Yep I had my surgery in April last year and I'm now 9 months out and 9.5 stone down which is 65% of my excess weight, I'm down from a 28-30 to a 16-18 and have been able to tolerate pretty much everything, just in tiny quantities.
TBH whilst it was a long wait I think it really set me up to be in the right headspace for the surgery and the post op reality. Also, for me anyway, my mentality was always that I didn't get overweight overnight so I'm not going to get skinny overnight either, I have to put in the time and effort to get the weight off, including waiting however long it took and using that time to totally overhaul my entire lifestyle and relationship with food.
The first year I was with weight management at Aintree and as part of that I had to see a psychologist, dietician, physio and consultant every 3 months which really helped me get in the right mindset (especially as they all have to sign off that they think you're ready before you can be approved to the surgical team).
A lot of people don't spend enough time on the psychological side of things so they struggle post op, but because I had the psych sessions I identified my food issues, my triggers and examined my whole relationship with food which helped me reshape it and identify the things I needed to change in order for the surgery to work. It's not a magic bullet, it's a tool that you have to know how to use to get the best out of it, and the mental prep work is just as important as the physical prep.
Also I don't think I'd have coped mentally if I'd had the op during lockdown - as it was there were still COVID rules in place when I had my op and pre-op I had to isolate for 2 weeks ... I share custody of DD13 50/50 with my ExDH but for my isolations (op was postponed twice) she stayed with him full time as I was too worried about her catching COVID at school and bringing it home as the rules were if you had COVID your op had to be postponed for a minimum of 8 weeks.
Because my op was postponed twice (I was ill then, ironically, theatre staff at the hospital got COVID) it meant that for the better part of 2 months I only saw DD via zoom/video calls, and that was hard enough right at the end of the COVID rules being in place so they were pretty relaxed at that point. If I'd done the whole process during proper lockdown then the first couple of post op weeks, where I struggled the most, would have been 100 times harder as I wouldn't have been able to have family/friends visit and support me.