What Makes You Gain Weight?

Oct 16, 2012

September was a crazy month for me.  I went to multiple pre-surgery doctor's appointments all for the sake of insurance approval.

One of these appointments was a psychological evaluation.  Let me tell you about the psychological evaluation I had prior to my LapBand surgery. It consisted of this tiny, mouse of a man telling me I won't be comfortable with my new body because most women aren't after weight loss surgery and proceeded to show pictures of floppy pancake breasts.  He made it quite clear that my breasts would look like this.  I pretty much stared at him with my mouth agape like a fish out of water.  Seriously.

Since that experience was pretty much awful, I didn't have high hopes for the psych evaluation this time around.  My goal was to get in and get out as quickly as possible.  Now, is it just me or are most psychologists bullshit?  I don't know, but I just feel like the questions they ask of me are really dumb.  My psychologist was a very small, young-ish woman who looked like all she ate all her life were twigs and grass leaves.  After telling her why I was there her first question was "So, what makes you gain weight?"  I looked at her, laughed, and said "food".  I mean, come on, you walked right into that one twig lady.  But, I have to admit that once my defensive mechanism of humor ran out, I did seriously consider the question.  What does make me gain weight?  Well, for one thing I graze, a lot.  I can't help it.  I just eat snacks all day long and would gladly forgo mealtimes for snacks.  It doesn't help that where I work there is always a plethora of candy and snacks laying around to enjoy.  Do I eat out of boredom?  Definitely.

Eating out of boredom or picking all day has had an affect on my mental state. I constantly feel hungry.  Most WLS patients refer to this as "head hunger".  Your brain is telling you "EAT FOOD NOW" when your stomach is actually quite content.  I think it will be a real battle for me to get through that but I'm waiting until after surgery to really grapple with it.

Which, speaking of, I have a date!  I'm due for surgery October 12th.  I'm excited but beginning to get nervous and the feeling of being unprepared.  I've been doing so much research for this surgery though, I think/hope I'll be ok.

Anyway, next update will probably be post-op!!!

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