Quick results from appointment with Dr. Nutritionist

Height: 5’11″, large frame

Age: 37

Start Weight: 440lbs

Day of surgery: 426

Current weight: 271lbs

Goal weight was 180. And it’s not gonna happen.

Dr. Nutritionist (explained below if anyone cares) has basically said that for my height, body structure, and metabolism, I’m done losing weight.

On one hand, it IS nice to have this info, so I can stop crucifying myself for not losing another pound.  I can stop weighing in every day.  I am officially in Maintenance Mode.

My job today and every day hereafter is to eat healthy & get some kind of fun exercise every day, because it’s The Healthy Thing To Do.

I asked about programs like Weight Watchers or South Beach Diet.  He says don’t bother, that by the time I adjust their points systems to take my RNY into account, it would be easier to simply count calories.

I asked about adding aerobics or other ways to maybe speed up that metabolism.  Cute mini trampoline? Bad idea, he says.  Too rough on my joints.  Jogging? Really bad idea, same reason.  When I was 440lbs, I had a prescription for a wheelchair, was in constant severe pain.  I may not have that pain anymore, but my knees/hips/spine are all still damaged and the last thing I need is ligament damage or even a broken bone.

His advice for more kinds of exercise: walking at the mall and get an elliptical machine with high tension.  Over the next 5 or 10 or 15 years, I could drop some weight and tone up, but really, I’m pretty much done.

Have to admit, I go back and forth between feeling proud of how far I have come, to still being disgusted with myself … there are people having weight loss surgery today BECAUSE they weigh what I weigh.  I am somebody’s BEFORE picture, no, I am somebody’s current nightmare.  Someone, somewhere is in tears of joy because they qualify for surgery because they weight the same thing I do; someone, somewhere is in tears because they’ve been turned down and they don’t know how the hell they can live this way any longer.

No matter how much I’ve lost, I will always look like a pre-op.

So yeah, I’m torn between the two extremes.

So for now, my 20month post-op program is this: Avoid rice, bread, crackers, potatoes, & sugar; exercise daily w/ 30+ minutes of sweating; get all my vitamins and liquids and 80 – 100g of protein.  And try to be good to myself.

That last one is the hardest one of all.

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Dr. Nutritionist Backstory: There are 2 major hospital systems in my city (and one minor hospital that just needs to be shut down).  Both big hospitals had official Weight Loss Surgery departments.  At the time of my surgery, only one had the Centre of Excellence rating, and that’s the only kind my insurance would accept.  So I had surgery at BH, even though SHH was the better hospital.

I had no complications from the surgery itself, no infections, and everything healed beautifully.  The hospital stay itself was a huge mess, and I’ll never go back there if I have a choice.  The post-surgery follow-ups were always strained: I was never happy I had the surgery, but they expected happiness & joy!!  But hey, it was paid for, and I was alive *shrug*.  Their nutritionist was not bariatric-specific; she worked for the hospital itself and she was simply assigned to that department.  She was extremely nice, but her advice just never worked for me.

When BH’s bariatric department got a new nutritionist even less informed that the first one, I finally went for a second opinion.

The other major hospital, SHH, had by this time also become a Centre of Excellence.  They had a doctor of nutrition who specialized not only in bariatric nutrition but also gastric bypassed patients.  This is all he does.  So when he recommended I drop The Big Carbs (pasta, bread, crackers, sugar, and rice), I did.  And it felt pretty damned good.

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