Does the VSG work for grazers?

The question is -- are you ready to make the committment to change. It's not like you have surgery and wheeee....you're thin.  It's just a tool. Have you ever known someone who wears the patch but still smokes.  It's dangerous, it's not good, but they still do it. Same thing.

I used to eat all the time.  I thought of food every moment of the day. I couldn't say no to anything, let alone just have one. I would eat bags of m&m's and skittles, because I didn't have unwrap anything.

Now, things are different.  I'm not hungry..and don't need or want to graze. I don't have the sweet tooth I had before, so it's easy to say no to the junk.   At my niece's bridal shower, I didn't want the cupcakes, cookies and candy...i just really didn't want it.  I had a small piece of wrap and a few pieces of cheese and salami.  Before, I would have eaten everything and more.

But, some days, I want the junk -- I want to eat skittles..but I tell myself no.  It's  not worth it. Somedays are harder than others.  But I still have to work at it...so will the surgery work..yes, if you work the tool you are given.

 OMG you discribed me. Are we twins separated at birth????

:)  maybe....

I eat 6-7 times a day! I might grab a cheese stick, or some friut or shrimp, or ham roll ups...get the picture?!

I cannot eat 3 times a day. It's NOT my lifestyle. I own my own business, have very active 7 yo twin boys and traveling playing poker.

I'm down 62 lbs since my last weight-in (I only weigh myself every now and then - no sense of being a slave to the scale) and my WL doc is happy with my progress.

As long as you make good choices and don't fall into old patterns which got you to being overweight, then you're ok with grazing.

Good luck!

Hi Jen-I was and still am a grazer.  Not as much as I was preop.  Before WLS it was the non brain eating trying to anesthetize what ever pain I was feeling at the time.  But with that being said, now I have to watch my grazing very carefully so that I get the proper foods in.  I do start each day with a good high protein meal.  I think that eating regular meals with snacks is easier but this WLS can still help if your style is to graze.  Like I said you HAVE watch what you graze on and make sure you get in the nutrients that you need.

Good luck on your journey!
Carole

like everything else it will depend on the individual. also, we might not all mean the same thing by "grazing".

when I was pre-op I always ate the most healthy - and maintained instead of gaining weight - when I ate frequently. get hungry, eat, feel full, go back to whatever I was doing and get hungry again 1 to 4 hours later depending. frequently ate every hour or two. still pre-op, I gained weight whenever I was eating only a few times a day in huge, huge portions. like, eat alarge (thin crust) pizza and still want desert.

I expected to and do eat frequently now and it still works for me. I guess this is grazing - eating a little something all day long. breakfast, instead of a meal, is what I eat between 5 am and 10 am. what I eat from after 10 am until 4 pm is lunch and, you guessed it, whatever I eat after that is dinner.

this worked before and it works now. I have given up the large portion "meals" forever, thanks to VSG.

I suppose it should go without saying - but doesn't so I'm saying it - that what I am eating is FOOD, not empty calories.

People have a different reaction to the removal of ghrelin...my reduction in hunger was immediate and intense.  I have NO hunger and it's awesome.  If you are hungry all the time (as I was) you may have a sensitivity to ghrelin that will be very much helped by a VSG.  But there is no way to know for sure.

I think this surgery CAN work for grazers for one simple reason -- I am eating (or drinking) all day long.  At least in the begining, it takes so long to eat things, you eat so little, you're so full for so long, you're so focused on getting in all your water, all your protein, all your whatever...there is never a moment of the day when I am not putting something in my mouth.  (LOL!)

Now, I am early out and that changes...within a few months you can eat more at one time.  And you DO need to make the right choices...for the rest of your life.  You DO have to have discipline...but it's the discipline to eat half a string cheese instead of a cupcake.  

It's all about YOU.  The surgery is tool, and it's a damn good one.  Miraculous, even.  But it can be sabotaged, so you need to fully understand what you're getting yourself into...and make the changes you need to make.  The sleeve just makes it SOOOOO much easier to do all that.

MM 

I used to eat all the time.  I would eat a meal and then 20 minutes later be snacking on some chips or something.  I ate when I was hungry, bored, watching tv. Everything!  This surgery has totally helped me.  I still have the hunger feelings.  That never went away.  But, I eat a couple bites and am totally full.  Would be miserable if I ate another bite.  A dinner for me now is like 2 meatballs.  That's it.  Once the weight started coming off it was easier too not to graze.  You see progress and you want to keep it going that way.  Atleast that's how it has been for me.  Even when I do snack now, it's not that much. 

   I think some people here are getting caught up in the semantics of the word "grazer".

   Of course post op we eat small portions very often (makes sense, tummy is tiny and we can't fit a lot of nutrients in it at once).

  When you speak of grazing pre op, I think there are a couple of types. One, sure.... maybe kinda hungry all the time. MOST people have great hunger control after the surgery, but not all. I'm lucky, my hunger can reach maybe a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1-10 now. I was like you, it felt like I needed a lot of calories to not feel physical hunger. I was a volume eater at meal time though.

  The type of grazer that people are speaking of the surgeries not working well for.... is the person that has to put food in their mouth all of the time because it's their drug and they are attempting to quell some emotional pain. If someone doesn't deal with the root of that, and do some healing, then removing most of the stomach and the hunger hormone will not help a lot. I think this is the case for some of our folks, who are struggling still after surgery. Don't get me wrong, I DID do some emotional eating, but probably 75% of my eating was because I felt hungry.

   It's very freeing to not feel like you're starving all of the time!!! I do eat when I feel hungry (low level hunger) and I do eat every few hours because for me, this keeps my blood sugar steady. It's way easier to make good choices, especially when you get so excited because you see the scale dropping!!!

   If I feel the desire to eat that does not come from hunger..... and it comes from "wanting something" I stop myself from doing so. I don't indulge in what I wanted. I substitute something healthy. These urges are very infrequent though. Mostly controlled by WILL to be someone with a healthy relationship with food.

   I hope this helped. If you follow the post op rules (drink lots of water, protein and produce before other foods, getting your supplements, etc) you should do beautifully with the sleeve!!!!

Meg

Very well put MEG!!!