Really?

I know everyone is different.  But I see alot of people on hear say they just are not hungry and could care less if they eat or not.  Having not had surgery yet, that seems very strange to me.

I want to hear about your experience with hunger/food after surgery.  What was/is it like for y ou?

 I had no hunger and no desire to eat. That lasted for a long time--about a year or so. I get hungry now and it is much harder to make good food choices, but still much easier than before surgery.Shortly after my surgery  I remember sitting in a meeting while the candy jar was being passed around and I had absolutely no desire to have any. It was really hard to get 800 calories a day in. Sometimes I could only get in 500 or so. I always tried to keep my protein up to 100 grams a day but it was difficult. I got full really fast and had a lot of restriction.

Pre surgery I was a volume eater. I liked to eat until I was full. I also got hungry - ravenously hungry by dinner time, if I didn't eat something in the afternoon.

Post surgery I honestly have very little hunger. Today I was busy and had my protein drink in the morning and realized around 2:00 pm that I hadn't eaten anything yet. So I stopped and ate 2 ounces of chicken and went on with my day. made sure I ate around 5:00 (another protein drink) and then had some fish and veggies for dinner around 8:30. My total calories for today are fairly low - just over 500.

I have tons of energy, work out regularly and most days eat around 700 calories.

It's really hard to imagine what it's like to have such a small stomach and relatively no hunger. I didn't really believe it myself either. Now I live it and it's great! I mean really, really great!

However, one of the guys in my support group never lost his hunger. He still gets hungry, but has successfully lost 90+ pounds in the last 10 months.

Hi there,
My hunger was non-existent for the first few weeks then it came back. I don't consider myself one of the lucky ones who lost their hunger for the 1st 6 months. Now that I am further out, I have to deal with head hunger which is a bummer but it sure is a lot easier with a sleeve.

I'm just over a year out and am one of those who could care less if I eat or not.
It has at times seemed like a chore just to get my minimum protein in for the day.
I have had complications (leak) which may have played a part in all of it. I have enjoyed eating a few things, chicken wings, soup, chicken thighs (chicken breasts make me sick now??) So do hamburger and eggs. I do enjoy shrimp, scallops, calamari; but not can tuna. It's weird!
I really would like to enjoy food again, but I would rather not care about food than be the gross 460lbs I used to be! Everyone is different, and individual tastes change with time.

Good luck with it all - it is quite the ride!

Jason

I am only 4 days out today, but before surgery I was also a volume eater (as well as a binge eater). Since surgery, I have noticed a change in both of those disordered eating behaviors as well as hunger.

So far:
1) I am not hungry at all (at any time in the day) and am actually struggling to get in 400 cal a day. Anything with protein in it fills me up fast, and with hydration & protein being my main goals at the moment, I find myself caught at times between not wanting to "force" anything, and not wanting to be dehydrated/nutrient deficient. It's a completely new struggle for me!

2) This early out, not only do I have a tiny sleeve, but it is also swollen from all the trauma of surgery. Restriction is intense, and I get a feelig of "fullness" very quickly - sometimes after 1-2 sips of protein shake. If I wait a few minutes, the feeling passes and I can sip a bit more, but it is a far cry from the old volume-eating days of yore.

3) As a binge eater, I have a psychological trigger of wanting to lose weight, severely restricting what I eat, feeling miserable, hungry and deprived, then binging on the biggest volume of the most unhealthy food i could find to assuage my sense of deprivation. 4 days of post-op eating isn't much of a data set, but so far, I am feeling anything but deprived, despite struggling to get up to 500 cal/day. I will be very curious to see how this develops over time as the swelling goes down and my restriction normalizes.

Hope it helps,
Somayeh

i still get physical hunger but it is not as compelling as it used to be, and it is much easier to distract myself away from the thought of food and eating.  i am also much more selective and fussy about the food i choose to eat.  i really prefer the healthiest food i can eat, not the empty calories that i used to eat in such large quantity.   i still enjoy eating though.

i am having less head hunger as time goes along  i think because having the small sleeve forced me to surrender to not being able to eat the way i used to.  it took the first several months to mentally surrender to the sleeve and i hope this trend continues since i have heard that there is tendency to gain some weight back the farther out you are from having the vsg.

So far i feel that i can be happy eating a thousand calories a day for the rest of my life.   Pre-sleeve i ate typically 5,000 calories a day. 

If i had to quantify this, i would say that with the sleeve, eating a thousand calories feels like what it would be to eat 2,000 calories. 

I am exactly a month out,  and  During the liquid stages I was not hungry,   I started soft food diet about a week or so and I wil get a tiny bit hungry, but once you start to eat something you get FULL real fast,  I also could not tell during liquid what exactly Full would feel like (hard to describe****il I started the soft foods,  I can eat one or 2 slices of provolone cheese and I am FULL !  so its been a struggle to get ALL the protein in,    Good Luck with everything, Definately ENJOY the Junk or Things you love before you start the pre surgery !!  Best wishes to ya !!   I am very Happy with my decision to do the sleeve  Down 30lbs already !

Pre surgery I was hungry all the time. Post surgery I only have head hunger, especially certain days. If I am occupied by something else I can easily forget to eat.

Prior to surgery, I was hungry all the time.  Except when I was stuffed.  Even when I followed a 1200-1400 cal food plan for months, I never "adjusted" and experienced a lot of hunger every day. 

I don't have hunger in the same way now, but I never really "lost" it, in that I have never had a day where I wasn't acutely aware of my next meal, and quite ready to have it.  But, my tummy does not grind and rumble like it used to, and that alone has been worth the price of surgery.  In fact, it has only growled 2 times since surgery, and I was a good six hours past my last meal.

Now, I have hunger but it is easily satisfied by an appropriate amount of food (it doesn't take 2 lb of food from the Chinese buffet) and that alone makes the anxiety I can have around it much less.  Plus, because I eat relatively little at a time (150 - 200 cal), I can eat 4 times a day which is also quite helpful.  I usually don't go more than 4 hours without eating something.