I don't care what you eat, really...

 It's none of my business.  I have a enough to handle dealing with my own food.  BUT, I do care very much about whether you are successful.  And if you're like me, surgery alone will not guarantee long-term success.

I have nothing to offer anyone other than my own experience.  And I can't help anybody figure out how to eat just a little bit of the foods that (for me) trigger enormous cravings, obsessive thinking, hunger and a spiral of compulsive eating.

I have a deeply flawed relationship with food, and my most important goal is peace of mind as far as my eating is concerned.  Surgery took me quickly to a much lower weight than I was going to be able to achieve on my own.  And my smaller tummy really does help me be satisfied with less, if I'm willing to do a certain amount of heavy lifting.

At 16 months out, I get hungry, I can eat more than I wish I could of foods that aren't good for me, and that monkey on my back still chatters away, trying to convince me that I'm fixed, I can handle whatever food I'm obsessing about, that I deserve it, that I can get back on track tomorrow.  For me, these are LIES. 

I am not the only one with a monkey on my back.  He's not a cute little Curious George monkey, he's an evil crazed lab monkey right out of "28 Days Later."  He is not my friend, he will not negotiate, he wants me to use and that's it.  For me, that's what an addiction is all about. 

Surgery did not kill the monkey.  So here I am, 16 months later, over a hundred pounds down with a mature sleeve and the ability to eat a quart of ice cream if I took a mind to.  Or a plate of french fries.  Or a large bucket of movie popcorn.  Seriously.  I promise, I cannot force myself to eat more than 3 ounces of chicken breast, but you might be surprised at what else I could put away if I wanted to.  Restriction is great, but it doesn't really "work" unless I'm willing to eat right to begin with.

What has been so wonderful, is that when I *am* willing to eat well, I am satisfied with less.  If I drink drink drink, eat mostly dense protein and vegetables, avoid the carbs, and weigh-measure-record, I can have a peaceful day with food - much more easily than was available to me before.  But if I want to stamp my foot, eat four Quest bars while telling myself I deserve them (!), drink my calories, or eat crap foods that go right through me, then the monkey starts shrieking and I spiral into a dark, compulsive place.  With a smaller tummy, but still with a monkey on back.

This may not be true for you.  But it is true for me, and I have to keep repeating it, because addicts have notoriously bad memories.  In my size 10 pants I forget life at size 26, I forget the incomprehensible demoralization of wandering zombie-like from Walgreens to Walmart buying bags of candy to eat before I got home, of buying a half a dozen donuts to eat before I got to work.  That all fades, and the monkey tells me it won't happen again.  But it can! 

Today, I want to be willing to live without excess food.  I want to be willing to do it even when I am not always successful (which I am not).  I want the willingness to keep at it no matter what, because I am not promised that this place is permanent, only possible.  Yay for all of us!

 

Great Post! Question for you, are you doing anything to find out why you have the addictions? Do you have a therapist or a group?

Great question!

I spent 26 years in Overeaters Anonymous.  It taught me everything I know about my screwed up relationship with food and tons of strategies to deal with it.  I gained and lost the weight multiple times, and felt I wasn't going to be able to do it again and maintain it without some additional assistance - hence surgery.  I have had stints of therapy throughout my life.  Therapy helped me in many ways, but not about the food stuff.  This is just my experience and not everyone's for sure.

I quit going to OA meetings (at least face-to-face) because of the surgery issue.  There's lots of opinions about surgery among OA members and it can be a distracting issue.  I have replaced it by developing a support network of like-minded folks who will call me on my **** and encourage me to keep plugging on.  I have met most of them here, but not all.  I cannot do this by myself.  I have to be part of a larger community of people.  I do not find my surgeon's group very useful, but other people have had fantastic experiences with their groups.

I do not know "why" I am a compulsive overeater, but I have had to learn a lot about what it does for me, what triggers it, etc.  I'm not sure the "why" is very important. 

It sounds like you have not really uncovered the underlying cause, you have lots of tools to deal with it but not the one to get rid of it once and for all. I am not sure I have either but I had a harsh dose of reality after surgery and some hard realization that my mother was the a large part of the reasons I overate. Even now that I have had the surgery the stuff she offers me to eat is unbelievable some times. She clearly just does not understand. But I really should say my parents were the problem. My dad was very strict and would not let us leave the table unless we finished everything on our plates. When I started eating full food again it was like a heart wrenching very difficult thing to not finish the little bit of food on my plate even though I was in excruciating pain. That was my wake up call. With a little bit of practice I am not able to take a single bite of something and throw it away. I was shocked at the physical nature of that. I still have issues with wanting to eat when I am not hungry and I am working on finding the cause of that. But it sounds to me like you are going to need to dig very deep to find it if you spent 26 years going to a group and don't have it licked. It could be something as simple as your mom gave you a slice of cherry pie when you skinned your knee when you were 4. You were comforted by the pie instead of your mother and you felt better. I think group is a good place to vent but you have to find a no nonsense therapist who will tell you when you are not facing the issue and will really dig. My wife and I had a marriage counselor like 12 years ago and even though we still have our moments we are still together.

I think theres a tendency for us to think that there will be a "Silver Bullet" cure for our compulsions to eat.  I certainly did.  I think that I am coming to realize that understanding the roots of my addiction only really helps me recognize when the addictions are triggering destructive behavior.  Understanding may be the most powerful tool, but its not a cure. 

In my garden, if I kill the root of a tree or a flower, I will eventually kill the tree or flower.  Addiction, though, seems to me more like a vine than a tree- Psychological Kudzu anyone?  It has no single root, no single point of failure that I can correct.  It has a place that it started to grow from, but after 40 years it has so completely entwined itself throughout my psyche and my life that I cannot completely eradicate it.  I can prune it, control it, live with it - but not kill it completely.

Using the garden analogy, If I leave the vine alone it will choke the life out of the tree and crush the building that its climbing. I can trim the vine and save the tree or let it become a beautiful part of the building.  But to do  that I have to recognize that trying to destroy the vine is futile and accept it as part of the landscape.

 

Yes. This. Love the vine analogy. But, it makes me think of Mom4Jazz's poison ivy. OUCH!

I would only add that we can almost all blame outside sources for our unhealthy relationship with food/sugar/drinks. Call it an addiction or don't, it doesn't matter to me. We don't get to the point of needing 85% of our stomachs cut out because we are okay with food (or sometimes drinks). Even if the gain started because of some medical conidition, I have found with the WLS friends I have who blame their weight gain on some medical condition that they are still having to deal with addictive eating patterns.

At the end of the day, it was/is our choice to perpetuate our unhealthy relationship with food. It doesn't really matter where that unhealthy relationship started, imo.

 

I like your analogy. Hopefully I don't have that many. I know that I have addressed one or two and I have others I still need to work on and I my need some help to get to the bottom of those. I have this thing when I work that if I am chewing something (gum and sunflower seeds work well) I can stay focused and my problem solving ability seems to work at peak performance. If I am not occupying my mouth with something (no obvious jokes necessary) then my brain seems to shut down. This is a tough one for me because nothing that works for me really fits into our plan. I need to get to the bottom of this. In the past I have used food to help with this, mindlessly munching on chips or popcorn to help me through. I think I was able to address a major mindset issue instilled by my parents early in my journey but I know I still have many others not the least of which when I am full I still WANT to eat, particularly when the food tastes good. I have compulsions like needing to taste things when they look good. I have a particular affinity for foods that are blue. Oh yeah, I still need some help.

 

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Even knowing why we eat, or for others, drink, doesn't change the fact that certain foods act like a drug. Or as one 12 step sponsor once said, I have an allergy to flour and sugar. An allergy is an unusual reaction to a substance. When I eat those things, I want more and more. If I abstain, I don't miss them. I've worked on my eating issues for years now, with therapists and in a 12 step program for food addiction. You can't get rid of the addiction as someone said, you have to find ways abstain from it. I've relapsed and gained the weight back too many times to question it. As rhey say in 12 step, while I'm in the rooms (abstaining), my addiction is in the parking lot doing push ups. So while I've worked hard uncovering why I eat, it has never removed the compulsion to do it anyway. Oh, and having ADD doesn't help, either.

OMG, we must have been in the same meetings!!  Were we separated at birth??

 

LNC62 - EXACTLY!  You've just summed up my story.  I've been in and out of a 12-Step Food Addiction Program since 1999 - the strictest form of OA.  I've seen 4 "food addiction specialists" - therapists - in the last two years who told me to go take a walk around the block if I am about to binge on cupcakes, or take a bath.  What a joke.  I can say I am a Food Addict because of this from my childhood, or this because of my parents, or because of that, and it all doesn't matter.  I eat because eating is my most common reaction to life.  Having a bunch of "head knowledge" is not going to stop the compulsion to run to the store for ice cream.  I am relying on this surgery for help.  I need the Monkey at bay....to give me a little reprieve from the ravenous hunger, and then I will hopefully have the willingness (and Support from fellow Sleevers)  to make better choices, to exercise and to do self care.  This is my plan, anyway.