Food Addiction/Eating Disorders and WLS Choice

[Midwest Grateful 48]

Hi everyone. Is there much evidence of specific surgeries - specifically gastric bypass vs sleeve - working best for patients struggling with food addiction or eating disorders? Or did that weigh into your decision in choosing the surgery best for you? Thanks in advance!

[catwoman7 11,197]

neither surgery will help with food addiction - they just restrict how much you can eat at one sitting. For food addictions, most people work with a therapist who's familiar with eating disorders.

[Midwest Grateful 48]

2 minutes ago, catwoman7 said:

neither surgery will help with food addiction - they just restrict how much you can eat at one sitting. For food addictions, most people work with a therapist who's familiar with eating disorders.

Thanks for the feedback, @catwoman7. I wondered if once a portion of the stomach is removed if it helps with hyper-focusing on food or emotional eating. I've been reading different takes on this. So when someone asked me, I thought I'd seek some feedback here from you pros. 😊

[Jeanniebug 473]

As @catwoman7 said, surgery doesn't treat food addiction.

The surgery will help with hunger and satiety hormones. But, it does nothing for "head hunger". You're getting surgery on your stomach, not your brain.

So, you'll be like a drug addict that has suddenly had their drug of choice taken away. Transfer addictions are very common.

I started seeing a therapist, a couple of months before surgery. I knew that I was going to need to work on my brain and that most of that work was going to come a few months after surgery. I wanted to get a foundation laid and I'm so glad that I did. My therapist has been a lot of help.

[LindsayT 584]

The mental part of all this is very real, and surgery won't fix it. You may not feel physically hungry, but the head hunger, for me anyway, was a beast I needed to tame. Therapy is an important step in doing just that. I would also say getting your dietitian involved helps as well. Until we address the reasons behind why we emotionally eat, it's hard to get past those urges after surgery, even if we can only consume a little bit at a time . I really believe that therapy should be mandatory before and after surgery to address why we emotionally eat and food addiction. This has been my biggest struggle since surgery- more so than the actual surgery and recovery- and my therapist had been amazing addressing the issue.

[SleeverSk 635]

When you have eating disorders I don't think it matters what surgery you have , its how you deal with the physiological side of things that will make it successful or not. I still have emotional triggers, and the night time nibbles. But there is no way I could eat as much as I use to when I felt like this but I still feel like I want to stuff my face and I realized I have some sort of sensory thing going on cause I constantly want to taste strong flavours and have always been like this even as a child