Diet after Sleeve (fear of my own sabotage)

[kmorri 1,689]

Having gastric sleeve surgery is way way better than dieting on your own.....Like so many others have said. I tried every diet out there. I was even successful on a few of them......short term!!! I lost 60 lbs on my own with a diet I made up for myself.....it was low carb for the most part. Basically I just stopped eating breads, Pasta, rice, and any starchy veggie....I ate lean meats, eggs, non-starchy veggies, and fruit........but to make a long story short, I lost the 60 pounds, but ended up gaining it all back plus a whole lot more!!

My problem wasn't really "what" I ate but rather how much I ate. I always ate very fast and ate an enormous amount.....

Now with the sleeve, I'm forced to eat slow, otherwise I'll be done after two or three bites.....so I eat slow and always eat my Protein first and most of the time I'm able to eat between 2 and 3 ounces of a meat like chicken, pork, fish...etc.

I am 4 months post surgery, I've lost a total of 73 pounds and I am still very surprised at how little I need to eat to feel completely satisfied!! It's hard for folks who have not had surgery to understand that......Like my husband and my sisters thought I ate small amounts just because that was all my tiny tummy would allow........they didn't realize that I also felt like I had just ate Thanksgiving dinner, and actually didn't want anymore.

Having weight loss surgery is a huge life changing thing. You must be prepared to eat healthy for the rest of your life for it to work........do all the research you can do....then do some more! I can honestly say this surgery is the greatest gift I have ever given myself. I have zero regrets!!

Good luck to you in whatever you decide is best for you.

[Megall9 268]

Before surgery I was an emotional eater. Didn't matter what the emotion was, I would eat. Celebrating? Eat! Sad? Eat! I'm just a hair over being 4 months post op and everything is so different now. I focus on the rules of my new way of eating, just as my NUT instructed me to do. I still look at Desserts and think "Yum! I want that!" but have no trouble saying no because I'm either full, or it's not worth wasting the calories on. Seeing and feeling how your body can change so drastically in such a short time also makes it easier to keep making the right choices.

[smg 471]

The good news is that in the beginning (immediately post-op), if your experience is like mine was, you'll find it difficult to put away enough food to really worry about sabotaging yourself. I didn't have the desire to eat constantly like I did pre-op. I did have urges, but they went away quickly and I attribute them to nothing more than head hunger.

If you keep yourself nourished and feed your body healthy foods, your cravings will subside over time. In the beginning, the "hunger" or "cravings" are mostly (if not totally) mental. They come and go and like anything else, if you stay away long enough, they pass for good (my experience).

Having said all of that, you really do need to go into this with a different mindset toward food than perhaps you had prior to surgery. I love food...always have...always will. Now I just love different foods, and a lot less of it. It's not an easy road, but it is one filled with a lot more happiness....at least mine has been. Best of luck!

[Alex Brecher 10,494]

@@stefanie0804,

You are right to ask this question! Weight loss surgery is scary and the gastric sleeve is irreversible, so you definitely want to be sure you are making the right choice before you commit to it.

You have gotten some good advice on this thread, and it is also good to remember that it is an individual decision. It is up to you.

I would ask yourself what worked and didn’t work for you in the past when losing weight. Why could you lose weight (if you could ever), and why did it come back on (if you were yo-yo dieting)?

Then go through the reasons why you had trouble losing weight and keeping it off, and for each one, ask whether the sleeve is going to help you with that. For example, the sleeve will not force you to make healthy food choices (at least, not after the first bit once you recover fully from surgery and are able to tolerate a variety of foods), although it may help, since you might get in the habit of eating healthy as you follow the post-op recovery diet, and also since you might (but you might not) have trouble tolerating sugary and/or fatty foods.

Or take hunger as another example. You will probably be less hungry, which would of course prevent binging out of hunger if that is what you have done in the past. However, some sleeve patients still have hunger, and if that is the case for you, how will you prevent a binge?

I would suggest going through each reason and each scenario for how the sleeve might affect it and how you will handle it in each case. I know – it is such a tough decision! Good luck, and keep asking questions as you need to.

[sc101071 398]

The loss of hunger so far has been a huge benefit. It may come back. But if you do as you're told and eat your Protein and hold off on drinking for half an hour, you have a magnificent tool to reign in hunger and prevent loss of control eating.

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