How Do You Define Success?

[Guest guest]

, North East PA. sent this in to another e-group I'm in, so I'm passing

it along, hope it helps.

You can subscribe to Barbara's monthly newsletter by going to www.wlscenter.com

It's a great newsletter. The water article came from her.

" How Do You Define Success "

by Barbara

Recently, when the newspaper, The New Orleans Picayune, interviewed me the

reporter mentioned that there is a common criticism of weight loss surgery

stories. They are either absolutely wonderful or they are disasters. She

questioned whether there is a segment that never gets heard from. That started

me thinking about those who consider themselves failures, and how we define

failure in relationship to this surgery. But before we look at failure, let's

look at success.

The surgical community considers anyone a success when they have lost 50%

of their excess weight. Right there we have a problem. I think we all approach

this surgery expecting we are going to lose 100% of our excess weight. And if

we don't, then we consider ourselves failures even though our surgeon is adding

our name to their success column.

The first month or two after the surgery makes matters worse. You are

losing 20 pounds a month and believing that this will go on forever. I know I

had my calculator out and was trying to figure out how long it would be before I

hit my goal (excess pounds divided by 20). But life isn't like that for most of

us. We hit plateaus. We come to the end of our widow of opportunity before we

reach our goal and we stop losing. Or we stop losing and regain some of our

weight.

And there are people who term themselves " slow losers. " They may never

achieve the " 20 pounds lost per month " mark. These are the people who my heart

truly goes out to. They are the silent group who may stop going to their

support group because they feel like they are such failures. They don't go to

their surgical follow up appointments because it will mean getting on the scale.

They don't discuss what they are going through in chat rooms. And they probably

don't because they get the same response, " Are you eating your protein,

exercising, and drinking water? " " If you are, then you must be snacking. " " It

has to be your fault. " And the feelings of failure adding to the low self-esteem

continue at an accelerated rate, because after all, the person had weight loss

surgery.

Why do surgeons consider 50% as a success? It is because there is no

other method that you could use that would result in that much weight loss on a

permanent basis. Remember back to your old diet days? Yes, you lost weight,

but regained it plus additional weight. The best you can attain with dieting is

a 5% weight loss.

Before surgery, have your eyes wide open. Although most people lose 70%

to 80% of their excess weight, you may lose only 50%.. Figure out what 50% is,

and be sure to rejoice when you hit that mark. Anything else is a bonus!

Hugs,

" It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. "

~ Confucius ~

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