One in ten of us will be...

Amen. I didn't want to change my relationship to food. Food and I got along okay, we had a really good relationship. No way did I want to ruin a beautiful thing.

But my demon was GERD, and NOTHING would cure the GERD but losing the weight (and that wouldn't cure it fast enough, it was literally destroying my larynx).... or getting RNY (the procedure alone can cure or put into remission GERD for certain folks)

I considered losing weight a nice bonus on the side (and I love it!) but the big BIG deal was killing the GERD before it ruined my life and made it impossible for me to teach. (The damage, sadly, was already done.... I still get laryngitis EVERY BLEEPING day.)

I didn't get the RNY for any other reason but in the forlorn hope I would be able to regain full use of my voice. The GERD is gone, and it's only painful to speak perhaps 25% of the time, instead of 100% of the time. That was the only TIPPING point that made RNY right for ME.

I completely agree!

Though, I must say I haven't got any sort of hormonal imbalance, no PCOS, no issues at all that would cause me to carry around an extra 200 lbs of me. I also realize that I "Owned" every one of those extra ounces. Those extra ounces are (or rather WERE) thansgiving dinner 1990, and that summer I spent with a chef, and overindulgence in coca cola.. I own every extra pound.. But they didn't get there due to addiction. They got there for a variety of reasons, but again, it wasn't due to addiction. It wasn't something I couldn't stop at any time.

Some people called me an addict now and again. I hated the thought, the concept, anything to do with addiction, the very concept freaked me out. (I think I fear addiction more than spiders and heights, and I can't handle those at all). I discovered, after one challenge that I was addicted to food, that I could easily stop eating without craving food. I once went a week without eating anything other than one serving of plain non-fat yoghurt a day. I didn't crave food. In fact, my husband, when he met me, was flummoxed by my attitude towards food. I didn't snack, didn't own snack foods. If I wasn't paying attention I'd forget to eat. It was not unusual for me to get to the end of the day, and try to remember when I last ate, and realize that I forgot... all day long. From what I understand of addiction, a person will crave, desire, rationalize or otherwise the thing they are addicted to. Since I don't crave food, and was never all that into food, it makes sense to say I wasn't addictedd to it.

You don't have to be addicted something to over-indulge in it. I know that my issues were:

A) I didn't understand the basics of nutrition, and what I thought I knew was so upside down, that most of my attempts to diet were undermined before I began, because the diet I was sold on when I was younger was "fat is bad, sugar is good".... and I gained a lot of weight on that.
B) I went through a period of situational depression that was pretty dark. Amongst other things, my sister was almost murdered, she and I were threatened at gunpoint that we were dead if she testified, I was witness to a separate heinous crime that put dozens of individuals in jail, my father's union was on strike, and he wa**** by a bus, and then I was babysitting my brother and he died while in my care. These events took place in a 4 month period of my life when I was 15 years old. I was depressed, and my parents, having lost their only son, were too caught up in their own emotional issues to pay much attention to me. I admit it, I "fed" the emptiness inside me, and it didn't take away the emptiness, but it sure added pounds. I gained 100 pounds before I dragged myself up out of that negative placce where I resided between the years of 15 and 18.
C) I injured my back and immobility added on some more pounds.
D) I married a foodie who could not comprehend anyone who didn't eat three (large) meals a day. I had ultimately fallen into the habit of one large meal a day prior to meeting hubby. When I met him I was prettty poor, and since my job then provided free meals (I was a live in teacher at a boarding school), I ate 3 meals a day, cafeteria (fattening) food... and hubby started to make sure I ate "properly".... I was maintaining my weight prior to meeting hubby but his efforts to make sure I ate "right" resulted in another 100 pounds.
E) I didn't then, and still don't care to exercise.

I did realize, post WLS, that I did get a "rush" out of being full... the sensation of fullness was the primary reason I ate one HUGE meal every day... I liked how it felt to be full. Perhaps I was addicted to that, or perhaps that is the main reason I always had large helpings. Whatever the case, food itself isn't my big deal. Not addicted.

Thanks to post ... Not everyone who overeats and get fat is an addict and not every addict will overeat.
 
Beside the hormones, pain pills - and back problem that made my exercise close to impossible - I did get fat because I ate too much at times. Not all the time. Also - the obesity gene in my family and the way we learn to eat  - the food the way we cooked - made it so easy to gain weight. But until the back issue - I kept my weight under control by being active, following healthy diet - I was never skinny - but not MO.  The back problem and steroids changed that.   Once I become insulin resistant and could not fix that with exercise (still can only do very mild - or may end up with severe back pain) - the surgery looked like the only solution.

Thank you I agree. I'm not trying to tell anyone that the calories weren't all my own choice. Unlike a goodly proportion of individuals on here for whom i have serious sympathy... who have PCOS... I can't even fall back on that as a reason for my obesity. mental and emotional trauma in my young life started me down the path, and a few injuries along the way made it harder, my mixed up nutso understanding of nutrition (slapping my own head over being so messed up), and then having a foodie for husband all sealed the deal. Even postop my current issues right now with a tiny bit of regain are down to two separate issues: Having surgery on my tailbone which necessitated 8 weeks of utter immobility... the muscle mass I lost was the worst of all, because having lost that muscle mass I just stopped needing as many calories, and it's been over a year, and I still need to try to get that muscle tone up. (tomorrow I'm going to start a water aerobics class ... my first real attempt at out-and-out exercise since surgery... the original RNY surgery).

I mostly detest people who over-simplify the condition of obesity. To a huge chunk of the population Obesity = can't keep your trap shut. But most of us here on OH understand that obesity is something with many facets, intertwining and complex. for me it's reasons A, B, C, D, etc etc etc. For someone else it's another reason, for a third person it's addiction or pregnancy or hormone changes. We all know that it is not as simple as "eat right and exercise" if it was REALLY that simple then obesity would be less prevalent. But that over-simplification "they can't shut their pie hole and move their butt" just angers me. It presumes that a person doesn't KNOW they are fat, and doesn't DO anything to stop BEING fat.

 I see that you had a revision. Obviously you being a food addict stuffed yourself mindlessly with your first procedure and needed another one. Let me know how the revision is doing after you are mindlessly stuffing your pie hole this time too.  Kelly can stand up for herself just fine, but you need to back off!  Jane

 hahahaahah - 

exactly, this is why I had any type of wls...the revision was because of the damage my lap band did to my stomach causing so much tissue damage and hiatal hernia....it wasn't just a frivolous cure all for me.  HOwever I do address my food addiction in a 12 step program so I have not had to compulsively overeat or be in denial for 10 years.  Bravo and by the grace of god I won't relapse.  At least I don't get aggressively defensive over the issue of addiction anymore.  There is no shame in it but there are symptoms and denials. Obesity is a symptom of addiction....just like over drinking is a symptom of alcoholism.

Am I missing something here?  You say that you haven't had to compulsively overeat or be in denial for 10 years, yet you weighed over 240 lbs?  How on earth did you get to be over 240 lbs without overeating if only addicts are morbidly obese and you have been in recovery from food addiction for 10 years?  One would assume that if one is in recovery from an addiction that one doesn't practice that addiction, IE compulsive overeating.  So, you ate normally for 10 years and still got over 240 lbs?  I did that and it took a boatload of food eating compulsively over a long period of time to get there.  Unlike others, I don't think I have metabolic issues.  In fact, I probably would have done just fine with just a restrictive procedure like the sleeve as I lost too much with restriction plus malabsorption.  That may have been overkill for me, although when I was practicing my addiction I managed to out eat a very malabsorptive procedure.  I am not proud to say that I am one of the few people I have heard of to regain 100 lbs with a DS.  That is the kind of over eater I am.  I could probably out eat a tapeworm.
I used to go to OA for years.  I have no problem with it.  I think it is a great program.  What I had a problem with were people talking about being in recovery from compulsive overeating that weighed 300 lbs and were stuffing themselves with cake every night, because it was allowed on their "abstinence".  Unlike alcoholism, people in OA could define their abstinence to overeating and apparently some people had very liberal definitions of abstinence.

I don't know if I've ever said it, but I think you're one of the best people on here. You have a very valuable story, and you share it unstintingly. I truly appreciate you, and really feel good to know you count me as a friend. You're so cool!

While I probably have a messed up metabolism from years and years and years of one-meal-a-day or if I skipped a day or two, then one humongous meal to make it all up... but overall it's just a matter of calorie intake to calorie burn ratios.

Ah, that is so nice of you to say.  You are without a doubt one of my favorite people here, too.  I hope someday to have the pleasure of meeting you in person.
Maybe I was lucky that I never really dieted much so my metabolism wasn't that messed up.  One good thing I did get from OA is that diets don't work and even the times I was normal sized it wasn't through dieting but by eating in a healthy way, not really depriving myself but not eating the things that I knew I couldn't eat in moderation.  I was never a moderation person so when I cut out the sugar and wheat and just ate 3 meals a day I managed to stay a pretty normal size, at least for as long as I could keep it up.  It was keeping it up that was the problem.   That is one thing my surgery has done to help me is keep me from feeling hunger.  Maybe my surgeon did me a favor by removing my remnant stomach because I have hardly felt hunger since my surgery and it was the voracious hunger that always made me fail every eating plan and go back to eating things that I knew would just make me want more.