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I was down 42.2 pounds (since 1/1/08) last Saturday. I weigh in again tomorrow morning, and I think I had a pretty good week.

Edited to add: I saw my doctor this week for a regular semi annual blood test (for thyroid) and blood pressure check. When I was a young man, before I gained all this weight, my resting BP was around 96/60. My whole family's BPs have always run low like that, and for us, it's normal. After I got hypertension and gained all that weight, my resting BP sat at right around 110/70-120/80 for the last 14 years. It started coming down this year when I started losing weight. This week, it measured 94/60, and I feel pretty good about that.

At my Weight Watcher's class, there are 3 or 4 folks there who have had lapband or gastric bypass surgery. The official position of our class leader is that WW wants to support people who make this decision as a last resort, but that the surgery is not a substitute for the lifestyle change that is necessary to making the surgery work. My wife's cousin, and a close family friend have both had the bypass surgery. For one of them, it was successful; for the other it wasn't. The reason is that one used the surgery as an opportunity to change the way she regarded food and its place in her life; and the other took the surgery as permission to eat whatever she wanted. Guess which one has kept the weight off, and which one has gained a significant amount of her weight back?

In August of 2004, I had back surgery to remove a disc and fuse two vertebrae. I was in the hospital for only 5 days (they had booked the room for me for 7 days, so I actually went home 2 days early), and my roommate at the time was in for gastric bypass. He had already been there for a week or so when I checked in, and when I left, he was still there. He suffered horribly. When you are so obese that bypass surgery is necessary to saving your life, you are also so obese that surgery and its recovery are terribly hard on the body, and fraught with risks.

2 weeks ago, our WW meeting was very emotional because, within a couple of days of one another, our class leader lost one of the women in another class she leads, a young woman in her late 20s with a 2 year old child who had the bypass surgery because she wanted to live long and healthy for her child, and who died on the operating table; and another couple of women in the class lost a close friend of theirs to gastric bypass surgery, who died of complications a few days after the operation. This stuff is dangerous, and the decision to go ahead with it should be taken only after sober reflection and a realistic self-assessment. Too often in our society, we tend to see surgery as the quick fix, and we are either emotionally or psychologically beyond where we can see the possibility of successfully turning our lives around without it.

The guy who always sits behind me at my WW class had lapband surgery. It has taken him several years to lose 50 pounds, during which time other people in the class have lost 100 or more pounds without the surgery. This guy only recently got his weight loss back on track, and he is now losing a steady pound or so each week. Ditto for the guy who always sits 3 chairs over to his left. The difference? They both stopped thinking of the lapband as the solution and lifestyle change as just an adjunct to the solution, and both started thinking instead of the lapband as just an adjunct to their primary goal of lifestyle change.

My point in all this is, if you really believe that you cannot lose weight without surgical assistance, and you have already tried everything else, then do what you have to do. Just be aware that one of the solutions is downright dangerous, and neither surgical solution will be successful unless you make the commitment to changing the way you view food, and changing the way you live your life. I don't mean to keep plugging Weight Watchers here, but the whole point of it is NOT to diet, but to change your life. Diets won't work if you don't change your life. Surgery won't work if you don't change your life. None of that stuff is worth a cup of warm spit if you aren't willing to make some fundamental changes to the way you regard food and exercise.

Losing weight is not easy. It can really become an uphill battle if your families and friends are not on board with you in your effort. But there is a lot of satisfaction in success. I'm very proud of the 40 pounds I've lost since the first of the year. And, for what it's worth, I'm very proud of all the other "losers" out there. Way to go, and keep up the good work. But please, exercise wisdom and judgment in how you approach it.

Sorry for the rant, but this topic is one that is close to my heart, and it is so, so important.

John wrote:

dukesean wrote: Finally, give up the sodas for good and stick to water and skim milk.

What is it about soda anyway. I find that if i drink caffene free diet coke (basically colored water with CO2, right?) I do not lose as well as when i drink only water and and maybe unsweetend tea. I am starting to think that the sugar substitues they use do not really help any. Says 0 calories though.

I also know that in sports... sodas are a big no no,diet or not, but have no idea why the diet ones are not OK.

In Weight Watchers, they tell us that your body requires lots of water - pure water - and that drinking lots of water has several benefits: 1) it is necessary to burning calories more efficiently and it has the effect of speeding up our metabolism; 2) it flushes crud out of your system, including all that sodium chloride we like to put on our foods, and all the toxins that have been stored in our fat and are now being released into our bloodstream as we burn fat and lose weight; 3) it depresses your appetite (if you slam down a tall glass of water before you eat, you will eat less because you're already a bit full - of water); and 4) it helps our body to the produce synovial fluids which lubricate our joints, which is important because as we lose weight we also become more active. Sodas, even diet sodas, don't do all that - or at least they don't do it nearly as well - because of all the other stuff in them.

Water is good stuff. I drink as much of it as I can stand.

My wife and I joined Weight Watchers on December 27th 2007, and I have lost 40 pounds so far in the intervening 5-1/2 months. Started out at 340 and am now dipping just below 300. I've made steady progress each week, even if it's just a 1/4 pound. I realize that it's going to take me a couple of years to get down to where I want to be, around 200 pounds or so, but that's OK. I'm taking the long term view.