It's always been feast or famine with me and, lately, it's been a whole lot of feast. I can diet a while but there is always a binge eventually that negates all my progress. My question is will WLS make it impossible for me to binge?
If I can't stuff myself with a ton of food I think I would have a fighting chance.
Thank you,
Pennie

Hi Pennie! wow. big Qs here. to answer your Q directly - it depends on the surgery. if you get one of the RESTRICTIVE procedures, it's really hard to eat a lot at one sitting. BUT there are strategies to out-eat the surgery. and i'm NOT going to tell you about them.

HOWEVER, binge eating - as i understand it - is more of a HEAD issue than a 'feeling full' issue. in other words, it's really important to take care of the bingeing before you have any surgery. no matter what - you'll still have to battle the demons that make you turn to bingeing.

i wish - with all my heart - that there were an easier way - that there was a simple answer that everyone could manage. but there's not.

Every once in a while, I just can't get full!!! Well, I am full, but my head doesn't think I'm full. I don't feel especially stressed during those times, I'm not grouchy (LOL), I just don't feel full. Maybe I've eaten a small portion an hour ago so I know I'm not hungry. Well, if I do give in and start tasting, tasting and tasting.....I get miserably clogged. Want to throw up, but can't and won't. Can't even get a sip of water to go down. So what happens, you just have to wait it out until it leaves your pouch and believe me you are MISERABLE. Doesn't happen to often, and I think that I'm so terribly busy now (WHY??? BECAUSE I CAN) and when I do get some down time, I automatically think about food. Dumb, stupid and mental, but it is something I have to deal with. If I start getting that feeling, I generally get a piece of really thin bread and toast it and put about a TBSP of peanut butter on it. Don't know why, but that stuff sticks with me and I don't hang on the refrigerator door. A lot of the time, I'm just plain thirsty for water.

We have been camping, and went to the store to stock up on somethings that the racoons had carried off, and I almost cried at the grocery store because there was such good things there and I couldn't eat them. I felt sorry for myself, pouted, and finally realized if it wasn't for my surgery, there was no way in heck that I could even actually be camping.

You will find a way to cope, or you will out eat your surgery and end up even more miserable and more obese than before you had your surgery. Get some help before you have your surgery and then maybe you won't have to go through some of the crap that I've gone through.

I was a MAJOR binge eater. I wasn't very optimistic that surgery would help with that, but it SO did (for me, personally)! Prior to surgery, I had a problem with fast food. I could easily hit the drive-through at McD's and get 2-3 double cheeseburgers, large fries, soda, and a shake...maybe even some nuggets, too. Then I could eat all that in the car on my way home and not tell my husband and still eat dinner with him like normal. I could pack away a crazy amount of food.

With the WLS procedure I had, though, they removed the part of the stomach that generates most of the ghrelin in your body (the "hunger hormone"). So, even though my stomach is larger than that of an RNY patient's pouch, I honestly don't have that crazy DESIRE to eat like I used to. I still eat fast food, but I am 110% satisfied with just a double cheeseburger without the bun - that is a filling meal for me now, and not only do I not physically have room to eat more than that without discomfort, but I also have no DESIRE to eat more than that. I don't even know how long it's been since I've had a French fry!

It's strange because my head and stomach aren't quite on the same page yet. I often find myself ordering more food than I can actually eat, but then I just have leftovers for the next day

Jill, is it possible to stretch the stomach that you have over time?

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It's possible to binge its just less food and a different process
<--at war with my coping mechanisms!

i'm with you, KO. there are times i won't even drink TEA if it's for the wrong reason - that feeling that i gotta have something NOW or the world is going to fall apart. fortunately, after many years, this is now very infrequent.

Last Night I had a meeting and came home upset. . .ever feel like you're the total freak in the room? That's how I felt last night
I was goign to fix DH some food and have some and he wouldn't let me eat b/c he knew it was b/c I was upset. He didn't stop me but he said Why are you eating? Pause leave kitchen
I had some cereal later when I was actually hungry and we had discussed what happened that bothered me.
But seriously I went as if to eat 3 times before I left the kitchen

I was only a binge eater preop. I never ate a meal. As a matter of fact one of the hardest things for me was learning how to eat at least 3 meals a day postop.

Generally, I can't binge because I have had 75% of my stomach removed. While it stretches to about half of what it was originally, that's still a lot smaller than it was to start.

As for the ghrelin production being removed due to the removal of a large part of the stomach, my surgeons told me it generally begins production again about 6 months postop. While I do get quite hungry at times, I satisfy myself first with protein (as all DSers pretty much do) & then move on to other things. Still, with the size of my stomach it's hard to really binge, esp. like I used to.