Hellooooooooooo.

I'm Jacquie. I'm getting a gastric sleeve on the 21st. I've been cautiously researching stuff. Quick sidebar-I had a double mastectomy a few years ago thanks to a cancer scare, and I didn't know about the "drains" until a week before I got the surgery. Had I known earlier, there's no way I would have gone through with it and I probably wouldn't be here today.

Anyway , in the interest of not scaring myself out of this, I'm wondering if someone could explain the "restriction" thing, bearing in mind that if it's too gross I will have nightmares.

Thanks!

Edited December 13, 20223 yr by jacquiecdv

Restriction to me is the emotional or mental feeling of wanting to eat a whole pizza but after a few bites, you feel you have had enough. The build up to the point is different to everyone. Everyone has different signals like runny nose, hiccups, pressure in their upper chest... Etc. I just feel satisfied. I stop early, at about 75% full. I learned in the early days of my first surgery 2008, one bite too many can give you hours and hours of being uncomfortable. I recently went through another new learning curve after my revision to bypass ( for gerd).

Ok. So it's not necessarily eating one bite too much and projectile vomiting for an hour. Thank you. Sounds a bit more mellow than I imagined.

Restriction for me is simply feeling stomach bubbles & a bit of tightness on my chest but not in a scary way. Its just my bodies way of telling me I'm getting full. Nothing scary or gross!

As others have said, how you experience restriction will be different than others - it varies widely from person to person. For me, I feel chest pressure. No pain, nothing uncomfortable, but its definitely nothing like feeling "full" before surgery. This is more just a sort of immediate awareness in my chest. That's when I stop eating. That's nearly always followed by one really loud hiccup. It has changed a little over time (I'm 15 months post-op), but by and large its pretty consistent and I've learned to listen to it.

On the exactly ONE occasion I ate beyond that, I was nauseous and uncomfortable, so I walked laps in my living room for 20 minutes or so and it settled.

No violent projectile vomiting ever.

First: Congratulations on beating your cancer or cancer scare! That's a HUGE THING!

Second: Restriction is basically just what bariatric patients refer to as being "full". We refer to it as restriction because we don't want to get stuffed or over filled as it tends to make us sick. No need to worry about it, you just have to learn your new bodies signals and understand when you are feeling said "restriction" before you eat too much.

Thank you all for the thoughtful responses. (And the nice words about my beating cancer, @kcuster83 . I tend to forget that experience as time goes by. I need to remind myself that it was kind of a big deal and gather more strength from it. :))

Based on your responses, my takeaway is that getting to the restriction point is your body's way of saying that the sleeve is full, and anything el se you try to stuff in there is going to remain in your esophagus. I'm going to posit that THAT is the source of the discomfort.

I have a friend who has an abnormally narrow esophagus. He'll eat, the food won't go down and he'll have to vomit. At that point he can't even sip water...he immediately gets sick. This can happen with any type of food that gets lodged in there and doesn't easily break down with stomach acids, which I guess also start backing up into the esophagus. He has gotten a procedure to dilate the esophagus every few years because over time, the space narrows again. Restriction sounds like a version of this, milder and able to be controlled, but ultimately resulting from stuff being stuck in the esophagus. Does that sound close?

Edited December 13, 20223 yr by jacquiecdv

I think the way most people use it refers to the difference between the volume of food you were able to consume pre-surgery and the comparatively tiny amount you can consume after surgery. It's definitely nothing gross; it's just that "ope better stop" feeling you get after a little bit of eating. Nothing gross about it; that's what the surgery is supposed to do.

Yeah - agree with everyone else - nothing to do with backing up into the oesophagus/vomiting, everything to do with getting a cue that my pouch is full and that nothing more will fit in easily. I've ignored it a little for various situational reasons over the last year but it's only resulted in discomfort and a renewed initiative to stick with the programme - never random vomiting. I hope you get over this mental hump and have your surgery OP!!!

21 hours ago, jacquiecdv said:

I'm Jacquie. I'm getting a gastric sleeve on the 21st. I've been cautiously researching stuff. Quick sidebar-I had a double mastectomy a few years ago thanks to a cancer scare, and I didn't know about the "drains" until a week before I got the surgery.

I hope you know that there will be a drain or drains following your bariatric surgery! I found them uncomfortable but bearable.

The restriction has physical symptoms. It’s a tightness across your chest. I find myself thumping my chest as if that will help move the food through my digestive system & ease the tightness - it doesn’t. The goal is not to feel the restriction as it is generally a signal you’ve eaten too much. Sometimes, though, I find it sneaks up on me. Stress, eating denser food or foods that sit heavily in my tummy (bread, pasta, rice, cous cous, potato, & such) can set it off early when I’ve eaten very little.

You wont start to feel it until you’re more healed & on solid foods. It does fade over time & as you get better at recognising when you’ve eaten enough - not full but enough that you don’t need the next bite. Learning to recognise the difference between needing to eat & wanting to eat is some of that head work that gets talked about.

Vomiting can occur but generally you’re more likely to experience the foamies. You may feel your restriction at the same time because food is ‘stuck’ because it’s too dry, too coarse or you’ve eaten too big a bite or too quickly. You’ll spit up slimy foamy saliva & may regurgitate (not the deep muscle cramping of vomiting) the last bite or so of what you ate. My nose often runs with it. Often after you bring up that bit of food you can continue to eat after a short break. Another one of those learning things & getting to know your body’s idiosyncrasies. It’s not a common or frequent occurrence.

You may not get a drain after your sleeve surgery. I didn’t & no one I knows did, though seems more common in the US.

1 hour ago, Sunnyway said:

I hope you know that there will be a drain or drains following your bariatric surgery! I found them uncomfortable but bearable.

Yes, I heard. Actually the idea of the drain was worse than they actually were when I had my mastectomy. More than anything I was concerned that "restriction" was something like non-stop bowel distress or vomiting.

One of the biggest mis-understandings or hope to achieve post weight loss surgery, is that the surgery will force the individual to stop on a certain amount of food, or restrict the.

This is not the goal of surgery long term. Short term sure, swelling can provide false sense of restriction. However surgery has a stretch factor.

If it is helpful for you, I have created a 20min master class video comparing all surgeries and how to get the most out of each surgery regrading appetite and portion support control.

The following link will help you watch the video https://helen-bauzon1.aweb.page/p/776a1a9a-fd05-4851-a838-208a39db2975

Feel free to clarify any questions

On 12/13/2022 at 8:57 AM, jacquiecdv said:

Ok. So it's not necessarily eating one bite too much and projectile vomiting for an hour. Thank you. Sounds a bit more mellow than I imagined.

But... how to avoid that?

11 hours ago, Sunnyway said:

I hope you know that there will be a drain or drains following your bariatric surgery! I found them uncomfortable but bearable.

I did NOT have drains after WLS.

Depends on the surgeon.

Congratulations to the OP on overcoming the big 'C'.

At 19 years post-op my restriction is the same was it was at about 6 months post-op. The restriction is still a very active part of my life. It was never even hinted that the restriction was temporary or not a long term part of my solution. Being a binge eater, if my restriction eased I would have returned to binge eating. It hasn't and I haven't.

I don't know if I did or didn't do something right or wrong but I'm glad my surgery is still in full force and function. Perhaps I'm just lucky.

Another aspect of restriction is that if one doesn't chew well, a chuck of food can get stuck which will result in pain and can compel retching until it is up and out. This is not as fun as it sounds. Chewing well enough was something I had to focus on for the first few months.

I had an open surgery which means I was cut from stem to stern and opened up. I ended up with a drain because they couldn't reach something related to removing my gallbladder, bile ducts IIRC, and some 30 odd staples neither of which were the joys one would expect. The vast majority of people then and more so now have laparoscopic surgeries which involve 3 small holes and rarely a drain.

Good luck,

Tek