agree. We gave the benefit of the doubt with what info we were given in the beginning. That's all we can do. It's not good to jump to assumptions about someone in the beginning that's here asking for support/help/info. You might suspect that they're not doing what their plan says, but you have to gather info from them to make an assessment and sometimes they're not completely transparent.

I think I have a good sense of people and when it seems like they are not being completely truthful or are leaving out big portions of the story.

This thread was a wild ride. I also don't believe OP was trolling, but I think there are more issues going on here than just dealing with the weight loss stuff. If you're still reading this OP, I sincerely recommend you try to speak with a therapist about the issues you've been discussing. If you can find a bariatric therapist, great. Otherwise, any certified therapist should be able to help provide you with a caring ear. You seem to be carrying a lot more weight than just the physical pounds, if you get what I'm saying, and speaking to someone can help lighten the load.

Regarding the specific things you've been discussing, a few thoughts. First, as others have mentioned, the procedure you chose is a tool like the other procedures, but it's a tool that statistically results in the least weight lost of the rest. That doesn't mean you can't be extremely successful, just that it might be tougher.

You say you don't want to be one of those people weighing every gram of your food on a postage scale. Well, I'm one of those people and I've been lucky enough to have a lot of success so far. That said, I don't necessarily watch every gram, if I'm a little over it's not the end of the world. But most people have absolutely no idea what a portion of food actually weights until they actually weigh it. When I started out I was shocked on how small my 4 oz potions of food were, if I had been eyeballing them I would have had twice as much as I should have. So I would get a cheap scale (you can get them for $10 or less) and start weighing EVERYTHING. You say you don't have time, but it takes practically no time at all. Weighing all my ingredients takes at MOST 3-4 minutes per DAY. You just put stuff on your plate like normal, but first put the plate on the scale. I had some cantaloupe for a snack earlier, and I just put the bowl on the scale and watched the numbers as I filled it and stopped when I hit my limit. It took pretty much the same amount of time that it would have taken to put the cantaloupe in the bowl without using the scale anyway.

You also mentioned you weren't interested in a sleeve because you believe the recovery time would be a month. I can only speak for myself but four days after my sleeve I drove 30 miles to visit with family, and I was fine. I took about a week or so off of work and went back with no problems. Everyone is different but from what I've seen posted by others, that's generally the experience most folks have. I'm not saying you need a revision, but don't let the potential recovery time deter you from a procedure if you and your doctor feel it would be appropriate.

Best of luck.

Well, this certainly went in an unexpected direction.

I think the OP basically wanted us to tell her that there was some way for her to both lose her weight and make no further changes (because "sacrifices suck").

I did want to add one thing, though, for the future people who read this. Your body can carry an INSANE amount of poop. So the OP, starting her post-colon-cleanse weight, already was down as much as ten pounds (I ? you not!) just from having it all out of her.

And it doesn't matter which scale you use as long as you use the same scale every time.

I myself don't trust the scales outside of my doctors' offices. (Mainly because the one in my bathroom doesn't handle 300+ all that well, heh heh.) And there's usually maybe only 1-2 pounds difference between the different facilities - my PCP's office, the hospital for whatever reason, or the office with my surgeon, nutritionist, case manager, etc.

Everything about this post seems off.

First of all, no one requires a 6-week liquid only diet. It's a day or two at most of clear liquids, then a week or two of full liquids (protein shakes, strained full-thickness soups), then pureed food, and a month later you are eating regular food (slowly, small amounts, chewing carefully, but regular food). I know most GI specialists will have their own version of the post-ESG diet progression, but the variations are not that huge. How do I know this? Because I researched almost all of them before deciding who would perform mine! I made sure I understood the assignment, as the kids say.

Second, OP said: "I started at 251 post-colonoscopy-cleanse (since they have to remove all of everything in your gut before doing the procedure)" and "251 is the post cleanse weight, meaning I had everything purged from my system to prep for surgery."

WHAT? NO. ESG is an upper GI endoscopic procedure. The doctor enters through your mouth. This has nothing whatsoever to do with your lower GI. All I had to do is one day of clear liquids to make sure the stomach was empty before they go in to stitch it into a sleeve.

I seriously doubt OP had an ESG. Or if she did, it was by some hack who did not know what they were doing. Good grief.