Will VLC clients maintain their loss. Probably not. Will most DIETERS maintain their loss.  Probably not.  Will folks who have made permanent changes in their habits maintain their loss.  Maybe. Hopefully.  DIETING IS HARD.  LIFESTYLE changes are hard.   Am I scared to be a WLS failure. YOU BET!  But that’s what makes me so hopeful that I’ll succeed.

All of these things are TOOLS that we need to make our changes permanent which ones are OK with you and which ones are not?

Atkins Diet  (from A)

Weight Watchers

TOPS

Overeaters Anonymous

VLCS

Scales (both food and weight)

Exercise (walking, gym, sports or whatever makes you move)

Measuring Cups

Food Journals

Weight Loss Surgery

Smaller Plates

Jenny Craig

NutraSystems

Diet to GO

Optifast

Medifast

RAW Foods Diet

Vegetarian Diet

Sugar Busters Diet

BMI Calculators

Tape Measures

Curves

Gold’s Gym

Intuitive Eating Plans

Zone Diet (to Z)

The ones that make my skin crawl probably are not the same as the ones that make your crawl.   Everyone is different.

The problem is so many folks go:

working out is hard.  Yes it is. I do  it every day (what happened to that EASY way out with WLS???)

Or  NOT eating sugar is HARD   Yes it is.. I would much rather eat Crème Brule every day than once a month or so.

Or  I wish I could eat  <insert a food here that you love but you can’t’ eat any more because YOU choose not to eat it as part of your LIFESTYLE CHANGE>.. yep I hear you I can’t eat chicken anymore on my EASY plan.    How much fun is that… I LOVE chicken.  CHICKEN does NOT love me…  the key is you can always revert to eating your “forbidden food” if you choose to.  I may never be able to chow down on chicken again… so  now what’s so easy.

Do you have to set an alarm to make sure to take all your supplements?  I do. I take vitamins twice a day, I take calcium every two hours. I take IRON.  I take fiber, magnesium, D3, and B12 every day.   I will for the rest of my life.   I do not want Rickets or ulcers so I can’t take NSAIDS.  What do you take for pain?  Pop an Aleve?  Or a Motrin?  Or aspirin?   NONE of those are options for me ever again…. Tell me again how easy this is?

And before you start telling me that this was MY CHOICE… yep it was.  And Yes I knew about these things and NO I am NOT complaining, I am just pointing out that EVERYTHING we do in our lives has hardships.  I just opted to pick what hardships I wished to endure.  I would never choose  VLC dieting as my choice for weight loss as I have NEVER known anyone who kept the weight off permanently.   Heck no one I know on a DIET kept ALL their weight off permanently as everyone goes off the diet.  Even with WLS if you don’t follow the rules you will fail.

There are rules to all diets.  There are rules to all tools..  There ARE RULES TO WLS that have to be followed to make it work…

Rules that include:

Get enough fluids (all diets)

Protein first (most diets)

MOVE your tush  (all plans say you will do better with exercise)

Plan your meals (some say 3 meals a day no snacks some say 3 meal  and three snacks a day)

Measure your portions  (even diets with unlimited veggies have you measuring some of your intake right?)

So tell me again why WLS is the easy way out?

Oh yeah I know why…. Because I have a tool that now allows me to say NO more easily to things early on.

Tags: Cheating, diet tool, Easy, Magic, VLC. WLS

More Background but this is about the other board…

First some more background:

I own another board as many of you know… (all 5 of my readers)… and that board came about THREE YEARS ago (can you believe it’s been THREE YEARS) as a result of a board split with South Beach DIET for Beginners Board.  A great board.  I made TONS of great friends there.  Supportive friends… loving friends. Nurturing friends. LIFETIME friends.  What brought us all together to start was that we were following or attempting to follow the South Beach Diet as a way to health and wellbeing.  (and maybe happiness).  Why is it that THIN = Happy??? (that’s another post/rant all together).

Well over the last three years we’ve all morphed and changed matured and grown in our self understanding as well as our understanding of our needs, desires wants etc.

Some of us have gone to intuitive eating, some of us have opted for surgical intervention, some of us are just being ourselves (and we love everyone no matter where they are in their journey as long as they are HONEST with us and THEMSELVES…  lying to yourself (and us) about your journey just makes it hard to love and support as we should.  ALL Of us STRUGGLE daily with being the best people we can be.  BUT the one thing I love about the board is that no matter where a person is in their journey we love and support them as needed… well most of us.

Whether spoken out loud, written or implied, the judgments about WLS are there. I hear them from strangers IRL.  I hear them on my board from folks pretending to be supportive (and then I get PMs from others who think that the attacks are unwarranted and unnecessary and wonder why I let them stand.

I let them stand because South Beach Friends may be OWNED by me but I think of it as OUR board and I want everyone to feel free to speak their mind there.   HERE is another story and HERE I will bash who I want.  I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.  I answer to NO ONE at Ethnic Chicken.

These ongoing subtle attacks are nagging at me and I feel the strong need to address these misconceptions…

Let’s start with the most common (and the ugliest one of all)  Weight Loss Surgery is THE EASY WAY OUT….

Let me ask you.. in what way is this the EASY WAY OUT?

Do you think that jumping through all the medical hoops for all the tests and clearances is easy?  Do you think that going through a medical procedure/surgery that might kill or maim you is easy?  Do you think that forever changing your insides so that you can’t drink alcohol (for some of us) or eat sugar or fat (for some of us) or drink and eat at the same time is EASY?

Yes it’s a choice we make.  So in that vein, I realize that this hardship is self imposed, but is it any harder than say a VLC that you go see your doctor for every month?  And WHICH is more sustainable?   ONE day those on VLC will have to come off of it… will they be able to control their food intake better now that they have quickly dropped  50-100 pounds?  What did they learn during their Shake drinking time vs. what I’ve learned as a newly post-op WLS patient?

Tags: Cheating, Easy, Magic, south beach friends

This is a very very long post… I will break it down into  parts.

This is PART ONE

Background

How about NONE of the above?

I am getting SICK and TIRED of the ARROGANT and IGNORANT people who think that Weight Loss Surgery is ANY of the above.

First of all let’s address the two aspects of MY type of WLS.

I had Roux-en-y Gastric Bypass (RNY).  The Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure involves creating a stomach pouch out of a small portion of the stomach and attaching it directly to the small intestine, bypassing a large part of the stomach and duodenum. Not only is the stomach pouch too small to hold large amounts of food, but by skipping the duodenum, fat absorption is substantially reduced. In addition, the amounts of food we can eat are greatly reduced.  I used to eat and eat and eat.  An unaltered stomach can (and does) hold up to SIXTEEN CUPS of food.  My pouch now holds probably 6-8 oz or so.  Eventually it will grow to hold 8-12 oz.  Much better than 16 cups don’t you think???

In addition I have some rules that have to be followed.  At this point there are two food rules that I live and die by:

1.   PROTEIN FIRST.  I strive for 100g of protein a day but I tend to be ok with a range of 80-120.   My doctor would be happy with 60-80 but I work out pretty hard for his standard patient and I’ve been well educated by the likes of Andrea, Nikki  and Melting Mama so I tend to be more aggressive with things like protein and supplements (vitamins and such)

2.  NEVER EAT and DRINK at the same time.  AND wait at least 30 minutes after eating before drinking.   I do drink up until the time I put food in my mouth but once I eat I stop drinking.  I will never ever break this rule on purpose (I’ve done  it by mistake but not on purpose)

There are also rules about sugar and fat but I tend to bend those a bit..

So what does this mean for me?  It means is, I can eat very little food at this point. Eventually I should be able to eat what is considered A NORMAL amount of food.  The problem with this is that what OUR society (vs. what is medically necessary) considers a normal amount of food is EXCESSIVE to the extreme at this point.

I wish sometimes that I could eat more. But  I can’t.  And what the surgery has taught me in the extreme is that YES I can survive and THRIVE on the amount of food I am ingesting daily.  I thrive, I work out, I live. I enjoy.   It’s a good life. I have NO deprivation of any kind.  Thankfully I am not in any way shape or form suffering from side effects or problems.  I have friends that struggle so to stay healthy that my delight in how easy this feels (and yes right NOW it does feel easy) sometimes become guilt.

I had this surgery nearly ten months ago on September 22, 2009.  It was my rebirth in many ways.  I thought about having lap band but I like the malabsorption part of the RNY, even if it does not last forever. (Well to be honest the malabsorption of the nutrients does but the caloric malabsorption goes away sadly) I like that my pouch is tiny.  It still is tiny by the way. I was thinking at 10 months out I should be eating much more normal amounts and sometimes I can.  Most times however, I eat ¼ of a serving of something (half of a half) and call it a day. In fact, I went to lunch today with Leslie, Sylvie, Angie and Brian showed up.  Between the FIVE of us, we ordered TWO quesadillas.  We all had leftovers.  I had about 3 tortilla chips with salsa and TWO small wedges of steak quesadilla.  Oh and a couple of spoonfuls of rice and refried beans… YUMMY.  AND DONE.   AND then, (but wait there’s more) Angie Bri and I hit STARBUCKS for large (venti) iced decaf coffees.  That’s gone now too… I will have a snack later.. I will enjoy a dinner and a snack and more iced decaf…. And somehow today I will manage to get in about 1500 calories, 100g of protein, 150g of carbs and 60g of fat or so… and yet… I still continue to lose weight.  Maybe that’s the part that’s EASY.  The fact that I’m living and doing it well and I’m happy?

Is life supposed to be hard?  I don’t think so.   So let’s talk about these ideas of  CHEATING, MAGIC or EASY….

Tags: Cheating, Easy, Magic, ranting, WLS