Does the Patient Fail the Procedure...?

Nope. Mostly the surgery, sometimes the surgeon. Why do they even bother with the psychological exams if they ignore the results and approve people with obvious need for therapy to overcome their food issues? That's just setting the patient up for failure. Oh wait! Maybe that's the plan, repeat/revision patients mean twice the income!

I eat like a normal person. I don't go over board on sugary treats, but I don't deprive myself. I don't count calories or carbs, just am mindful of of all carbs. I eat until I am full. I don't exercise at all EVER since my surgery. And I am maintaining a low normal BMI with ease. I have the blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol levels of an athlete.

MY surgery WORKS.

I feel healthy and I AM responsible for that because I chose the DS.

I don't know.  I'm sure the surgery fails the patient in many cases, BUT I have seen some people on this forum post what they eat, defend fast food to the death, make bad choices, and a year or two later, they're back here complaining that their surgery failed and they need a revision.  REALLY?  Let's face it.  We were food addicts before we had surgery, and food addicts we always will be.  Sure, we can learn to eat well, lose weight and keep it off, or we can have surgery, suffer through the initial months, start eating all the crap we ate before surgery, gradually stretch our stomachs, and end up right back where we started.  That's not surgical failure.

I'm sorry, but I'm bristling a little bit at the cavalier way that all WLSers get lumped into the "food addict" category when I categorically am not and never was a food addict.  I know that I am not alone in feeling this way.  Not all of us had mental problems with food.  For some of us, it was a physiological or metabolic problem.  Let me explain:

I didn't compulsively eat buckets full of crap food before surgery to reach 300 pounds.  Like many lifetime dieters, I ate progressively fewer and fewer calories until I was only maintaining those 300 pounds on 1200 calories a day.  I will not deny that there were times when I got pissed-off, frustrated, and full-out incandescently furious with this situation and would abandon my diet for a week or two.  I dieted for EIGHTEEN YEARS.  Sure, I cheated sometimes.  But of the 52 weeks of every year, I'd wager that I spent more than 48 of each of them on some kind of reduced-calorie/reduced-fat/reduced-sugar/reduced-joy diet.  Think about that: eighteen years.  That's a long time.  That's a lot of diligence and effort, even if I went AWOL three or four times a year.

Those "off weeks" were usually around holidays, so there would be cookies, candy, or cake involved, i.e., the usual suspects.  I won't lie.  I wasn't a saint.  Nor was I a gluttonous sinner, secretly stuffing my corpulent cheeks at every opportunity.  I ate like the rest of the normal-sized people around me.  I was too self-conscious to eat more than them, even if I had been still hungry.  The damage I did during those weeks I considered more than enough punishment for going off my diet.  It would take months to lose the 10 pounds I'd put on each time, and it would require me to cut my total calories down a bit more to do it.  By the time I was 35, I had reached 300 pounds (a BMI of 51 - SSMO) and acquired a panoply of comorbidities: severe obstructive sleep apnea, hypertension, depression, and grinding joint pain.  I was down to the aforementioned 1200 calories and had reached the End. Of. My. Rope.  I knew that my options were surgery or early death.  After lots of research, I chose the surgery that offered the biggest metabolic boost and had, in my opinion, the least punitive post-op dietary guidelines.  I felt that I had been punished enough during those eighteen years (no, I'm not bitter about them at all, huh?).  I am thankful every day that my surgery worked, and that it continues to work for me. 

To my knowledge, clinical addiction comes with a set of symptoms.  I didn't, and still don't, have them.  I never missed food post-op, because I never lost it in the first place.  I didn't mourn eating, because I ate/eat several times a day post-op, and all the foods I liked to begin with.  I didn't (and still don't) eat in secret, to numb or tranquilize myself, or to escape from my life.  Food and eating are an important part of my life - I have a family, we have regular meals at mealtimes that I prepare at home.  I don't have to excuse myself because food is still part of our celebrations, and I never, EVER fear losing control around it or being under its influence.

It was clear to me that my BODY was broken, not my MIND.  The surgeon fixed my BODY, not my MIND.  Five years later, the proof is in the pudding:  I lost 151 pounds.  I weigh 149 pounds.  I have not been more than 5 pounds away from 149 in either direction for 3 years now, and that is how I like it.  There has been no regain, no bounceback, no physical problems.  Throughout this five year journey, my mind has been put at ease where food is concerned.  When I'm hungry, I eat.  I make choices appropriate for my surgery type.  Because I chose a surgery that didn't take any of my favorite foods off the menu entirely, I have a lot of options and no anxiety about eating anything, which allows me to eat guiltlessly with complete peace of mind.  Therefore, I can only conclude if fixing my BODY produced the CURE to my obesity, then my problem was not with my MIND and I was NOT a food addict.  Sometimes the problem is not always in our heads.  Sometimes it really is our bodies.  And sometimes, even if it hurts like hell and feels like failure, we are forced to admit that even with the most assiduous efforts, despite everything that we've been told since kindergarten, it is NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE to do whatever or be whoever we want when we put our minds to it.

Visit the DS board sometime.  You will find enough stories similar to mine to fill the Library of Congress.  I know that even though I've only told you my story, I speak for many DSers.  We knew we were broken past needing a "tool" to fix us - we needed a complete engine rebuild with a new transmission.

I realize that I sound quite *****y in this post, but all the addicts in my family (alcohol, drugs, nicotine) caused the rest of us nothing but pain when they lied to us, stole from us, leeched us dry emotionally, and refused to get treatment because they had. to. have. their "fix."  I don't care to be associated with or labeled an addict.  Ever.

I'm sorry you're pissed off, but the fact of the matter is, food is the thing in your life that caused your weight problem, whether or not you were stuffing your face.  I think most people *****sort to WLS are those who have yo-yo dieted enough that their metabolism shuts down and they are no longer able to use the weight, even on low calorie counts.  So, while we may not have been stuffing our faces, it was our relationship with food (just like it would have been with crack or alcohol) that brought us to the last straw.  Sure, being addicted to food doesn't necessarily cause you to lie and steal, although I'm sure there are a lot of closet eaters out there who only eat to really satisfy themselves when they are alone.  I don't need to visit the DS board to know many people who had the same metabolism problems.  And remember, I didn't say YOU were a food addict, so if you don't claim the title, you can just walk away.

Fine, I'll grant that you didn't say I personally was a food addict.  You said that WE, meaning formerly obese people who had lost a significant amount of weight, were ALL food addicts.  I believe that included me, as I was SSMO and lost a great deal of weight.

That's wrong.  We are not addicts at all.  We've been desensitized by the overuse of that word in general.

You said that my "relationship" with food made me fat, just like a relationship with crack or alcohol.  That's wrong, too.  A good therapist will tell you that a relationship is a mental construct.  You can no more have a "relationship" with food than you can with an oscillating fan.  Food, like alcohol, is no more than a substance that can be used or abused.  Food does not make one fat in the same way that a margarita does not make one a drunk.  The difference between someone that can enjoy that substance in moderation and someone who abuses it is largely physical.  To be considered addicted to alcohol (or drugs), you have to go through physical withdrawl symptoms when denied that substance.  People who are merely dependent on those substances can quit without suffering physical pain - that anguish can be purely mental.  Addiction requires a physiological response.

For example,  I used to have one margarita a month.  I would get tipsy very quickly.  I have a low threshold for alcohol.  I also have no physical withdrawl symptoms when I go without it.  In the same way, one brownie a month used to raise my daily calories.  I had a low threshold for calories.  I did not have any physical withdrawl symptoms when I didn't have a brownie.  There was no pain on withdrawl, ergo, no addiction.

To forestall the argument already formulating in the minds of the obtuse: certainly, when denied food, the body experiences physical symptoms.  When denied oxygen, the body experiences painful physical symptoms.  When denied water, the body experiences painful physical symptoms.  Humans need food, water, and oxygen to survive.  Are people living in the Arctic Circle addicted to clothing?  Are we all addicted to having shelter?  No.  Are we addicted to oxygen, water, clothing, and shelter in the same way that someone can be addicted to heroin?  No.  These are all things that are necessary for the preservation of human life.  You need a certain amount of calories a day in order to live. Ergo, we can't be addicted to food in the same way that we can be to drugs or alcohol.  You can't be addicted to calories.  

What you're clearly conflating with addiction are behavioral disorders or abuse: those impulses in our minds that drive our behavior around certain substances.  We can develop eating disorders - binge eating, compulsive eating, anorexia, bulimia, etc.  These are mental disorders, not physical ones.  They might speak to a person's inner demons - lack of control, revenge, narcissism, soothing, etc. and they might cause a person to vary their calorie counts, and, as you said, "eat to really satisfy themselves when they are alone."  That's not food addiction.  That's food abuse.  

Let me be really clear - you are not alone in conflating the two terms.  It seems that most of the rest of the world sees addicts in general as less violent than abusers.  Just consider the connotations of the two words - abuser is violent, menacing, and terrifying.  Addict, well, these days you can be "addicted" to love, coffee, the Jersey Shore, your smartphone, and chapstick.  people fling that term around like it's nothing.  The term "food addict" is all over the place, when really, people should call themselves "food abusers."  That sounds harsh, doesn't it?  If you can't leave the food alone, but you don't have physical discomfort when denied it, then you're not an addict, you're an abuser.  I'd say that makes up most of the population who like to call themselves addicts.  Imagine how they'd all look at themselves when they had to call themselves abusers.  I'd bet it would change their perspective and they'd stop treating the word addict so lightly.  I've seen addicts (who were also abusers).  We aren't them.

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 My, my, my . . . dont we have our shorts in a bundle?  First of all sweetie - we are talking about FAILURE here - people who are struggling.  You claim to be an astounding success, just like most of the DS'ers, although I personally know two with FAILED surgery.  So, my 'We' is an exclusive club to which you aren't invited.  Move along now and join your overly successful group.  You have no business here.

Main Board = Everybody's business.  Topic started by a DSer = my engraved invitation.  My success is simply success with no hyperbolic modifier.  If you consider it astounding, then thank you very much.

Your "we" was global and cavalier.  And yes, my panties are in a bunch, sweetie, by people assuming that obesity has one cause, i.e., addiction.  For most people, one cause equals one cure.  Oversimplification of this complex disease only allows the general public to continue to heap scorn on the obese and reserve their deepest disgust for those of us who've had WLS, because we took "the easy way out." 

Those people must be truly revolted by people who've had WLS and have regained.  I feel nothing but sadness for those poor souls.  I do not assume, though, that they failed their surgery because they couldn't beat their "addiction" or break the cycle of abusing food.  I'm sure that there are some WLS postops with disordered behaviors and/or attitudes toward food, whether they were pre-existing or surgery-induced.  I'd be willing to agree and say that these post-ops were at least partially responsible for their surgery's failure.

I'm equally sure that there are some that suffered mechanical failure of their surgery - dilated stoma, pouch or sleeve made too long, insufficient malabsorption, insufficient restriction.  There have got to be some that chose a surgery that was inappropriate for them, either because they were counting on a surgery to change their behavior - and we've heard for years that surgeons operate on your stomachs, not your heads - or because they chose a surgery that was too powerful or not powerful enough for them.  I think a rational person would agree that, in those cases, the surgery failed the patient.

And bless your heart, did you really just try to bring your paltry two failed DS acquaintances into this thread on surgery failure?  Really?  Oh, sweetie.  My panties may be in a bunch over terminology, but your heart's got to be completely devoid of the milk of human kindness for you to make that statement in light of the myriad RNY & Band post ops on the Failed Surgery and Revision forums here.  I won't even go into my friends, family, and personal acquaintances who've been failed by the RNY & Lap band, but I'll give you a hint: it's more than two by multiples of ten.

That's just sad.

You are wrong about food addiction.  It is real.  If you say you have never been a food addict, and I believe you, you can not know what people who KNOW they are addicted to food and eating and behaviors experience.

It is a physical compulsion, just like the compulsion to drink alcohol or do drugs.  It is the physical feeling that people experience that drives them to eat, not some mental disorder.

I am a perfectly sane sensible person but I am addicted to food.  Call it abuse or addiction or whatever suits your fancy, but it is no different than the compulsion to drink.  The only difference is that you can live without alcohol or drugs, but not food.  That is the reason that it is so hard to turn food addiction off.

All addictions involve physical and mental components.  Some people get fat because they have metabolic disorders.  Some people get fat because they eat compulsively, some people get fat because they have metabolic issues and food addiction.

I am not ashamed of being a food addict.  I am not particularly fond of it either.  It just is.

 the idea that only a substance can be an addiction is ridiculous - gambling is clearly an addiction.