nikki042

I have to say that this post has to be one of the most valuable ones to me because its honest, I have always loved food and will and the sleeve will not take that away I just need to find peace with my eating and use it for fuel instead of pleasure, who doesnt love wine with cheese or a good slice of pie but do I want to look at my life with regret or do I want to know I have the power and can live a balance life. I get my sleeve in Jan and Im trying to find new ways of living and finding other things that can make me happy, I have to trade this addiction for another one that is healthy for me.

This is a great post and I love all the input. I took a stance similar to Cheri's. I did not want to diet for the rest of my life, and I don't. However, that does not mean that I did not change what and how I ate. I never tracked, I never followed extreme diets after my surgery (super low cal, super low carb, etc.). What I did do...cut out the bad carbs (ie.the white stuff). I see no justification in cutting out an entire food group like fruit because it is higher in carbs. I also learned to make better choices. So when I take my kids to McDonald's (let's face reality, it is going to happen), I order a salad with grilled chicken and with no dressing or a grilled chicken breast sandwich and don't eat the bun. Will I have some fries? Yes, but I eat my other stuff first and then only have 5 fries and stop myself. For me, it has really come down to learning how to eat and moderation. I am a firm believer in that you have to make healthy changes that you can live with for a lifetime.
I also know that I am an emotional eater. And I also know that I am a hormonal eater. I can tell when I have had a bad day, when I am stressed. All I want to do is eat. I still struggle with it, but the way I have found to combat it is to not keep trigger foods in my house. If it is there, I will eat it. The sleeve has not given me more will power. I have to make a conscious effort everyday to make the right choices. I was also a slow loser, which I think also forced me to make better choices. If I didn't, I knew I wouldn't lose even with the sleeve. It took me 18 months to reach goal. I am now 2 years post op and I have been maintaining my goal for 6 months now without many issues. I do feel I am doing something I can live with forever without feeling deprived.
I think, like so many others have said, is that too many people go into this in one of 2 ways. They think it is the magic cure. They will still be able to eat however they want, but because they can't eat very much, they justify it..."Well, I can only eat half a hamburger". If you don't not take the steps to change your relationship with food, you will struggle in the long run. Trust me, there are a lot of foods out there that you will be able to eat a lot of, ie:slider foods. Sure you can only eat 5 chips not, but 2 years from now, you will be able to eat a whole lot more. And if you don't take control right from the beginning, you will find yourself stalling or gaining later on. Then there are the people that go to extremes. I am all for healthy eating, but I knew that I could not go the rest of my life never eating ice cream, or eating less than 20 carbs in a day. All you are doing is dieting again and it is bound to backfire. We are all human. And, unfortunately, we like high-fat, high-sugar foods. If you completely restrict yourself and do not build a healthy relationship with food, you might just end up finding yourself binging (we have all been there before the sleeve).
Am I perfect? Not even close! Even being 2 years out, I still struggle with emotional eating. I still worry that I will re-gain. But I am working on it everyday knowing that I have this amazing tool to help me. But if I don't help it, it can't help me.

I respect everyone that came here to share their struggles. It's hard to post non-positive things here and it takes courage to admit when you're sliding.
I've posted at length about this in the past. I think that even when we tell ourselves before surgery that this isn't a magic fix, part of us will still want it to be one post op. It takes work to change. We are not fat because we eat too much. Okay, yes, we are. But WHY we eat too much is the real issue, not finding new ways to eat less so we can be thinner.
Far too many approach this surgery like a diet. Every one of us can lose weight with 85% less stomach. The challenge is to keep the weight off in the long term, and while the sleeve makes that easier it does not do the work for us forever.
I'll be 2.5 years out in January. I am currently five months pregnant, so I am also currently 18 pounds heavier than my goal weight. For me, there was a tiny bounceback - I set goal to 135, but had really hoped to hit the 120s as I'm not even 5'2" tall. That did not happen. My body LOVES the number 137. I can live at 137-139 pounds and not worry about anything I eat, and I will not leave that weight window even during my cycle. But the second I take it lower, it's a constant struggle and I have to be a calorie counter to keep those stupid two to three pounds off. So for me, I just have to accept that short of getting plastics, my body doesn't want to be 135 pounds or less, BMI chart be damned. That very minor issue aside, prior to pregnancy, for me, maintenance was very easy. And I have only gained fifteen pounds in five months of pregnancy, despite the fact that I eat about double what I ate prior, just because I really am hungry all the time and I have a larger capacity.
But there is a reason for that!
I spent the long seventeen months to goal learning how NOT to eat emotionally. Every time I put food in my mouth I tracked it, even four M&Ms. I made myself be honest about my intake because for me, this was the only way to stop excess. If I found I was eating more, or poking my head in the fridge more frequently, I asked myself why and learned to recognize emotional and boredom eating. This in turn helped me stop doing those things, for the most part.
I did not eat like I was on a diet when I could hardly eat anything at all. I ate a reasonable amount of calories and carbs instead of restricting myself to 500 calories and 40 grams of carbs a day. I did this specifically so I could learn to eat normally, in moderation.
I don't care how good your intentions are as far as eating healthy and making life changes go. The reality is that nobody here is going to live for the rest of their lives eating only 500 calories on a no-carb diet while heading to the gym for three hours a day. We cannot live that way long term. Sleevers NEED to use that first year to learn how to eat reasonably so that they can live at goal later. My tastes changed a lot and I enjoy eating healthier now and I choose to do it about 90% of the time. But I do not deny myself the opportunity to eat what I want to eat. I simply do it in moderation now. I could still get carried away if I allowed it to happen, I'm sure. But the point is that the desire to just stuff myself with junk food is completely gone. I don't even enjoy most of the foods that I once lusted over.
For some people, therapy is going to be a huge part of overcoming this obstacle. For some, doing what I did can help. I read books about the topic. I read stories about regain here and on OH. I made myself focus on changing, even when it frustrated me and even when I really felt like I would go crazy from wanting food. Once the habits weren't habits any longer, it became a much easier journey for me and I reached goal in a very healthy state of mind.
For those of us that did bounce back a bit, or for gals like me that are pregnant and watching the scale go up, albeit very slowly, or watching their waistlines expand it's still a challenge. We are all afraid of failure. Nobody here opted for the sleeve as their first attempt to lose weight! All of us tried and failed, many of us for years on end, before opting to remove most of a body part.
I agree with a previous poster - there is no reason to start the negative thinking and the hate game with myself because I lose 90% instead of 100%. I cannot let the scale control me forever. If I have this child and cannot lose all of the weight afterward again (an issue I do not expect to have, honestly) then that's what my body wants at my age. I can only do so much. And I have come TOO FAR to let myself feel badly over a few pounds.
OP, thanks for the very real post. Anyone prior to surgery should read these types of posts. There are a LOT of them out there. Most of us more than two years out don't hit VST to read the forums every day, so sometimes you have to do some searching to find what we've said on a topic in the past. But getting this out there for people to read is only going to help people. Because surgery on your stomach is not going to fix what's going on in your head and making you overweight in the first place, and thinking this will be easy will lead to disappointment and possibly failure.
Good luck to everyone out there struggling. There is no reason that you cannot pick up and get back to your personal goals (assuming they're reasonable!) at any point after surgery. There was no magic window and your stomach at two years out is only slightly larger than it was at one year out. You still have restriction and if you use it like the tool it is, you can get back to where you want to be.
~Cheri

I'm pre-op and have wondered about this, too. I'm not an emotional eater. I eat for the taste. I eat for the feeling of the food in my mouth. IDK, maybe I am an emotional eater? The term "emotional eater" seems misleading anyway - isn't hunger an emotion?
Anyway, I read your post and thought, "Ok, seriously, how can this be fixed?" Besides all the obvious boot camp answers that were given (which is sound advice, but maybe not quite what you were looking for), the only thing I came up with was hypnotherapy. Years ago, I lived in a condo complex and my downstairs neighbor was a hypnotherapist. I was so intrigued by this profession, and I asked him why people would get hypnotized. He said, "Oh, for pretty much anything. Stop smoking, eat less, exercise more, stop drinking, stop shopping, stop biting your nails... you name it, I've done it." I asked him if it worked, and his answer was, "It can."
He went on to explain that it's all about the power of suggestion. Being hypnotized doesn't erase your mind's natural response, it just substitutes a type of reaction. He said it doesn't always work forever, but you can be hypnotized more than once, and eventually, the habit/feeling/thought you're having won't be the natural response anymore. The more you can identify your triggers, the more you can tell your hypnotherapist what to suggest to you during your session.
Now, I get that this could all sound like a lotta ridiculousness. I would normally seek out a more practical solution in a situation like this. But I actually love this idea - maybe my neighbor was hypnotizing me at the time that he was telling me how well hypnotherapy can work. (lol - but now that I made the joke, I wonder if HE WAS!!) I just know that the idea still intrigues me, and it's something that I might look into if I see old habits creeping back up when I'm in post-op land. It's worth at least looking into, and I see no harm in trying it.
Anyway, I thought I'd share that idea with you. I hope you find something that works for you - and when you find it, let the rest of us know! Good luck!!!

Thanks to the OP for posting this. It really is a battle that we need to continue to fight, but I also wanted to put a little perspective on your gain.
You gained 17 pounds in a year. I don't know about you, but before I had surgery I could gain 10 pounds in a weekend.
At the same time, I agree about emotional eating being a huge thing that needs to be addressed.
I am also a bit shocked that you identified cheese as your slider food into problems. I love cheese! You've made me realize that I really need to stay vigilant about what I eat and how I eat.

Success after surgery is most definitely a matter of changing one's relationship with food: It's a "head job."
According to this BMR calculator, when and if I reach my goal weight of 170lbs (a weight I haven't seen since my late 20s), assuming I remain relatively sedentary, I will need no more than 1879 calories per day to maintain that body weight (by the way, the BMR requirement drops down more than 1000 calories to 1708 for a woman who is 5',5" at 150lbs). If I am accurately reading between the lines of what people are writing on these forums, it appears that it is not difficult to consume far more than 1800 calories per day after the two year post-op mark.
This is precisely why the surgery is not a cure for obesity.
I'm guessing that it's a lot easier to limit oneself to 1879 calories per day when your stomach has been reduced to 15 to 20 percent of what it had been before surgery especially when you consider that the ghrelin-producing fundus has been removed but, obviously, it's not fool-proof or the long-term success rate would be 100 percent instead of eighty.
My best friend's uncle is six months out after a gastric band to VSG "conversion." He had successfully lost all the excess weight with the band but knew he would gain it back without the VSG. He has now fallen below goal and, in order to work on his head, is attending both Weight Watcher and OA meetings every week for support.
Eighteen months from now, I'm betting that Uncle Tony is going to be contributing to the 80% side of the equation because he's working on his head (only six months out) instead of using (abusing?) the surgery as just a temporary obstacle to eating the way he used to. Good for him.
I'm thinking that those of us who have undergone the surgery in the UAE should consider starting some sort of self-help support group where we can start working on our heads before that "golden period" expires. A few weeks post-op, I'll be contacting Smoggy and DesertMom to brainstorm about this.

Thank you for your post Nikki, I fear facing the same two year situation. I know the possibility exists...now I have to get off this site and work out

For Nikki & Diva, from that wonderful sage...Winnie the Pooh:
"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

BRAVO!!
Thank you for posting this. It seems we both seen Dr. A around the same time. My Sleeversary is on 9/15 and I had mine in 2010 as well.
ABSOLUTELY we MUST work on our heads. I posted something exactly like this in my status today. This should not be taken so lightly that we all think this is some magical cure. It is NOT!!
We will ALL have to deal with our food demons at some point. I'd go as far to say only a handful of us will be lucky enough to not need to do this. Majority of us will. The hard truth is, most of us became obese because of our unhealthy relationship with food.< /strong>
Many of us will not realize this until at least 2+ years post op. The difference between me today and me one year ago is vast... and I was even STILL over 1 year post op then. I have gained weight too. I do definitely plan to start working on that, because even though some people are telling me that I look better now (as opposed to the various "anorexic" comments I was getting before) I don't FEEL better. I do want to get back to my smallest where I was able to fit my big bubble butt in some size Zero NYDJ. I was tiny, but I felt amazing.
One thing however to keep in mind that myself and YOU are a true fighter. If we weren't, we would not have gone as far as to go to Mexico and have our stomach's cut out. It's so easy to say "Get back on track, you know what to do... etc..." because yes, we know what we are supposed to do. There is a might huge difference between KNOWING and DOING. Like I said, most won't know how this feels until they are far out enough TO KNOW.
Big hugs, and if you'd like, contact me anytime. Together we are stronger.

I want to join the list of thank you's for posting this.
It is the one thing that we can't really predict, when the emotional aspect will rear its ugly head.
I agree with you, that trying to get a hold of that part before surgery will be so helpful.
Getting how you feel out there is such a positive way to move forward.
Good luck to you!!

This thread has been particularly enlightening to me.
It appears that I have anywhere from 12 to 18 months (maybe a little longer) after surgery to redefine my relationship with food so that I view it as nothing more than sustenance. If, instead, I primarily regard and use that "golden period" as just a temporary obstacle to eating the way I used to eat preoperatively, I will most likely not reach goal and/or will very likely start gaining back what I had lost as do 20 percent of all VSG patients (as advised by my surgeon).
If, after six months post-op, I see that I am still thinking about food in the same way I do now, then I will know that I need to seek professional help before my new pouch is able to accommodate 1000 calories in a single sitting.
It would be nice to hear from post-operative VSG patients who are more than two years out and are either at or below their desired weight. I'd be very interested to know specifically what they attribute their success to, i.e., how their relationship with food has changed as a direct result of the surgery.

Hi Nikki;
At two years out plus myself, I applaude you for your courage to speak.
Today I have learned how to "trick" my sleeve and get a lot more in than what I should. Now when I need to "lose" weight I kill myself for several weeks to get off one or two pounds which I see come back quickly. Wish I could say I'm stuck but not ready to give up knowing I could be happier with 5 lbs off me.
With a lower caloric intake as the new normal, it does take longer time frame to lose that excess weight. This is not like taking off pounds after surgery. My hunger came back at around 18 months (not everyone returns...lucky me.) While I am still under surgeons goal, I am 10 pounds above my lowest weight. Yes, I am still in a normal BMI range but the scale is stuck. So I am one size larger than at my smallest.
Nice that others advise to eat slowly, or Protein first...heck, I eat like I did before just in less volume. Think pre sleeve. My brain or emotions want food. The brain is a powerful thing, wiser than most of give credit to our emotional eating habits. I eat because I simply love to eat.
So today I still obsess over food, but I have tool to limit my intake. Still, I love my sleeve and have no regrets.
Hugs to you Nikki...nominate you as my hero today.

Big hugs coming from me to you! I know this is a lifetime battle. We see it in gastric bypass patients and we are going to see it in sleevers too now that VSG is becoming more popular. THE GOOD NEWS IS..you haven't gained much back. You can still get your weight back down! IF you must eat a bit of cheese--eat it with some Protein like ham or turkey slices--or maybe with some beef Jerky or something protein based. We all know that dense protein fills us up fast and keeps us full longer. That sounds like maybe something you need to reincorporate back into your plan. Don't beat yourself up. It's just a bump in the road and you can get back on track!! Wishing you all the best

I really appreciate your post because a lot of it sounds familiar to me. I have only lost about 38% of my excess weight and at this point I am 15 months out. I was going great and then had a plateau which frustrated me and I fell off the wagon somewhat. I have gained about 10 lbs back but a few days ago decided to get back on track and what has helped me is to write down what I am going to eat for the next day the night before. I write in exactly what foods I am going to have and it has surprising helped me to be less impulsive about eating. When I look in the cabinet or fridge for something and see something else that I'd rather eat, I think "that is not on my plan so I can't eat it". That little step has helped me get more in control and I am down 2 lbs in the last 3 days. I wish you the best of luck on this journey!

These are excellent thoughts to share with everyone. I think there are far too many people that dive into the sleeve looking for a magic pill and throw reality out the window and then say "WHAT HAPPENED??" No internal issues were dealt with, not enough questions were asked of the surgeon, and they do not fully understand the whole process. I'm glad you've shared this.
That said- one thing you can do right now while you're getting your head straight- hit the gym at least FIVE days a week and do cardio for at LEAST 30 minutes at as high a level as you can. That will help peel some of it back off.

thanks for sharing! I am worried about this also. I have surgery Feb 7th. I have a couple of friends that have had the surgery and they are gaining weight because they can still eat the chips, Cookies, etc... with out any issues but get sick when they eat meals. I am like that now before surgery so i am really worried about that after surgery. I usually get sick after eating a meal but I can eat chips, cookies, cake with no problem. It's crazy, I am trying to cut all the junk food out now before surgery so it wont be so hard after. Good luck with your journey keep working hard!

Thank you sooo much for your post! I have been going through a lot of therapy to address emotional eating as well. I recently came across a therapy called EMDR. I have made LEAPS AND BOUNDS with this therapy and it has helped me more than talk therapy- actually there has been no comparison. Talk therapy never helped me in the past and man I sure did a lot of it and spent $$$$!!!!!!! Your post is soooo important to all of us- thank you for sharing and may you grab the bull by its horns again!!!!

Hi Nikki,
Thank you so much for sharing this. It was very helpful to me.
I have always eaten food for the taste of it, not to satisfy hunger. Consequently, I have consistently overeaten my entire life.
I believe that you are entirely right in that unless I establish an entirely different relationship with food after the surgery than I have now, I will eventually gain the weight back: According to what my surgeon told me, 20 percent of all bariatric surgery patients do.
The fact that you are able to identify your food issues has to be 90 percent of the battle. Keep at it and treat this slight Detour as a warning sign instead of a failure.
I'm rooting for you. Just get back on track.
Thanks again for sharing. I took everything you wrote to heart and will take heed.

Hi all!
I want to share my story because I feel like things are "hopeless" again like they did all of those years I had been dieting prior to having my gastric sleeve.
I was sleeved in September of 2010 by Dr. Aceves in Mexicali. I had a wonderful experience there and would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I feel like I may need to do it again since the weight gain has started.
I started at 240 lbs and the lowest weight I got to, which was last year at this same time, was 150 lbs. At that time, I stuidly felt like I was losing too much weight, as I wanted to stay curvy, so a friend of mine who has had the lap band, suggested I find something high calorie to substitute my daily intake with so I was getting enough calories to not lose any more weight.
Being an emotional eater, this should have been a huge red flag for me, but here was an excuse for me to overindulge, so I took it. cheese was what worked for me. I ate a lot of cheese.. sometimes, nothing but cheese once I figured out it would go down easy. After that I moved onto processed crackers and Cookies, again, things that go down easily without getting full and without getting the sick feeling.
I weighed myself yesterday and I'm back up to 167 lbs. Two months ago I was at 163 lbs, so i'm rapidly climbing back up the scale.< /p>
I do go to the gym, was twice a week, but in the last two weeks i've bumped it up to 3 times a week. I do strength training with weights and cardio. I am fairly active on the weekends, as I am fortunate enough to live in an area where everything is either walking or biking distance.
The problem is, and i'm suspecting this will be most of our problem here on this site, is that we are emotional eaters. And it was great at first with the sleeve because you literally could not eat anything.. .or you were so afraid to eat anything that you just wouldn't eat it in fear of getting "that feeling" (you all know what i'm talking about).
I can take the literature and read it over and over... my doctor can send me emails and tell me what to do (eat your Protein first, dont snack, etc). In a perfect world, if I could do that, then I wouldn't have needed to have weight loss surgery in the first place. My brain tells me to eat for comfort, eat when you're happy, eat when you're sad, eat to Celebrate.... and the hard part is, now that I've figured out what I can eat with the sleeve, its becoming more and more difficult to overcome this feeling.
I have been in therapy for about 8 years trying to overcome this emotional eating issue, but its so easy to go back to what we know, rather than change it. Not making excuses... i'm just reaching out to others who may have the same feelings and eating disorder as I do... and maybe if we can get rid of that shame we feel by sharing with each other, we can overcome this need to eat to stuff our emotions. Because I do feel very shameful that I paid all of this money, risked my life in Mexico to have this surgery done... and now i'm sabotaging myself and undoing the very thing that I've wanted my entire life... to be thin and "normal". Whatever normal is...
If you haven't had the sleeve yet, please, make sure you get in tune with yourself with regard to the emotional eating, becuase although the first year or so of the weight loss is great! If you dont get your disorder under control, it will all come back, eventually.
I said at the beginning of this post that I feel hopeless, but by letting me share here, I do feel a little more hopeful than I did when I started writing this.
Thank you for listening.
Nikki

Hi all!
I want to share my story because I feel like things are "hopeless" again like they did all of those years I had been dieting prior to having my gastric sleeve.
I was sleeved in September of 2010 by Dr. Aceves in Mexicali. I had a wonderful experience there and would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I feel like I may need to do it again since the weight gain has started.
I started at 240 lbs and the lowest weight I got to, which was last year at this same time, was 150 lbs. At that time, I stuidly felt like I was losing too much weight, as I wanted to stay curvy, so a friend of mine who has had the lap band, suggested I find something high calorie to substitute my daily intake with so I was getting enough calories to not lose any more weight.
Being an emotional eater, this should have been a huge red flag for me, but here was an excuse for me to overindulge, so I took it. cheese was what worked for me. I ate a lot of cheese.. sometimes, nothing but cheese once I figured out it would go down easy. After that I moved onto processed crackers and Cookies, again, things that go down easily without getting full and without getting the sick feeling.
I weighed myself yesterday and I'm back up to 167 lbs. Two months ago I was at 163 lbs, so i'm rapidly climbing back up the scale.< /p>
I do go to the gym, was twice a week, but in the last two weeks i've bumped it up to 3 times a week. I do strength training with weights and cardio. I am fairly active on the weekends, as I am fortunate enough to live in an area where everything is either walking or biking distance.
The problem is, and i'm suspecting this will be most of our problem here on this site, is that we are emotional eaters. And it was great at first with the sleeve because you literally could not eat anything.. .or you were so afraid to eat anything that you just wouldn't eat it in fear of getting "that feeling" (you all know what i'm talking about).
I can take the literature and read it over and over... my doctor can send me emails and tell me what to do (eat your Protein first, dont snack, etc). In a perfect world, if I could do that, then I wouldn't have needed to have weight loss surgery in the first place. My brain tells me to eat for comfort, eat when you're happy, eat when you're sad, eat to Celebrate.... and the hard part is, now that I've figured out what I can eat with the sleeve, its becoming more and more difficult to overcome this feeling.
I have been in therapy for about 8 years trying to overcome this emotional eating issue, but its so easy to go back to what we know, rather than change it. Not making excuses... i'm just reaching out to others who may have the same feelings and eating disorder as I do... and maybe if we can get rid of that shame we feel by sharing with each other, we can overcome this need to eat to stuff our emotions. Because I do feel very shameful that I paid all of this money, risked my life in Mexico to have this surgery done... and now i'm sabotaging myself and undoing the very thing that I've wanted my entire life... to be thin and "normal". Whatever normal is...
If you haven't had the sleeve yet, please, make sure you get in tune with yourself with regard to the emotional eating, becuase although the first year or so of the weight loss is great! If you dont get your disorder under control, it will all come back, eventually.
I said at the beginning of this post that I feel hopeless, but by letting me share here, I do feel a little more hopeful than I did when I started writing this.
Thank you for listening.
Nikki

Lezzie..
i'm happy to help. I haven't written anything on this board since I joined prior to surgery...I'm not really the "group" type of person I suppose. But feels good to get it out there. Good luck to you! The sleeve will be the best thing you have ever done for yourself. But the 2nd best thing is going to therapy, work on those emotional eating issues, because you will need it. You'll be all set for the first year or two and then BAM you can eat again... again, good luck and i'm happy to have been able to help answer some of your questions. Let me know how it goes...

Hi all!
I want to share my story because I feel like things are "hopeless" again like they did all of those years I had been dieting prior to having my gastric sleeve.
I was sleeved in September of 2010 by Dr. Aceves in Mexicali. I had a wonderful experience there and would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I feel like I may need to do it again since the weight gain has started.
I started at 240 lbs and the lowest weight I got to, which was last year at this same time, was 150 lbs. At that time, I stuidly felt like I was losing too much weight, as I wanted to stay curvy, so a friend of mine who has had the lap band, suggested I find something high calorie to substitute my daily intake with so I was getting enough calories to not lose any more weight.
Being an emotional eater, this should have been a huge red flag for me, but here was an excuse for me to overindulge, so I took it. cheese was what worked for me. I ate a lot of cheese.. sometimes, nothing but cheese once I figured out it would go down easy. After that I moved onto processed crackers and Cookies, again, things that go down easily without getting full and without getting the sick feeling.
I weighed myself yesterday and I'm back up to 167 lbs. Two months ago I was at 163 lbs, so i'm rapidly climbing back up the scale.< /p>
I do go to the gym, was twice a week, but in the last two weeks i've bumped it up to 3 times a week. I do strength training with weights and cardio. I am fairly active on the weekends, as I am fortunate enough to live in an area where everything is either walking or biking distance.
The problem is, and i'm suspecting this will be most of our problem here on this site, is that we are emotional eaters. And it was great at first with the sleeve because you literally could not eat anything.. .or you were so afraid to eat anything that you just wouldn't eat it in fear of getting "that feeling" (you all know what i'm talking about).
I can take the literature and read it over and over... my doctor can send me emails and tell me what to do (eat your Protein first, dont snack, etc). In a perfect world, if I could do that, then I wouldn't have needed to have weight loss surgery in the first place. My brain tells me to eat for comfort, eat when you're happy, eat when you're sad, eat to Celebrate.... and the hard part is, now that I've figured out what I can eat with the sleeve, its becoming more and more difficult to overcome this feeling.
I have been in therapy for about 8 years trying to overcome this emotional eating issue, but its so easy to go back to what we know, rather than change it. Not making excuses... i'm just reaching out to others who may have the same feelings and eating disorder as I do... and maybe if we can get rid of that shame we feel by sharing with each other, we can overcome this need to eat to stuff our emotions. Because I do feel very shameful that I paid all of this money, risked my life in Mexico to have this surgery done... and now i'm sabotaging myself and undoing the very thing that I've wanted my entire life... to be thin and "normal". Whatever normal is...
If you haven't had the sleeve yet, please, make sure you get in tune with yourself with regard to the emotional eating, becuase although the first year or so of the weight loss is great! If you dont get your disorder under control, it will all come back, eventually.
I said at the beginning of this post that I feel hopeless, but by letting me share here, I do feel a little more hopeful than I did when I started writing this.
Thank you for listening.
Nikki

Hi all!
I want to share my story because I feel like things are "hopeless" again like they did all of those years I had been dieting prior to having my gastric sleeve.
I was sleeved in September of 2010 by Dr. Aceves in Mexicali. I had a wonderful experience there and would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I feel like I may need to do it again since the weight gain has started.
I started at 240 lbs and the lowest weight I got to, which was last year at this same time, was 150 lbs. At that time, I stuidly felt like I was losing too much weight, as I wanted to stay curvy, so a friend of mine who has had the lap band, suggested I find something high calorie to substitute my daily intake with so I was getting enough calories to not lose any more weight.
Being an emotional eater, this should have been a huge red flag for me, but here was an excuse for me to overindulge, so I took it. cheese was what worked for me. I ate a lot of cheese.. sometimes, nothing but cheese once I figured out it would go down easy. After that I moved onto processed crackers and Cookies, again, things that go down easily without getting full and without getting the sick feeling.
I weighed myself yesterday and I'm back up to 167 lbs. Two months ago I was at 163 lbs, so i'm rapidly climbing back up the scale.< /p>
I do go to the gym, was twice a week, but in the last two weeks i've bumped it up to 3 times a week. I do strength training with weights and cardio. I am fairly active on the weekends, as I am fortunate enough to live in an area where everything is either walking or biking distance.
The problem is, and i'm suspecting this will be most of our problem here on this site, is that we are emotional eaters. And it was great at first with the sleeve because you literally could not eat anything.. .or you were so afraid to eat anything that you just wouldn't eat it in fear of getting "that feeling" (you all know what i'm talking about).
I can take the literature and read it over and over... my doctor can send me emails and tell me what to do (eat your Protein first, dont snack, etc). In a perfect world, if I could do that, then I wouldn't have needed to have weight loss surgery in the first place. My brain tells me to eat for comfort, eat when you're happy, eat when you're sad, eat to Celebrate.... and the hard part is, now that I've figured out what I can eat with the sleeve, its becoming more and more difficult to overcome this feeling.
I have been in therapy for about 8 years trying to overcome this emotional eating issue, but its so easy to go back to what we know, rather than change it. Not making excuses... i'm just reaching out to others who may have the same feelings and eating disorder as I do... and maybe if we can get rid of that shame we feel by sharing with each other, we can overcome this need to eat to stuff our emotions. Because I do feel very shameful that I paid all of this money, risked my life in Mexico to have this surgery done... and now i'm sabotaging myself and undoing the very thing that I've wanted my entire life... to be thin and "normal". Whatever normal is...
If you haven't had the sleeve yet, please, make sure you get in tune with yourself with regard to the emotional eating, becuase although the first year or so of the weight loss is great! If you dont get your disorder under control, it will all come back, eventually.
I said at the beginning of this post that I feel hopeless, but by letting me share here, I do feel a little more hopeful than I did when I started writing this.
Thank you for listening.
Nikki

Hi all!
I want to share my story because I feel like things are "hopeless" again like they did all of those years I had been dieting prior to having my gastric sleeve.
I was sleeved in September of 2010 by Dr. Aceves in Mexicali. I had a wonderful experience there and would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I feel like I may need to do it again since the weight gain has started.
I started at 240 lbs and the lowest weight I got to, which was last year at this same time, was 150 lbs. At that time, I stuidly felt like I was losing too much weight, as I wanted to stay curvy, so a friend of mine who has had the lap band, suggested I find something high calorie to substitute my daily intake with so I was getting enough calories to not lose any more weight.
Being an emotional eater, this should have been a huge red flag for me, but here was an excuse for me to overindulge, so I took it. cheese was what worked for me. I ate a lot of cheese.. sometimes, nothing but cheese once I figured out it would go down easy. After that I moved onto processed crackers and Cookies, again, things that go down easily without getting full and without getting the sick feeling.
I weighed myself yesterday and I'm back up to 167 lbs. Two months ago I was at 163 lbs, so i'm rapidly climbing back up the scale.< /p>
I do go to the gym, was twice a week, but in the last two weeks i've bumped it up to 3 times a week. I do strength training with weights and cardio. I am fairly active on the weekends, as I am fortunate enough to live in an area where everything is either walking or biking distance.
The problem is, and i'm suspecting this will be most of our problem here on this site, is that we are emotional eaters. And it was great at first with the sleeve because you literally could not eat anything.. .or you were so afraid to eat anything that you just wouldn't eat it in fear of getting "that feeling" (you all know what i'm talking about).
I can take the literature and read it over and over... my doctor can send me emails and tell me what to do (eat your Protein first, dont snack, etc). In a perfect world, if I could do that, then I wouldn't have needed to have weight loss surgery in the first place. My brain tells me to eat for comfort, eat when you're happy, eat when you're sad, eat to Celebrate.... and the hard part is, now that I've figured out what I can eat with the sleeve, its becoming more and more difficult to overcome this feeling.
I have been in therapy for about 8 years trying to overcome this emotional eating issue, but its so easy to go back to what we know, rather than change it. Not making excuses... i'm just reaching out to others who may have the same feelings and eating disorder as I do... and maybe if we can get rid of that shame we feel by sharing with each other, we can overcome this need to eat to stuff our emotions. Because I do feel very shameful that I paid all of this money, risked my life in Mexico to have this surgery done... and now i'm sabotaging myself and undoing the very thing that I've wanted my entire life... to be thin and "normal". Whatever normal is...
If you haven't had the sleeve yet, please, make sure you get in tune with yourself with regard to the emotional eating, becuase although the first year or so of the weight loss is great! If you dont get your disorder under control, it will all come back, eventually.
I said at the beginning of this post that I feel hopeless, but by letting me share here, I do feel a little more hopeful than I did when I started writing this.
Thank you for listening.
Nikki

Hi all!
I want to share my story because I feel like things are "hopeless" again like they did all of those years I had been dieting prior to having my gastric sleeve.
I was sleeved in September of 2010 by Dr. Aceves in Mexicali. I had a wonderful experience there and would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, I feel like I may need to do it again since the weight gain has started.
I started at 240 lbs and the lowest weight I got to, which was last year at this same time, was 150 lbs. At that time, I stuidly felt like I was losing too much weight, as I wanted to stay curvy, so a friend of mine who has had the lap band, suggested I find something high calorie to substitute my daily intake with so I was getting enough calories to not lose any more weight.
Being an emotional eater, this should have been a huge red flag for me, but here was an excuse for me to overindulge, so I took it. cheese was what worked for me. I ate a lot of cheese.. sometimes, nothing but cheese once I figured out it would go down easy. After that I moved onto processed crackers and Cookies, again, things that go down easily without getting full and without getting the sick feeling.
I weighed myself yesterday and I'm back up to 167 lbs. Two months ago I was at 163 lbs, so i'm rapidly climbing back up the scale.< /p>
I do go to the gym, was twice a week, but in the last two weeks i've bumped it up to 3 times a week. I do strength training with weights and cardio. I am fairly active on the weekends, as I am fortunate enough to live in an area where everything is either walking or biking distance.
The problem is, and i'm suspecting this will be most of our problem here on this site, is that we are emotional eaters. And it was great at first with the sleeve because you literally could not eat anything.. .or you were so afraid to eat anything that you just wouldn't eat it in fear of getting "that feeling" (you all know what i'm talking about).
I can take the literature and read it over and over... my doctor can send me emails and tell me what to do (eat your Protein first, dont snack, etc). In a perfect world, if I could do that, then I wouldn't have needed to have weight loss surgery in the first place. My brain tells me to eat for comfort, eat when you're happy, eat when you're sad, eat to Celebrate.... and the hard part is, now that I've figured out what I can eat with the sleeve, its becoming more and more difficult to overcome this feeling.
I have been in therapy for about 8 years trying to overcome this emotional eating issue, but its so easy to go back to what we know, rather than change it. Not making excuses... i'm just reaching out to others who may have the same feelings and eating disorder as I do... and maybe if we can get rid of that shame we feel by sharing with each other, we can overcome this need to eat to stuff our emotions. Because I do feel very shameful that I paid all of this money, risked my life in Mexico to have this surgery done... and now i'm sabotaging myself and undoing the very thing that I've wanted my entire life... to be thin and "normal". Whatever normal is...
If you haven't had the sleeve yet, please, make sure you get in tune with yourself with regard to the emotional eating, becuase although the first year or so of the weight loss is great! If you dont get your disorder under control, it will all come back, eventually.
I said at the beginning of this post that I feel hopeless, but by letting me share here, I do feel a little more hopeful than I did when I started writing this.
Thank you for listening.
Nikki