randompersonrandom
Explorer
I believe the reason behind your weight gain matters. From what I can tell, people generally fall into 2 separate categories, and what works for one is completely wrong for the other. On top of that, each side gets seriously irritated when the other starts lecturing about whether you can stop and keep the weight off.
If your weight gain happened because you honestly had no clue about calorie density, what normal exercise looks like, what a normal portion is, or what healthy adult eating includes — vegetables, lean meats, not too much high-fat dairy, sugar, or processed stuff — and you didn't realize that most adults need to put in deliberate exercise effort to stay in shape, and since then you've overhauled your eating habits and your whole relationship with working out, and you've figured out how much food you actually need each day and it's no longer an issue... then no, there's a decent chance you WON'T put the weight back on. The reason is that food and eating were never actually your problem — what you lacked was knowledge, plus you were stuck with the terrible standard American diet (or some other country's equally terrible standard). GLP-1s can be useful for that situation, but treating that isn't really what they're for.
If your weight gain happened because you already understood all of that, you KNEW exactly how much and what you needed to eat to not be fat, and you fought it, white-knuckled it, felt hungry, bitter, and wretched, and even when you did pull yourself together and cut back on the too-much or too-calorie-dense or both for a while, you inevitably, ALWAYS fell back into it.... then yes, you likely DO need to stay on the meds permanently, because food and eating ARE a real problem for you, and these meds make it manageable so you don't relapse.
When people from these 2 groups talk to each other about "how things really are," they tend to royally tick each other off, since they aren't the same and they don't appear to realize that there are 2 different major root causes at play here.
If your weight gain happened because you honestly had no clue about calorie density, what normal exercise looks like, what a normal portion is, or what healthy adult eating includes — vegetables, lean meats, not too much high-fat dairy, sugar, or processed stuff — and you didn't realize that most adults need to put in deliberate exercise effort to stay in shape, and since then you've overhauled your eating habits and your whole relationship with working out, and you've figured out how much food you actually need each day and it's no longer an issue... then no, there's a decent chance you WON'T put the weight back on. The reason is that food and eating were never actually your problem — what you lacked was knowledge, plus you were stuck with the terrible standard American diet (or some other country's equally terrible standard). GLP-1s can be useful for that situation, but treating that isn't really what they're for.
If your weight gain happened because you already understood all of that, you KNEW exactly how much and what you needed to eat to not be fat, and you fought it, white-knuckled it, felt hungry, bitter, and wretched, and even when you did pull yourself together and cut back on the too-much or too-calorie-dense or both for a while, you inevitably, ALWAYS fell back into it.... then yes, you likely DO need to stay on the meds permanently, because food and eating ARE a real problem for you, and these meds make it manageable so you don't relapse.
When people from these 2 groups talk to each other about "how things really are," they tend to royally tick each other off, since they aren't the same and they don't appear to realize that there are 2 different major root causes at play here.
... anyway, it goes without saying that once I got another chance at eating, I consumed like a ravenous baby and packed on pounds so quickly that just 2-3 months after the surgery, they had to put me on a diet... I've always excused my large appetite by blaming my fragile 'infant condition'. Staying active for most of my life kept things from spiraling too far, but over these last couple three years, my weight and health were clearly heading in a bad direction... GLPs turned out to be exactly what I required...
