Have you ever done this?

[Ree 215]

Have you ever chewed up food and spit it out? I know it's probably not something to get in to the habit of but tonight I just wanted to feel FOOD in my mouth so I chewed on a small piece of hotdog and then spit it out. I've seen a few youtube video's of people admitting to doing the same thing.

[Carlotta1 401]

Yes I did this twice ..with popcorn and another food item, only one bite. Once I did this..I was not craving the food after . How strange. I guess the power of the food was greater than the taste. Food lost out. I did not go any further

[O.T.R. sleever 3,386]

Yes, I did it very early on. My first victim was watermelon. I was still on Clear Liquids. Keep in mind here I'm not recommending that you do this, just letting you know that you are not alone.

[No game 14,437]

Hi

First, this behavior is the first steps of bulemia and getting into the habit of chewing food and spitting it out can lead to a very serious eating disorder. After WLS we are already dealing with changing the way we relate to food, so we want to instill good habits all along the way and avoid the bad ones as much as possible.

Second, there's a biological reason not to do this too. When you smell food and when it enters your mouth and you begin to chew, the body goes into Prep Mode to receive food. Your salivary glands produce saliva, your pancreas produces insulin, your liver produces gastric acid and your brain begins to calculate how much nutrition you're about to receive from the food you eat so it can keep track of it's daily needs/calories --- the body is a well tuned machine and it knows how to deal with food when it knows it's coming. But then you spit out the food. Your body still has excess saliva, insulin, gastric acid and it can't figure out why it didn't get the nutrition it thought it was going to get so the brain accountants go nuts.

Excess insulin in your body causes your appetite to increase so you'll eat more food to soak up all that extra hormone. Excess gastric acid in the stomach -- now released at the Y of your common channel -- can cause indigestion or heartburn or ulcers. And those brain accountants are now doing some creative math to recalculate the nutritional value of food because it thought it was going to get a certain number of calories, but none came, so next time you try to eat that same food the brain thinks you need twice as much to get the same nutrition as it thought it should have gotten last time.

So not only is the whole "chew and spit" habit a training ground for bulemia, it's also a way to tease your body into thinking it's getting food when it really isn't. Bulemia is a very serious illness and not something you want to play around with.

From the unknown sleever.

[Ree 215]

That makes sense. Thanks. Certainly not something I want to get into the habit of doing.