The DS IQ test

[Spiky Bugger]

Thanks for the "dirt" on WW, EN. I very much enjoyed it. I still see the main lecturer from my days at WW, she's regained all and then some. I know of only one person who lectured for WW and kept her weight off, and she walks MILES every day. WW for me was always successful, I was an expert at taking the weight off. I just had BG's "fuck it" attitude when I was done and trying to maintain. One piece of Fanny Farmer's chocolate and BAM! I was regaining even faster. The last time I knew it would kill me if I regained again. Started having heart issues, palpitations and rattling cough, wore a heart monitor for the doctor I recently fired that showed nothing in a whole weekend full of chest pain. That's when I met my mentor in WLS at Knit Night and the rest is history. My mentor has regained with her sleeve, sadly.

We did Overeaters Anonymous, TOPS, and a host of other diet fads back in the day. Even a "one food" diet where you ate only one food each day. Like hard boiled eggs; lettuce; that type of thing. I lasted one day on that, my sister lost 75 pounds. My mom lost a ton also, but then sat down hard roller skating and broke her back in 3 places. So, I guess she robbed her bones with all that horseshit. The idiocy stuns me today, thinking back on what we put ourselves through for a temporary fix.

Someplace around here, I have the "recipe/Rx" that my mom's doctor gave her in the 1950s for a liquid weight loss diet. I recall the Carnation evaporated milk and some, believe it or not, Karo White Corn Syrup. I wonder where that is.

 

[Sheanie]

Oh My God, Sue. That brings back memories. I have, somewhere, the old original WW recipe box. Mama used to make chicken breast with croutons in tin foil. Also, a pear almondine dessert, as well as a bread pudding. So many recipes. So many carbs. No butter, no yummy fats.

 

[ProteinSnob]

No wonder so many poor women turned to amphetamines in the 50s and 60s! I can't imagine being able to lose weight on corn syrup and evaporated milk!

Growing up fat in the 1980s, I remember my mother making chicken breast every single night in the microwave with only Mrs. Dash for flavor and an iceberg lettuce side salad with oil and vinegar dressing. Breakfast was 2 hardboiled eggs with Mrs. Dash and 1/2 a slice of 45 calorie bread. I went through the teacher's lunch line at school for the only "diet" option: a salad with chopped ham and eggs with no dressing. I lost a little bit of weight, yet I was still obese.

No WW group, just me beating myself up constantly for still being fat. That's the one good thing about WW: fellowship.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Oh My God, Sue. That brings back memories. I have, somewhere, the old original WW recipe box. Mama used to make chicken breast with croutons in tin foil. Also, a pear almondine dessert, as well as a bread pudding. So many recipes. So many carbs. No butter, no yummy fats.

Your mom was most assuredly younger than mine...do these look familiar?

http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html

 

[brooklyngirl]

@ProteinSnob - I'm scarred from Mrs. Dash for life too. I hate, hate, HATE IT. My husband thinks it's crazy that I'm so repulsed by it, but then again, he doesn't have food issues either!

 

[southernlady]

Your mom was most assuredly younger than mine...do these look familiar?

http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html

OMG, a few DID look familiar!

 

[Elizabeth N.]

Ah yes, the ways we used to get in our weekly liver and fish requirements without actually getting liver or fish.....

 

[Lori]

I'm SHIVERING from the Mrs. Dash!!! I will NEVER touch that crap again. The ultimate diet "flavoring!" Ugh!

 

[bugirll]

absolutely everyone starts at some point with zero knowledge. That's ok. When I was four, I knew nothing about driving. That does not mean I would never drive. People also have bad information extremely often. So, it's not what you know, it's the capacity and willingness to learn and apply. It's the critical thinking skills that help us look at a situation and say "that's not right because the evidence says something else".

 

[newanatomy]

absolutely everyone starts at some point with zero knowledge. That's ok. When I was four, I knew nothing about driving. That does not mean I would never drive. People also have bad information extremely often. So, it's not what you know, it's the capacity and willingness to learn and apply. It's the critical thinking skills that help us look at a situation and say "that's not right because the evidence says something else".

This is the most important thing to keep in mind. If this forum had a mission statement, this should be the first and last item! People need to stop assuming that "newbies" are stupid. They were smart enough to find their way here, right?

 

[Elizabeth N.]

Nobody is assuming that newbies are stupid, least of all me.

In my dream world, as I said above, there would be a big chunk of mandatory education for EVERYONE seeking WLS, but especially the DS. It would not be reserved only for those who are motivated enough (and who have the means) to look for info online. It would be written into every avenue of access for WLS, and it would be constructed, credentialed and reviewed regularly by people who really KNOW THEIR SHIT, which in the case of the DS the ASMBS, among other professional organizations, does not. )

The scariest thought for me is, for every person who manages to find their way to a place like this, how many hundreds or thousands don't?

I think of three of my local friends who didn't do a lick of research (other than, in the case of one of them, conversations with me, for all the good it did). One (who had RNY, not DS) is dead. She had, among other issues, an active eating disorder. She probably would have lied her way successfully through any evaluation, but she didn't HAVE one.

The other two, who had DS (in one case as a revision), are both having a lot of problems. The one whose "research" started and ended with me at least listens occasionally to my advice. The other one....well, I think either her denial is so thick as to qualify as a dissociative disorder, or she just doesn't give a damn and is waiting to die.

I believe they could all have been helped to some degree by a DS IQ test.

 

[Munchkin]

Your mom was most assuredly younger than mine...do these look familiar?

http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html

OMG... And I thought Metrecal was bad. I may be scarred for life after seeing these.

 

[Munchkin]

The PSYCH EVALUATION and the (usually) MANDATORY THERAPY. *grrrr*

I know this will surprise you but I didn't have a psych eval or therapy. And me personally, I am eternally grateful. I grew up with a whole family that was seriously nuts. They went to psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, group therapy...you name it, they did it. And they took every psychotropic drug known to man at one time or another. One even had multiple series of ECT. I watched them for decades and they never got any better. And at least to me it looked like they lived in a haze from all the drugs and never really felt anything. There had to be someone around to take care of them and that was me and for a long time, my father. I've seen it all. After living through this I swore to myself I would never become addicted to therapy or any of those drugs. And all my life I have stayed as far away from these things as possible.

My theory was my relatives were quite happy where they were. They were cared for and no one expected anything of them. They were addicted to meds and therapy. Whenever it looked like they were going to be forced to actually DO something, they just "went over the hill"/had some sort of 'episode' and got to start all over. We were all enablers, me, doctors, the meds, and therapy.

I was probably lucky my insurance didn't require the psych eval. I was expecting it and I was dreading either going through with it or giving up on surgery. I didn't want to do either one. I will always be grateful I didn't have to make that decision. Because of my past, I revel in living an unexamined life. I would rather walk across hot coals than let a doctor walk through my head!

 

[Elizabeth N.]

@Munchkin , I don't doubt that there are people for whom a psych evaluation/clearance would be less than beneficial. But frankly, I've seen so much of the opposite in my years in groups like these that I'm standing my ground on having that be a requirement.

HOWEVER (remembering that this is my dream world *g*), I would also require that evaluation be WORTH SOMETHING. My own therapist has some pretty strong ideas about how psych clearance should work for WLS people. I was only his second or third client who went the WLS route, but since then he's explored the topic with quite a few more people. His point of view involves determining what roles food/eating and body shape/size play in a person's way of being, and addressing whatever issues in those areas that seem like they would undermine success. For some people, this takes only a few sessions. For others *pointing at self* it takes years of hellaciously deep work. And everything in between, of course.

He's also of the opinion that it doesn't take very long to recognize someone who does NOT have those "shoot yourself in the foot" types of issues and to encourage that person on his/her way.

 

[Sheanie]

Your mom was most assuredly younger than mine...do these look familiar?

http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html

Oh, fuck me, Sue. Those are the recipe cards I still have. 1974 was the year I went on my very first WW diet, at the tender age of 14. I weighed 115 and thought I was fat. I have (I'm proud to say) raised my 3 grown children way different. My daughter has a very healthy self image and a confidence I can only dream of. I have always told her how beautiful she is, and never encouraged her to diet, EVER. Never made my kids clean their plates, or try foods they didn't want to. They all eat everything as adults, even shit I won't touch, like Brussels sprouts and kale, oysters and the like.

Yes, my mother was 81 when she died in October 2012, daddy was 11 years her senior, and he died in 2009, just weeks after my DS.