I've just finished a 2 type chocolate cake - it was 1800 calories (so Chris told me after i'd eaten it - I didn't care)... y'no the best of it? I don't even particularly like sweeties !...

For my T for the last 3 nights running i've had chinese curry sauce with prawn crackers (partly coz of the taste - mostly coz I knew it'd go through easy).. I've eaten crisps all week too..

I'm so fed up with myself ! Whats wrong with me??? It's almost like the more people tell me that "i've done so well" the more I want to go eat summat !!!

As a result of eating crap all week my weight has gone up by 3 pounds - not really a proplem - no big deal - but still a gain.. makes me wonder.. why am I doing this AGAIN?

This is how easy it is to pile the pounds back on without this surgery. No wonder I gained more than I lost over the years of dieting.

My restriction is as tight as I can have it - infact it's just right... it's ME thats the problem !!

Hormones? who knows... feeling sorry for myself?? DEFINATELY !! lol...

I'm sitting here swigging at nice cold Water "trying" to stop myself going into the fridge to eat anything that i'm not supposed to.. It's not working... so I thought... type & say how I feel... I've just read it & thought.... what a lot off old toss !!!

Don't ya just hate these types of posts??? The ones where we know the poster knows the answer too - but just can't see it for themselves?

och I don't know.... hit submit before I change me mind !

Aud x

Nancy, thanks for the comment from your dietician that said it takes a "good year" to get healthy eating habits under control. I hurt my band this week (ate the most since banding.) I hope I didn't do any damage, but I don't have my eating under control yet. While I don't completely agree with Donali's post about "MO being a disease" I can agree that whatever is wrong with us controls me (just me, I'm not talking for anyone else.) I have zero control over my thoughts at night. Sometimes I have moments when I fight the thoughts, but most of the time the thoughts are stronger than I'll ever be.

I personally think there are several categories of morbidly obese people. Many people here were thin growing up, so their mind has been programed as a thin person in the past. I don't think it's fair to lump them in with someone like me who weighed 175 as a child. I've been fat my entire life. I can't agree with Donali about the Band helping me overcome my condition, either, since my hunger is hardly ever in my belly - it comes from the voices in my head that tell me to eat regardless of PBs, golfballs in my throat or fear of stretching my pouch. Donali never got full without the Band, but I would be stuffed to the gills, barely breathing. So I think there's lots of different categories, and until each category is broken down, there's really no way to determine the cause or diagnosis.

I do agree with a lot of that very big and colorful post about our disease, but I can't grasp it entirely because MY personal eating disorder is not physical whatsoever, it's all in my head. When I eat decent meals and feel satisfied, I lose weight, and I'm never physically hungry. I could eat pizza for Breakfast, tacos for dinner and loaded nachos for dinner and a cup of Ben & Jerry's for a snack at night and wear size 12, but I can't control my portions cuz my head tells me to eat 4 times the amount.

While I don't completely agree with Donali's post about "MO being a disease"...

Just remember - you are not agreeing or disagreeing with ME - I am quoting medical experts who say that morbid obesity is a disease - and has been recognized as one by the NIH since 1985.

You can agree or disagree with them - they're the ones who have done the research, not me. I'm just passing along the information.

I think medical experts are full of SH*!#$%T a lot of the time. In this case, however, it seems logical to me to err on the side of possibility. It is hard for me to accept that MO is a disease in my understanding of the word, because I feel like I should have control over my weight, and what I eat, and I feel like I don't. I have no doubt I feel that way because society has taught me that. If I had grown up in a society that taught me MO was a disease to be cured/treated, instead of the easiest to solve character flaw, then I wouldn't have grown up with self-esteem issues, and wouldn't be MO - because I would have been receiving appropriate treatment all along.

But when there IS a bonafide disease out there like PW, I have to believe that there could be some mysterious, as yet undiscovered, reason WHY I am driven to eat the way I am. The fact that the band turned off a lot of that "eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat..." chatter seemed evidence to me that at least part of my problem is physical. If we have some sort of chemical imbalance that drives us to eat, that is ALSO a physical defect - not an emotional/psychological one. However, until someone can isolate it and prove it, the "educated" people can get away with making it a willpower problem, because it is virtually impossible to see/know the difference. Once the physical defect (if any) is taken care of, then we can really see how much of our problem is emotional/psychological.

I have willpower. Just not around food without my band... Or without Meridia...

I'm just popping in to this debate... It has been a beautiful sunny winter this year (VERY VERY unusual for us) and I have been snacking too much too. I haven't really gained back and forth but I get in long plateaus and I know its because I eat too much of the wrong foods. I even got a fill a couple of weeks ago and I can tell it is tighter but I still manage to get the wrong foods to go down... Or maybe its the easy to swallow foods... I strive to get my protein in and do eat a lot of meat and cheese but I also love nice soft quiche, mashed potatos, chocolate, etc. This next week is my birthday so I'm sure more of those favorites are coming but I definitely need to cut back on the quantity I consume. My hubby works swing shift so I am home all alone every weekday evening and seem to munch all evening long. In the morning it has been tough getting anything down but it gets progressively easier (only a little in regards to meals... dinner still seems tight and tough) thru-out the day. I don't know why snacks always seem to go down so deliciously easy. Anyway we all struggle with this problem. Nobody is alone and we all must learn our own ways of dealing with it. I don't want to have to think that because it is cloudy in a given week that is automatically going to smash my success. Best wishes all, Teresa

Oops, when I said, "Donali's post" I meant the article you shared, not your post. Sorry 'bout that.

And I don't necessarily disagree with it, I just think it needs a lot more work. Yes, I have a disease, I'm just not sure that the disease is Morbid Obesity. I think the obesity part is a symptom of the disease. I call mine OCOD (Obsessive Compulsive Overeating Disorder.) So I am in agreement to a certain degree, I just think the subject needs a lot more research into categories.

"The fact that the band turned off a lot of that "eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat..." chatter seemed evidence to me that at least part of my problem is physical."

I am completely different, because the Band did not turn off the chatter. The chatter won't shut up, it never does. It starts after work and gets louder and louder till I finally fall asleep, which is why the problem isn't physical for me. For me it's 100% mental.

One thing we can agree on is that we are sick, that's not debatable.

I have always been a summer loser and a winter gainer. It seems to me that the weather and temps play a huge role in the foods I crave. Winter = chili, stews, pot roasts, homemade breads; Summer = fresh garden veggies, salads with grilled chicken, kabobs!

But then I eat ice cream year around.

This thread is EXACTLY why I love this board. I don't think everyone has to agree all the time to be a happy group. I think discussion like this actually helps everyone. I think it's fantastic that people can post what they feel, apologize if they think they have hurt someone, and still maintain their own individual feelings about a subject. That's what makes this board unique.

Lisa- I feel a lot like you do with my eating. I'm going to post a new thread about it.

megan

I agree with Megan. This is a very instructive and thought-provoking thread and I thank everyone who has posted and who will post on it. I've been stealing glances when I have a few minutes but all in all haven't had time to really formulate any thoughts about my own condition/disease/experience. Suffice it to say you've got me thinking, which is MILES ahead of where I've been. Thanks!!

I am completely different, because the Band did not turn off the chatter. The chatter won't shut up, it never does. It starts after work and gets louder and louder till I finally fall asleep, which is why the problem isn't physical for me. For me it's 100% mental.

One thing we can agree on is that we are sick, that's not debatable.

I agree, we are all different, and we all gain or lose weight different. I don't have the chatter in my head, I don't wake up in the middle of the night to get something to eat. And I don't agree that I am sick because of my weight.

When I was five years old, we were on our way to a Sunday outing, my Dad, Mom, and my three brothers. A car crossed the line and came over and hit us head on. My father broke one leg into 50 pieces. He was in a cast from his chest to his toes for over a year. My mother broke her kneecap and hit her mouth and lost all her teeth. One of my brothers hit his mouth, knocked out his teeth, and two of his teeth went down in his lungs. He also hurt his knee and broke his jaw, and had pins in it. One of the other brothers lost his front teeth, and my other brother and I was just bruised up.

We had no money coming in our house at all for a very long time. My Mother was a great cook, but everything she cooks was southern and very fattening. We lived on pots of Beans, stews, and every Sunday we had fried chicken. Most of all, almost every meal we had was based around what kind of potatoes we were having. Potatoes was the base of all our meals, and most were fried or mashed with gravy. food was hard to come by since money was so scarce, so we had to finish our plates of food, and couldn't waste any.

I learned to cook exactly like my Mother, and once I got married and had children, I started gaining weight. I didn't lose the weight between my children, which started me off on a huge weight gain. I didn't exercise like I should have, or eat the right foods. The only way I knew to cook was how my Mother taught me. Just like the old saying "You can't teach old dogs new tricks" I just didn't realize the way I was cooking was causing me to gain so much weight.

Losing weight has been extremely hard for me because of the way I cook, and because of lack of exercise. I am learning I can fix meals without the potatoes or the other starches. I am learning just because I fix my DH those things, that I don't have to eat them. I am learning I can fix some veggies and fill up just as good on them as the starches. I am learning I have to exercise to get this weight off. I am learning that no one except me can do this, and I am also learning that I have to want it bad enough to do all of that.

Do I think I am sick because I have gained this weight and have problems getting it off? NO! I just think I have to learn the right foods to eat and the right way to cook without all the grease/oils. My dear Mother, bless her heart, didn't even realize that cooking with lard was bad for her. She cooked with it right up until a couple of years before she died at the age of 83, and she was in such bad health I finally told her it would be best if she didn't use it anymore. She grew up eating lard sandwiches because of the depression, so using lard to cook with was a natural thing for her. I followed her footsteps using lard and cooking just like she had, so now I have habits to break too.

I think almost everyone on these boards has a reason why they gained weight if they go back and really think about it. And yes, I do believe it can be a sickness for some people, but not everyone.

It took me a long time to realize it's my problem, and I am the one that has to work at getting the weight off. If I sit on my lazy butt and don't do anything about it, then it's my fault. I have chosen to get this band to use as a tool, to move my butt and to eat the right foods, and guess what? It's working, and I feel great! I am lovin life again for the first time in a long time.

I have always been a summer loser and a winter gainer. It seems to me that the weather and temps play a huge role in the foods I crave. Winter = chili, stews, pot roasts, homemade breads; Summer = fresh garden veggies, salads with grilled chicken, kabobs!

But then I eat ice cream year around.

I think we're sisters, blossom. lol

"NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD AS BEING THIN FEELS"..............

I love that!!!!! I will always say that to myself!!!!!

If I had the mental ability to simply make better choices and get more exercise, then I wouldn't have needed the Band. Like I said, there are a lot of different reasons for obesity, so I started a new thread, "Why are you fat." But still, I personally feel that anybody who goes to the drastic extreme of surgical intervetion for weight loss has got to be sick. One way or another, we aren't a well group (or we weren't before losing weight, I should say.)

Hi Betty,

Good post. I don't know if I would neccessarily call my obesity an illness but in my case it is obviously hereditary. I am the spitting image of my grandmother and great great grandmother. Heaviness runs in my family everywhere. I also know people who are very thin and can eat whatever they want. It seems obvious there is something different in my metabolism when I see people like that. I was thin till I was about 3 years old and then I started getting heavy. My parents were dealing with emotional stuff at the time so I don't know if that changed their meals or what but I also have always eaten too big of portions and I think being on the depo shot for the last 9 years has played a role in my adult obesity. One clinic had quit giving me the shot because of my huge weight gain but I continued getting it elsewhere. New evidence shows that shot definitely causes bone loss, so just recently I switched off of it to a lower dose pill. I think many factors have played a role in my weight problem and they have all compounded it. I think insurance companies should be more willing to treat it as a disease and treat it as such. If I even mention weight when I see my family practitioner my insurance refuses to pay and sends me the bill for the entire visit regardless of what the appointment was actually for. That is very wrong in my books. Best wishes, Teresa

Lisa - I lost 120 pounds in 7 months, but I put it all back on again. I can lose the weight, but I can't keep it off. And, each time I gain it back, I gain back a little more than I lost. When you live a lifetime of eating wrong, and not exercising then it is a hard habit to break. I don't want to lose 120 pounds just to gain it all back again. The band is a tool to help me keep the weight off, just like it will for you. If you take your band out now, you will most likely gain your weight back again. Everyone has different reasons for why they got the band. I got the band to help me lose the weight, but also keep the weight off. I also got the band to better my health, which is my number 1 priority. Evey year I get older, the harder it is to lose. Let's face it, the older we get our metabolism changes! I certainly don't want to have to depend on someone getting me up and down out of a chair because I am not able to do it myself.

You could ask everyone on this board and probably come up with a different answer. Everybody has different reasons why they gained weight. Everyone's story is not the same, if it was, then they certainly would have found a pill to pop and be done with it by now. Some people can take a diet pill and lose all their weight, and the next person doesn't lose a pound.

My niece was just telling me about a month ago that all the doctors in her state had a big meeting on weight loss. The conclusion to this meeting was that very few people can loose weight and keep it off. The majority of people will only lose 20 pounds no matter what they do.

I know how hard it is to lose weight, and I know for some people it is impossible. Some people will have RYN and gain everything back. Some people will lose all their weight and never have another problem. Like I said, everyone is different. What works for one person, won't work for another.

But Teresa, help me out here because you are touching on points I've been trying to make all along. You have a lifetime of obesity due to hereditary reason, depo shots, etc. (which is like saying I was lonely, I was abused, it's raining, etc.) I'm not calling them excuses, I'm calling them reasons, because I have a list of my own.

But suddenly you've lost an enormous amount of weight by reducing your food intake, which proves that our obesity boils down to the simple fact that we consume more food than we burn, regardless of the reason. It's chemical, therefore it's physical, and it's also mental. So we have Chemiphysimental Disorder. There, I came up with a name for it!

I love reading the thoughful posts on this thread. (Surprised at what you started, eh, Audrey?) Tomorrow is my six-month bandiversary, and you've given me additional cause for reflection.