Originally Posted by
JimF22003
Saying "just do the diet" is unrealistic. I was a champion dieter. Over the course of 25 years I lost at least 4 or 500 pounds. Some of the diets I followed successfully for as long as a year. But the truth is that almost all people who lose substantial amounts of weight through dieting gain it back. By the end of the process I had dieted my way up to 475 pounds.
You will never find me to be a cheerleader for bariatric surgery. But for some people, including me, it was literally a last resort. I don't know what the odds were of my dying were without the surgery, but I guarantee you it was a lot higher than 1 in 200.
That is the point some people are making here. If "just do the diet" is unrealistic, then after surgery how is it any more realistic? If you can't do the diet mentally without the surgery, how are you going to do the diet mentally after surgery? Either way with or without the surgery, you would be doing the same "diet." The surgery just makes it so that it is physically impossible to eat a lot, that is until you stretch the stomach out again and are back to eating like it was prior to the surgery. That is what is going on with a coworker. He was eating tiny bites of food for lunch. That's all he was physically able to eat. Over time, he ate larger and larger bites and is now eating 12 inch Subway hoagies and a bag of chips for lunch, probably along with his usual case of beer every night.