"Emotional eating"

[BlackBerryJuice 349]

So, pre-op I considered myself to be a major emotional eater. I'm now 3.5 weeks out and *knock on wood* have had zero desire to overeat in reaction to any sort of emotional stimuli. Before the surgery, overeating or binging was my normal response to being either happy or upset. I even signed up for counselling for my emotional eating after the surgery, and when I went for my 2nd appointment on Monday, I had nothing to talk about when it came to food. Which makes me wonder, how much of this "emotional eating" is actually based in your physiology? Maybe it's just that the yo-yo dieting made me extremely hungry and the severe hunger was just harder to resist under emotional stress, which led me to binge? It's just bizarre, I was so worried that I'd binge post-surgery and hurt my stomach, but it's like I was cured with a magic wand (again, *knock on wood*).

Can anyone else share their experience with emotional eating before vs. after surgery? I'm looking to gather some individual experiences and, based on the anecdotal findings, maybe relay this information to our local obesity expert and an eating disorder specialist I know to see if either of them wants to conduct an actual medical study about this issue. Maybe therapy is NOT the way to deal with this at all.

[CraftyChristie 62]

Deprivation, dieting, guilt, etc play a LARGE part in emotional eating. We go to it for comfort because it's an excuse to have it. I personally have had the same experience. I was a MAJOR emotional eater before surgery. I'm past 3 months out and I've had no instances of emotional eating. I've had a couple "almosts", but I think it was more out of habit... and as soon as I realized I was thinking that way I'd just drop the idea. It's so easy to ignore now. It's interesting learning to handle your feelings without food.. but it's entirely possible, and very freeing.

[Mary Gordon 3]

I used to be an emotional eater as well. I'd get depressed and I'd start eating, usually salty things. potato chips and stuff like that. Now after my sleeve, i haven't been able to do that...so now i have gotten used to the idea and it has definitely helped me to control myself.

[Fleur de lis 2]

It's funny that this is the first post I saw because I got on to ask about overeating after the sleeve. I just got finished eating dinner and didn't stop until I felt like I was going to explode; my usual habit. As I'm sitting back trying to stop the ache, I'm wondering if this is something that I will be able to control after surgery? One of my big fears is that I will not really know when to stop. Even with a full sized stomach, it's sometimes hard to gauge when I'm satisfied, as opposed to being full to capacity.

Has anyone else experienced this? How have you worked it out?

[GeorgieGirl1957 0]

i don't think I was an emotional eater. But I always said that instead of cutting out my stomach, they should have taken my tongue. I am a super taster, a total foodie and I just love GOOD gourmet type food.

I am not a junk food junkie. I just eat too much rich food and I eat way too fast, so I could eat a lot and I didn't feel full for about an hour after. Then I would feel horrible. Now I can still eat the foods I love, just little bites, they way that kind of food was intended to be eaten. Like the French!

I am learning to eat less, smaller bites, and to not hoover my food. I think I am enjoying it more, anyway? But I sure cannot eat more than about 3 -4 oz of softies right now. I started softies today and I got full really quickly on salmon I had for dinner. I wanted to eat more, only because of the taste. But I sure didn't want to push my sleeve.

So I keep telling myself I can eat whatever I ate before, but maybe only 20% of the amount and I must savor my food, not inhale it---a very bad habit I developed over 30 years ago as a young nurse starting out in hospitals. We used to take a bite and run, take a bite and run, or eat it all fast and then run. I chose the latter, which in the end turned into a bad thing to do to myself.

But I really can't think of an emotional connection to food. I had that discussion with my preop shrink consult too. And in the final analysis, I just like the taste and since they couldn't take out my tongue, at least they made it painful to taste too much. LOL.

gg

[clk 3,519]

Preop eating was an intensely satisfying experience. I loved the stuffed to the gills feeling and that guilty feeling that I shouldn't be eating something but I was doing it anyway. I ate when I was bored, I ate when I was angry, I ate when I was happy...I would eat all day long sometimes, especially when stressed out.

food made me incredibly happy. Guilty, afterward, but for a brief time I was very happy. Food was definitely like a drug for me.

I'm only seven weeks out, and now I've done a complete 180 turn.

I don't like eating. It's not enjoyable. I enjoy the taste of two or three bites, and then I'm tired of eating. I have to remind myself to eat, because more than once I've gotten to the end of the day on a yogurt and a cheese stick.

I don't want to eat when I'm happy, or sad and I absolutely cannot eat if I'm angry or stressed. It is physically impossible for me to overeat. If I eat one bite too many, or even if I drink too much Water too fast, up it comes (more like a productive burp than vomiting) and I have to stop.

While these are good steps to ridding myself of food addiction, I'd have to say that it's also depressing. I'm moodier and slightly depressed lately, mostly because my main coping strategy was cut out with my stomach. So I'd say that yes, the surgery could probably help with this (though not everyone experiences a lack of hunger or cravings post op) but that therapy is probably still needed for some people (like myself) to help cope with the major upheavals WLS can cause.

The surgery can fix your tummy and possibly cause the cravings and the emotional eating to stop, but it doesn't fix whatever made you overeat in the first place.

~Cheri