One in ten of us will be...

 I had the lapband 10 years ago. Never lost the weight.  Couldn't lose the weight. Now with the rny I have lost most of the weight...I went to 500-700 calories a day which during the lapband I was eating 1200 per day never losing. It wasn't until I discovered that I can't eat that much. My body won't lose weight on even 1000 per day...I had to have rny to remove my stomach because of the damge done to the tissue by the lap band.  Now with eating 500-700 cals a day and exercisng, weight training etc ( i am finally out of a wheel chair) I am losing 1-2 lbs per week. Yeah for me and the miracle of rny. 

I am afraid of ever compulsively eating again. It was that behavior that brought me to 240. I was appalled at that weight. I couldn't believe I got that heavy. Of course during the eating I was packing in about 1600-2000 cals a day so I was in big time denial thinking I was eating ok but I was eating sugar and drinking diet sodas and doing a lot of harm to my body. That is my experience. I do know that once I eat some processed type sugar food I am off and running with compulsion to eat more. THat is addiction to sugar.  I guess a lot of people on here got fat from pcos or eating vegetables and too much meat but I got obese eating too much sugar.

I also feel I am an addict and my drug of choice is sugar and wheat.  There are physical reasons and scientific explanations and that is all well and good but in the end all that matters is that I know myself and who I am and what I can and cannot do.  I got morbidly obese by eating thousands and thousands of calories.  I never kept track but if I had to guess it was over 5,000 a day on a busy day, never less then 3,000.  It's actually a wonder I didn't weigh much, much more.  If I could have, I would have mainstreamed sugar ;)  When I stopped eating the sugar and wheat the compulsion eventually went away and the weight came off.  Plain and simple.  That is why I call myself an addict.  But I have 5 kids.  All but one have issues with their weight.  But only one of them is an addict, my youngest, my mini me.  I see myself in her so much.  The others like to eat, love going out to eat and trying new foods but it isn't their life.  Like most people enjoy a glass of wine or two, they enjoy a big meal or decadent dessert.  I NEED to eat that dessert when I am in my addiction.  I need it as much as I need air to breath.  Nothing else matters, I can think of nothing else, do nothing else until I have my food fix.  I am an addict.
I failed my first WLS and would never had have had a revision to try to lose weight again if I didn't need one for medical reasons.  Because I knew that no WLS in the world would cure my addiction and that my addiction would defeat any surgery out there.  It had already beaten down the best there way.  But when it came to pass that I would need a revision I decided that I needed to address my issues that brought me to morbid obesity and caused me to fail miserably my first WLS.  And I do believe that in order to be successful with WLS it does help to address whatever issues brought us to that point, whether they be addiction, emotional eating, physical problems, whatever caused us to get where we needed major surgery to fix the problem of morbid obesity needed to be worked on because WLS can only do so much.  It's like taking pain medication for headaches, which I know a lot about lately, and not doing anything about the cause of the headaches.  Maybe symptom relief is all you need but for me I needed to find the cause and treat that, as well as the symptom or it would keep coming back.
What is funny  to me is with all your arguing about addiction it really sounds like your problems were more physical then because of compulsive overeating.  You sound like you had a very ineffective metabolism that hung onto every ounce in spite of not eating too many calories.  You may have gotten to morbid obesity due to your addiction but it doesn't sound like addiction kept you that way, physical problems did.  So people can and do become morbidly obese and stay that way without being addicted.  I have no clue what percentage of people who are morbidly obese are true food addicts but it seems to me with the way food is being processed along with all the technology that is enabling people to be less and less physically active that morbid obesity is fast becoming an environmental problem more then a problem of dysfunction.  Who know, maybe us addicts are the rare ones?

ah ha...there's the rub. If i had not addressed my addiction to sugar...etc....I would never be where I am now.  It has helped me tremendously to understand how foods are addicting and what foods I have addiction to. If I do not eat them...for me it is sugar, white flour, certain other foods I do not have cravings or compulsions.  And yes, I do have a physical issue but addiction to food is mostly physical as it is the way a body reacts to foods that normal eaters do not have. Like the food giving them comfort or a high or a calmness or whatever that ingratiates itself to the person ingesting it.

I hadn't always had that reaction to sugar. I started it after i became 35 lbs overweight...had hormonal imbalance, went into menopause, etc. etc.   the fact I became addicted to sugar made it impossible not to eat it and I gained so much weight it was horrible then I was stuck there. The lap band did not help at all. I ate reasonable meals with the lap band and never ate sugar, white flour breads, pastas etc but was relegated to soft mushy foods and little protein....so i never lost my weight. thank god and praise the lord for RNY.  It has brought me down to this far and now I am losing much more slowly than in the beginning of 1 lb a week or so. I a losing .5 lb a week or .25 lb a week but still losing and am confident I will be back to my normal self finally someday within a year or two.

Actually I've never been a huge sugar eater. Now carbs I like. However, what I don''t like is you trivializing other components (medical, trauma or otherwise) to someone else's journey just because it doesn't coincide with your addictions theory. But you know what, I give up. Apparently absolutely everyone on here is a food addict, and has no reason for being overweight other than not being able to control their basic need to "shove crap in their pie hole".

 Um.

Wow.

Did you see your surgeon on the show?

we have the discussions about addiction all the time but no I did not see the show or your youtube but am aware of the dangers with alcoholism .  It is one of the first things Dr. Blackstone points out.  It is a form of transference they told us during education about obesity addiction and success after surgery.  I did meet a woman that had gastric bypass only because of a stomach issue and she is normal weight.  I also know about the surgery being approved at Scripts for people with diabeties.  I still maintain my original position that most ( not all ) obese people have food addiction.  I dont think most people can become morbidly obese without overeating.  

 You might want to read the study and watch the show.

I do not disagree to some points you make.

"I dont think most people can become morbidly obese without overeating."

No, they cannot, but... once again... with clarity... there is far more to true addiction that someone simply overindulging in a particular substance.

Lora

Anecdote warning!

I am a food addict. That's how I became obese, and it's why the only way I lost weight prior to weight loss surgery was to develop an eating disorder. Food is/was my life.

My best friend is also morbidly obese. She is definitely not a food addict. She's....well...she's lazy (I love her, but she knows she's lazy). She's lazy and horribly depressed, and not interested in even attempting to make decent food choices. She eats about one meal a day, which is bad for your metablism and not doing her any favors, and she eats crap when she eats. That's why she's obese. She likely has some other health factors that don't help, but yeah...she's not a food addict.

It's fairly easy to become obese from basic overeating without needing to binge all the time like an addict. Eating too many portions or even one too many portions with your meals and not exercising and having a sedentary lifestyle and low metabolism will easily lead to obesity.

That's my 2 cents.

Hey.... are we friends?



You're describing me!
 

I don't like to move the bod, almost always ate one meal a day for most of my adult life, didn't make the best food choices, and my food always was more calories than my caloric requirements for the day. Therefore the weight piled on. Simple math (sadly our bodies don't much like math in the losing, do they?)