Struggling with my food addiction

I will tell you what works for me, and honestly it took me a long time to finally come to grips with myself to get to this point.  I like to eat, no hunger, no desires for anything in particular but I just wanted to eat, especially at night in bed and if I didn't eat I felt deprived and cranky and would sabotage all my hard work during the day and eat something stupid at night.  So finally I said to myself why are you fighting how your body wants to eat, if you want to eat at night go ahead, but you can only eat so many calories and maintain so where are you gonna give them up.  That lead me to not eating during the day, nothing whatsoever, during the day touches my lips besides water/iced tea/lemon.  I start eating at dinner time and then have a snack or two depending upon where my protein numbers are.  And interestingly enough I am still at goal and my body does not constantly rebel against what it wants to do naturally.  I try to eat protein forward snacks but I don't always.  I keep my protein around 60 grams a day and have been healthy since surgery, no more diabetes meds whatsoever.  You have to come to terms with you, you get this much food so how do you dole it out to yourself so you can reign in the regain.  I go down to 1000 calories a day when I gain any weight and around 1400-1600 when maintaining. 

Good Luck.

Heidi,

That is very helpful! Yes I completely agree, we each have to find what works best for ourselves. It can be hard to tune out other's opinions on what works best. Thanks for your response! 

Wow, Lady Heidi!

Exactly!   I started realizing that at about 1 month out that if I eat first thing in the morning, I wrestle with hunger all day; whether it is head or actual, I do not know.  So I start out late in the afternoon and finish up sometimes at 10 pm.  It works for me and my NUT is onboard with it.  As long as I get the protein and liquids in.... it works!  

Thank you all for the responses. I believe that I need to get some help with this struggle, and hearing that others have gone through it is very helpful and encouraging. I will definitely be seeking therapy, because this is a difficult struggle alone. 

A big problem for me was that somewhere along the way, I forgot what works best for me. I started listening to how often others ate, and how they managed their weight. I stopped doing what works for me, which is not allowing myself to eat the carbs, or especially the sugar. In order to get rid of my physical cravings, I have to remove them from my diet. I have started back on this today, I still will continue weighing everyday, and I will focus back on getting in my liquids and all the things that my surgeon started me on. I know that the hardest part is the detox of getting the sugars out of my system. 

White Dove, I appreciate much of what you said, however, I don't think you're correct in assuming that I will weigh more than 200 in the next few months.

I have managed to maintain my weight loss so far since surgery, and I am an aerobics instructor and work out about 2 hours each day. And more importantly, by noticing that my weight crept up 5 pounds, I reached out to this forum and am back to the basics of health. So I think that shows that I can be successful, and I still have a chance to turn it around. 

Thank you again everyone for your responses. 

This is just my experience but I am definitely a food addict.  I am most particularly addicted to white carbs, sugar, gluten and quantities.   My addiction caused me to fail miserably my first WLS, which was very malabsorptive and should have given me a lot of leeway in terms of eating, and maybe it did.  Who knows, maybe without the malabsorption I would have gained 200 lbs instead of 100 lbs.  I did not experience any restriction and the combination of large amounts of food, especially junk food, and malabsorption guarantees horrible side effects which greatly affected my quality of life.

I didn't seek out a revision to lose weight as I felt I was a lost cause.  I wanted a reversal so I wouldn't suffer the miserable side effects I had.  My surgeon informed me that I couldn't be reversed, only revised and suggested I have a RNY pouch along with the reduction in malabsorption.  I agreed because I figured if I could do so much damage with malabsorption I could really go crazy without it.  My surgeon told me I might not lose any more weight but at that point my goal was to stop the rapid weight gaine.

I only had 8 days between consultation and revision and in that time I did a lot of soul searching.  I acknowledged to myself exactly why I failed and questioned myself about what would be different.  I accepted that my problems were refined carbs, sugar and gluten products.  I decided to give them up since I had to go through the post op eating period anyway.  Major surgery has a way of taking away your appetite and it was fairly easy for me to detox off the carbs and then follow the eating plan.  Having restriction allowed me to eat less and be satisfied so it helped the problem I had with quantities.  After a few weeks without the sugar and gluten I lost all cravings for them and they haven't returned in over 2 1/2 years.

Accepting my addiction meant accepting that I could never safely eat certain foods in any amount.  There would be no playing around with moderation because I knew from years of past experience that me and moderation do not work out.  The only thing that works for me is complete abstinence from those things that I am addicted to.  The surgery gave me the tools for the first time in my life to be able to stick with that, my reducing, if not eliminating my hunger and giving me the ability to east small amounts for the first time in my life and be satisfied.  I take it one day at a time and remember that I am bodily and mentally different from others who can eat those things in moderation.  I have found that as long as I stick with my personal guidelines I don't have any problems with cravings.  I am very rarely tempted to eat things that have sugar or gluten and if I am it's a fleeting thought and then I recoil from it as if a hot flame.  I know I am putting a lot of 12 step references in here but that is what helps me, too.

Good luck to you.  I personally don't think it's a horrible idea to go back to the immediate post op eating.  Whatever it takes to help you detox from the things that have you by the throat.  Once you have gotten those things out of your system you should be able to think more clearly about them and they should lose the hold they have over you at the moment.