So I know the sleeve will help you eat less but does it really help with cravings and eating the right things?

I'm almost 3 weeks post surgery and can say that with my two protein drinks a day and all the water, I really don't "crave" anything at this point. Don't get me wrong, food smells delish, but I just don't have the overwhelming urge to eat it. Went to dinner with friends last night and had grilled salmon - I ate 4 small bites of that and 4 small bites of retried beans (I was at a Mexican restaurant) and that was so filling. I was actually afraid I wasn't going to be able to keep it down.

Not really. In the beginning, yes. Once you are healed, you can eat pretty much whatever you want. All the sleeve does is force you to eat smaller portions. Head hunger, cravings, longings ... I still have them. I was in the store the other day staring at a box of Halloween Cadbury eggs and having a debate with myself if I could still eat the whole box. I finally snapped out of it and walked away. Surgery does not alleviate us of personal accountability. You still have to tell yourself "no" all the time. You still have to make sometimes-difficult decisions about what you allow yourself to consume. Nothing, I've found, about this journey comes easily. Hunger, however, improves greatly with surgery. I always made the worst decisions when I allowed myself to become hungry .. so that has empowered me greatly. I'm sure you've heard the phrase: this is surgery on your stomach, not your head.

Personally, this sounds like a POST-OP question but what the surgeon told me about cravings is that you'd need to remind yourself to eat because you will forget because you wouldn't feel hungry. Maybe cravings will increase if you're working in a restaurant or if you're constantly around food that reminds you that food is delicious, making you want it. Hopes this helps. I'm pre-op too.

For me, the cravings are reduced. But I hear a lot of people talk about how they continue.

Cravings come from different sources. Some are more physiological and some are more psychological, but all I think are some combo of the two.

I think the surgery, because of the metabolic changes that happen, does provide an opportunity to change one's relationship with food. For example, if I'm offered a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie I'm going to have a mental reaction to that - it's a food I've always loved and enjoyed and I have positive emotional associations to it. So my first thought will be yes! I really want that now! In the past if I didn't take that cookie I'd likely obsess about it and end up baking a batch of Cookies and eating a ton or just scarfing down some store bought cookies, so in some ways it often seemed best to just eat the cookie and satisfy the need.

But now - if I was to say no to the cookie I'm able to move on. It doesn't take a hold of me like it used to. So, yes, that first moment of saying no is still a little hard, but overall it's SO much easier than it used to be. And I feel like it's worth it to push myself to say no and realize that I can actually do that now. It reinforces that I now have more control over my eating than I used to. And I guess I think the more we exercise that control the stronger that muscle becomes.

I've seen that line a bunch of times, that the surgery is on our stomach, not our brains, but in a lot of ways it IS on our brains because of the metabolic changes, and changes in the hunger-stimulating hormones. Those changes really can change our relationship with food, but perhaps we need to work on changing our habits as well to help maximize the impact.