Advice wanted

Hi Everyone. I am new to the site. I am 24 years old and have two sons ages 6 and 1. I have struggled with my weight my whole life. I weighed 120 in 4th grade, 140 in 8th grade, 190 after my first child, and now am at my highest weight of around 250-260. after my second child I started 21 day fix. I lost about 11 pounds in 2 weeks. Then I fell off the wagon due to difficulty staying on top of exercising and meal prepping while trying to car for two children, work full time and keep up with house work. Then I started some diet pills. I lost about 16 pounds in 2 weeks and then fell off the wagon again. Since. I have gained back the weight I lost each time. I am at a BMI of 50 and do not want to continue on the path of continually gaining weight or yoyo weight loss. I think one of the hardest parts for me is that I am picky and I don't have a lot of time to prepare. I feel like if I had someone that could just make my meals and provide them I would do fine because it would cut out all the tedious work. I am considering variate if surgery, but have not yet spoke to my doctor. Things I am looking for.....

1. Any advice such as meal tips or plans for weight loss. 
2. First hand information on bariatric surgery, recovery time, success, and challenges. 
3. If you had surgery, would you recommend it or would you change your decision. 
4. Any other information you think might be helpful. 

Hi, nice to have you.

I think the most important thing is that this is hard work. You have to be dedicated or it won't work. Surgery isn't a quick fix, yes it will help you lose weight but it's a tool and you have to work the tool or it won't continue to work. It will be exactly like everything else you've done (and me and everyone who does surgery since it's usually a last resort!) and it could end up working for like a year and then not if you don't work the tool.

And what I mean by working the tool is eating correctly - tracking what you're eating and following the guidelines exactly. Eating protein forward, drinking water, and getting your vitamins. These are all key. It's possible to have the surgery and eat things quick things from a grocery store like deli meat, beef jerky, frozen fish, etc and be successful but unless you're rich I don't think anyone is going to be preparing your meals for you.

So I would take that into consideration - I would not want to do the surgery if I wasn't serious about putting the effort into it long term.

I'm only 18 months out but I haven't regretted my decision for a second.

Good luck.

Thanks. I understand it is a last resort and I have to put in the effort. That is one reason I like that my insurance make you have a 6 month period attempted weight loss tracked prior to approval. Once I talk to a doctor if I can stick with it 6 months without surgery perhaps I won't need it. 

Everything Mute said.... I think one of the things with 'dieting' was when I had limited success it was hard to keep pushing through. With surgery, while it is just as hard if not harder than any diet, having success motivates you to continue, and it is the first time I had hope i could go all the way. I will tell you maintenance is harder than losing... I am learning. No regrets.

So with a BMI of 50 at 260, I assume you are around 5' tall (at 5'7", my highest recorded BMI was around 53 at 339 pounds). 24 is young. It is a great time to have weight loss surgery because you have your whole life ahead of you. But I will admit, at 24, I personally would not have been mature enough to have it and realize the true extent of what I would have to do to be successful long-term. Everything has to change to be successful. Not only in losing the weight, but more importantly, keeping it off. The mental part is hard.

I had RNY 8 years ago when I was 42. For me, it was the right decision. I have absolutely no regrets. I am very open about my weight loss surgery. When others ask my opinion, I tell them my story and encourage them to do their own research. 

Thank you. It is definitely a big decision. I am going to speak to my doctor about other options as well.

Hi! While I don't have kids, I'm about the same age as you so I figured it might be helpful if I threw in my two cents and share some of my experiences with you. Now it's important to keep in mind that everyone's obviously different and their journeys/experiences will be different as well, but here are my experiences. I'm 26, 5' 3". I had surgery 9 months ago at age 25, my highest (recorded) weight was 310 pounds last October/November, and my weight the day of surgery was 293. 

Like you, I have been significantly overweight my entire life. I managed to sort of halt my upwards trend in high school and stay in a 175-190 range, but directly out of high school gained about 70 pounds really, really quickly. I have tried diets my entire life, and would be very diligent with them, get upset with lack of success, give up, and start the cycle over again. 

A few years ago my mom made the decision to have bypass and that encouraged me to pursue it as well. I can tell you I struggled so bad with the decision to have the surgery at a young age because I felt very down on myself and in a "why can't I just lost it on my own" mindset. In hindsight that mindset drives me crazy because you do the work still after surgery, it's just that you have a tool that allows you to turn that work into results. I ended up making the decision to get it done because I was completely healthy (besides the whole morbidly obese, bmi of 55.5, thing) and wanted to get everything turned around before I developed co-morbidities. 

You asked about recovery and challenges, etc. The first challenge was definitely the pre-surgery diet. Good lord, the pre-surgery diet lol. My surgeon required us to do 2 weeks of only protein shakes, broth, sugar free Popsicles, etc. And for me this diet happened right at Christmas time, so that was incredibly rough, and definitely a test of willpower. Post surgery, I recovered very well. I had surgery on a Monday or Tuesday, spent a couple nights in the hospital, and then went home. I didn't have issues with gas pains, or really hardly any pain. I took my codeine/tylenol thing a couple times after I overdid it with my walking, but that was my fault for walking 3+ miles two days after surgery lol. The worst part of surgery was the waiting because I was reasonably convinced I was going to be in that small percentage where something goes terribly wrong. Thankfully, that wasn't the case and I haven't had any complications. The worst pain/issue I had was directly after waking up from surgery (I'd never had surgery before or general anesthesia) because I felt so super naseous and confused, but thankfully that passed quickly. I also was constantly thirsty. Like insanely thirsty. The small sips every 15 minutes wasn't cutting it for me and my doctor said for me to just drink slowly and that I'd "know when I drank too fast". Weirdly, I didn't every actually hit that limit and within a few days was drinking normally. 

Fast forward through the various stages of diet plans (a week clear liquids, 3 weeks cloudly liquids, mushy things, a month soft foods, then to the add as you can stand stage), and I am down to 188 pounds for a current loss of 122 pounds and over 50 inches. Obviously I'm not as far out as everyone else, but so far I do not regret surgery for a minute. I was upset when I started losing hair around month 3/4, I get a little unhappy on the very rare occasions that I have a bad reaction to food, but all in all I do not regret anything. For current challenges: This is kind of an inverted challenge if you will, because I very rarely have adverse reactions to well...anything that I've tried. Eating too fast isn't a problem for me, I haven't had any bad experiences with any sort of food, with two exceptions, etc. Because of this I've needed to be incredibly diligent to make sure I'm eating slowly, or not eating too much, or not eating too many carbs (which has always been my demon to overcome). I guess the point of that whole schpeel is if you decide to get surgery, don't count on it being a monitor for you. Like others on this thread have said, it isn't a short cut, and while a lot of people might have bad experiences with eating too fast or too much or certain kinds of foods, there is not guarantee that that's how you will react and you have to monitor yourself carefully and follow all the rules to make sure you make progress. My other biggest struggles include drinking liquids near mealtimes and head problems. I follow the rules really well, but one that I struggle with badly is not drinking water with meals. That is just a very hard thing for me and I've been working to make sure that I follow that rule better. The head problems are mainly that I look in the mirror and don't see any differences. Which is silly of me, because I know that they're there, but I just don't see them sometimes. So no matter what you choose to do, surgery or not, make sure you take lots of pictures of yourself now, measure, and keep clothes from your highest weight so that you can make your brain see that you have made progress and that there are differences. 

Sorry for the bit of a long ramble, but it sounded like you were looking for personal experiences etc. so I just threw a bunch up there. No matter what way you choose to take this journey, whether through surgery or not, best of luck to you!!

Thank you for this. It is definitely the type of response I was looking for and find it very helpful. :)

Glad it helped! If you have any other questions let me know and I can throw in my two cents!

I have never had children, however I have three autoimmune diseases, depression, and binge eating disorder.  I am the diet pro, lol.  Having said that, it is difficult.  I had nagging and unending hunger before surgery.  Surgery was a transformative experience.  I was anesthetized while ravenous and woke up calm and not hungry for the first time in my 39 year old life.  Now, I still struggle with the psychological aspect of eating, to be sure, and I make errors and mistakes, however I have not gained weight for the first time ever in my life.  That said...

My highest weight was estimated to be over 750 pounds.  The scale at the time only went up to 725 or so; the rest is the doctor's estimate.  I lost the bulk of that eating a modified low-carb ketogenic diet.  At 440 pounds I finally had fantastic health insurance again and started the process of medically assisted weight loss.  Today I weighed 295.3 a year after surgery.  I have had stagnant weight the past month and a half due to, as it always is, eating too much, GERD, and severe stress (I sit for licensure soon, have to move, and my mother almost died twice).  Still, no excuses eh?

1.  Meal planning, surgery or not, will help you lose weight.  After talking to numerous nutritionists, consistency and even repetitive meals can help, too.  Studies have shown that people who eat relatively the same every day are more successful in keeping weight off long term.  I use the website Plan to Eat to plan and organize my recipes.

2.  I reached a point when the hunger from eating few enough calories was unsustainable.  Phentermine helped, a lot, however it made my BP shoot up to 180+ so we discontinued that.  Contrave didn't really work.  Dieting was working, but I needed to eat under 1000 calories to lose (and still do) which is difficult to do at that weight without assistance.  

I chose to get the VSG primarily because I wanted the DS due to my BMI at the time being 78 (the DS is the best surgery for high BMI individuals in terms of EWL).  My health was very poor at the time, so we did the VSG.  While some DS patients suggested I get it done all at once (the DS is, so many say, more effective when done at once rather than staged), my health just didn't allow for it at the time, unfortunately.

Recovery for me was strangely easy.  I did not take any pain killers after surgery, I literally had no pain, and I went back to work about two weeks later.  It took about a month for me to "feel normal."  My surgery was June 22, 2015 and I've lost about 145 pounds, though for my size it should be better.  That is 100% mistakes I have made and is on my head.

The biggest challenge for me is the GERD.  20-27% of the patients tend to develop GERD from the sleeve.  I have it very bad, and it is pretty horrible.  My case is rare, though.  It is possibly exacerbated by a severe fungal infection, as well.  

Eating is hard for me because I am working on the last behavioral bits.  I eat when bored or annoyed, and I never quite broke the habit. I also have to face the fact that even post-op I need to eat 700 calories a day to lose.  I started doing this again this week, and miraculously, I started losing weight!  Go figure! :P  Kidding aside, it's a reality check that is still hard for me to emotionally swallow.  I intellectually get it.  Emotionally it's difficult.  So, back into therapy. :)

3. I would absolutely get surgery again.  The only thing I regret is waiting until I was in my late 30's to do so.  I would probably get the RNY if I knew I was going to get GERD!  However, I do wish I had the DS, which will perhaps be remedied depending on what tests say.

4. I think support is invaluable.  I'd suggest seeing a counselor.  I'm a counselor, and I see one, so I'm biased!  But, I think the main reason for my weight loss was that support.  I owe my counselor so much.