Shelly, you can go ahead and have the surgery but it won't help. Not in the long run. I HATE even thinkng this, much less typing it. But I know more than a few people who went with the surgery, had hideous complications, lost weight, stayed feeling HORRIBLE and SICK AS A DOG and within 2 yrs were heavier than before the surgery. They could not eat normally, take time release medication of ANY kind, eating ANY fat caused horrible bloating, cramps and diarrhea of the kind that needed diapers because you have NO control, and all of it was permanent and for NOTHING.
Until/unless they addressed the psychological reasons for the eating, NOTHING worked in the long run. Not even surgery to make yourself permanently sick. And yes, from what I have seen that IS what gastric surgery tends to do. I know ONE person who had a good result for about 2 yrs, then she thought she was 'fixed' so she started trying small portions of various 'treats' like strawberries and other types of fruits, and cake and junk food. took 6 mos and she weighed MORE than she did before.
A big reason for this, besides the psychological factors, is that the human body is incredible and will change to store calories if it thinks it is deprived. Most people are on much lower calorie diets when they get surgery, plus their body is starved for fiber and fat - with-o the complete digestive system your body cannot utilize these so if you eat them they come out explosively via one end or the other. So the body thinks it is in famine mode (this is actually what our bodies do when we eat no fat or super low fat, hence the Susan Powter no fat diet never worked but you did get dry skin, brittle hair, infections bc you skin was so dry it couldn't protect you, et..... the only reason Susan Powter was so happy about everything was she was drunk. She is an alcoholic and she later came out and admitted that it was the ONLY way she tolerated that diet.) and it packs fat away even faster.
Please, please, please, do this the right way, not the fast way. You CAN move even with osteo. You MUST move if you want to retain the ability to walk. PLEASE get a therapist and work through WHY you eat. Or go to OA - that is also a way to work through the issues. Until you work through WHY you overeat, you will not be able to sustain weight loss. I hate this, but it IS a fact.
One reason Starbie is able to keep to her diet is that she loves herself and is emotionally healthy for the most part. She already spent those years in therapy, so when she decided to lose the weight, she wasn't rewarding and punishing herself with food. ????? Susie, what do you mean reward AND punish? Well, most of us are overweight for many reasons. We eat to celebrate, to console, to feel better. We also eat because we don't feel, deep down where we don't talk about it, that we deserve to be healthy and what we think of as attractive. So we alos eat to punish ourselves and prove we were right - that we don't deserve to be healthy, to feel good.
If you need a more formal diet to go along with the therapy, look into the Zone diet. It honestly will help your body repair itself. You cut out white bread/pasta/etc...., most sugars are recommended but you can get away with some if you feel you must. The Zone is all about the balance. You aim to eat 40%carb, 30% lean protein and 30% fat. This is the same balance as the Balance and Zone brand bars. THey are still candy bars, but they are the healthiest candy bars out there. they also won't give you a sugar crash the way MOST of the clif and other brand bars will - because they have balanced protein.
Want proof the Zone works? I first heard about this while working in a bank. My entire dept did this as a team. Those who were at a healthy weight did not get sickly thin. Those who had weight to lose, did. We ALL felt better, we didn't drink as much coffee or caffeinated drinks. We felt our brains were clearer, we had more energy even first thing in the morning. We were happier - just in better moods even during PMS and periods (for the females). Health problems of all types got better. Our bosses got some big bonuses and treated us to some nice things because our productivity and profitability SKYROCKETED. NOTHING else changed in the group that would explain these things. We got other depts to join us, esp after the first potluck when we brought zone recipes in - some are strange but many are really GOOD. This is where I used to make yogurt cheese a lot (see my thread about that). Those of us who started out still including sugar (on the Zone it is okay to eat HALF a snickers if you have 2-3 oz lean deli turkey with it - so you really CAN eat real food with this), after a month or so didn't want it anymore. We just didn't even think about it until one day the vending guy complained because no one was buying anything anymore. (yes, that really happened!)
I got my mom to do the Zone also. She has an autoimmune liver disease. the docs ALL thought that once you had damage to the liver from this disease, there was NO way to fix it. My mom cut her stress hugely and she ate by the Zone. She has a biopsy every 2 yrs. After 1 yr on the Zone, she had another biopsy. Her doctor didn't just send her the results. He wanted her in his office NOW to discuss them. She was really afraid things had gone super bad and this was a transplant discussion (that is a real possibility at some point).
She had to have a scan (not sure if it was MRI or something else) to let them see her whole liver. This was unexpected and new and scary. THe doctor also insisted on doing it as a rush thing. So at the appointment after that, just a few days later, he demanded to know WTH she was doing? Why? Yup. Her liver was better. Not just a little better, a LOT better. Never happened in the long history of this disease and everything they knew about it better. She told the doctor that all she daughter was cut stress and the Zone diet. She told him about it and from what her doctor and his colleagues figured out, her body HEALED damage because on the Zone it was somehow able to do this. They wrote a journal article and put all of their patients on this diet. Not all patients did the diet because of course not everyone listens to the doctor esp about diets. The patients who followed the zone diet for more than a few months started seeing improvement in their overall health AND when biopsied also had improvements taht were not supposed to be able to happen.
THIS is why i recommend the Zone diet. There are a TON of books by Dr. Barry Sears about this diet. Including cookbooks. The change in how you feel happens in about 2 weeks. It is incredible, honestly and truly incredible. You also can follow all of Starbie's rules - the portion control rules are super important - meat the size of the palm of your hand, the thickness of a deck of cards. The Zone books willl give you guidelines like 1 cup cooked veggies is the size of a baseball (I think that is it, but the book has the actual type of ball - these give you a basic frame of reference that is more meaningful than "1 cup green beans". it is much more effectve to eyeball it and have an object to compare it to.
I really hope you can follow the eating plan of your choice and get some therapy BEFORE you go ahead with a surgical option. I don't want you to be miserable and unable to eat foods that you NEED (like fruit and foods with fiber) and that is the only long term result of many gastic surgery options. I think mattsmom has had such great success (and she has which is AWESOME and I truly applaud her!) because she did have the therapy and she worked at that as well as at her diet.
((((((hugs)))))) Whatever you decide, you have my support. I hope you feel better soon. Arthritis hoovers like the tractor beam on the Death Star.
