matellastella

225 to 140
size 20 to size 6
reached goal weight at 7 mths

8 months out. 154 lbs and finally fit into that little black dress!! So happy I made this life change even though it was difficult, I've never felt better or been healthier in my life!!

Ok I finally found a pre picture so I will try to upload them.
The teal dress is a size 10!

Before/ during (posted in another thread previously)

Creating a new thread because the other one has gotten really long.
So, here are my before and currents to keep the topic moving.

Current as of last week:

I was really hoping people here would be more understanding on this issue. Bulimia is something that has affected me on and off for the majority of my life, swinging between weights and sizes. Bulimia for me, has always been about feeling out of control, and I believe this surgery will quell that feeling. And how can you say I'm not big enough with a BMI of 30? How obese is obese enough? How is the way that I think about food any different than a person who has a BMI of 40? I am being honest about my struggles, and if this worls for me, I want to be able to talk about it to other people who live with this.
I have tried all sorts of therapy/counselling, and unfortunately, if you have an eating disorder and aren't 90 lbs or hooked up to a feeding tube, not much car. Believe me, I've been there. I would appreciate positive comments, instead of facing the negativity. There are many people on here who struggle from major pre or post-op depression, and we support them. This is another form of mental health issue that shouldn't be judged on this board. We all have our food issues to deal with. Is this one more severe? Maybe, but I would place it on the same level as binge eating, which I'd say the majority of people here probably suffered with.

Hello!
I am not a bulimic, but I am a compulsive overeater and I have been in and out of Overeaters Anonymous for 26 years and consider myself to have an eating disorder.
I am three months out, which isn’t a vet by any means, but I can give you my perspective at least. Surgery has been a great blessing, because it has allowed me to be satisfied with a smaller amount of food, and allows me to follow a food plan and lose weight. It also allows me to get back on track more easily than before.
Surgery has not *touched* the addictive component of my relationship with food. For example, I bought Quest Protein bars which came highly recommended (they’re great nutritionally). Unfortunately, they were very triggery for me and I ate two in one day, unplanned. This may not sound like much, but boy that feeling was so familiar and scary. After one, I couldn’t stop thinking about the next one, fought with it for a couple of hours and then ate a second bar. I was filled with those familiar feelings of guilt and regret. Now granted, this was only 400 calories of unplanned food which isn’t going to make me gain a bunch of weight, but I promise you I could eat 3 or 4 of those a day if I let myself and now we’re talking serious calories.
VSG only restricts the amount of food I can eat at a time, and only if it’s dense protein. Carby food like chips or sugar slide right on through. I haven’t tried popcorn myself since surgery, but several VSGers have told me they can eat a large movie-size popcorn by themselves. I have zero restriction with liquids, so I’m pretty sure I could eat a gallon of ice cream if I wanted (I’ve been mostly off the recreational sugar for the past 7 years or so).
I still have this old monkey on my back, and the surgery *has* made it a lot easier to deal with him. However, I would be cautious about expecting surgery on your stomach to address what for me, at least, is a problem in my head. I have felt shame and regret about eating food I “shouldn’t have” when I only had 800 calories the whole day. I still have to deal with having screwed-up feelings about food and screwed-up feelings about what I eat/ate even though my tummy is tiny.
This is just my experience, and yours may be completely different. I have heard people say surgery took away their hunger, surgery changed their tastes, surgery cured their cravings. This has not been my experience. Surgery makes my hunger manageable and keeps me from eating 2 pounds of food at the Chinese buffet. It doesn’t keep me from having obsessive food thoughts and my brain is still hard-wired to think that food is the solution for just about any emotional discomfort I have. Surgery helps me manage a side-effect of my food addiction (obesity), but it hasn’t made me a normal eater.
Hope this helps.