Planing for VSG.. Too many questions in mind.

Hello guys. Hope you are all doin really good. Reading your stories at the forum really encouraged me to start thinking about VSG. I am 26 years old and land in the severely obese category. Tried weight loss quite a lot of times, managed to score a bit with it but never completely lost all of it and ended up gaining more. Now that I am about to see a doctor for VSG there are some questions in my mind.

To be honest I love food. The reason I never completely got rid of weight when I was actually trying was the fact I never stopped eating. They say some people eat to live and some live to eat. I say that with much embarrassment but the truth is I belong to the second category. I eat when I am happy, I eat when I am sad. Food is the first thing that come to mind when I wake up. People comment on my weight gain and how it's getting worse each day,make me depress and even then I eat to get over the insult.

Now finally I decided to see a surgeon to discuss the prospects of VSG. I want to know from you guys that how does your appetite gets modified after surgery? Is that you can't eat more or you don't want to eat more? Like if people post op don't eat coz they are full early or they have lack of desire to eat. Seriously I'd be more happy if it says that it puts a leash to the desire for eating. I am seriously concerned if my love for food end me in getting trouble even after the surgery.

I will happy to hear back from you guys. 

Aime-kay, don't every be embarrassed about anything you post here.  We've all been in your shoes.

I l-o-v-e food too.  I was always a volume eater.  I wasn't interested in sweets or junk food, or even fast food.  But I loved pastas and breads.  L-o-v-e-d them.  Stuffed my face every day.

WLS has changed my appetite completely.  I've "de-carbed" and no longer miss pastas and breads.  I look back now and I'm grossed out by how much I used to eat.  Now, there are times I forget to eat.  I eat my protein first, then veggies, and then I really don't have room for anything more.  I try to make time to come up with different dishes - looking up recipes and reading other peoples' daily menus.

In the beginning, when I first started researching WLS, I never thought I'd be able to be successful.  But the more I read, the more I learned.  Like most people here, I tried every diet out there - failed and gained more weight.  I lived to eat, too.  I enjoy my meals.   But, if I eat a bite or two too much, I really pay for it physically.  Once, I ate too much chicken - and once was enough, believe me.  I felt like I was stuffed to the gills, and after a half hour of misery, I puked.  Lesson learned!

WLS has changed my appetite completely.  I've learned I have to weigh and measure my foods, and I pre-plan and journal.  And I read OH every day.  I am so glad I had WLS.  Good for you for looking at it now, at 26.  I had so many physical problems due to my obesity - hopefully you can have surgery before you damage your body.

Good luck to you.  Keep reading and learning!

Thank you Mary Gee Whiz :)

so it does help in you in a way that you can't get enough of food, right? what I am getting by reading all of the reply posts is that I will have to do some life style modifications as well.   Nothing worth having comes easy, so I am ready to work harder to reach my dream weight. Thanks for replying and supporting me :)

When you say "severely obese", what is your BMI? And when you say you never really succeeded at weight loss, how many pounds have you been able to lose in a single diet attempt? I ask because dieting tends to make an already highly efficient metabolism get even better at holding onto stored fat.

The VSG is a great procedure, IF all you need is portion control. It makes it physically impossible to eat too much AT ONE SITTING. It does NOT stop you from grazing all day, or making poor food choices. No form of WLS does that. I really think you should also research the malabsorptive surgeries, the RNY/gastric bypass and the DS/duodenal switch.

I chose the DS because I KNEW that portion control was NOT going to give me all the help I needed. I needed to make a dramatic, permanent change in my metabolism, and the DS offered me the highest degree of that. (The DS has the very best long-term, maintained weight-loss stats, specially for those of us with a high BMI.)

The DS has a VSG stomach, and I can tell you it made a dramatic change in my appetite. Oh, I still get hungry, but it's vastly different from the constant, grinding hunger I had pre-op. I get hungry, I eat a normal portion, I'm full and satisfied for 2.5-3 hours.

I LOVE FOOD. Today, I can eat anything I choose, and I can eat it in moderation. (Pre-op, 'moderation' was not a word I understood.) I enjoy food perhaps even more now than I did pre-op, because I no longer feel guilty about enjoying my favorites---mostly things that are high in both protein and FAT. (Because of my DS, I absorb very little fat. It's pretty much a 'free' food.)

Visit all the surgical boards, including the Revisions board. Talk with as many people as you can who are AT LEAST 3 years post-op. Research ALL your option, and do your best to choose the one that will give you a post-op lifestyle you can live happily with FOREVER.

Thanks for your input MsBatt.

I am reviewing other surgery options as well but I guess it's probably the low side effects/ complication profile of VSG that compelled me towards it. Also one of my friend underwent VSG 7 months ago and I saw her transforming into a new person just seven months out. Totally inspiring! 

My weight for now is 231 lbs. It was 4 years back when I lost some weight by diet and exercise and reached around 175  but that regained all of it back due to lack one exercise and poor food choices. Multiple times after that I tried to shed it down but it seems kinda resistant now.

And may be the world may look at it as an easy way out but I know I have tried my options and I am exhausted.

What wrong with easy? (*grin*) Seriously. It's people who were seeking an easier way to do things who are responsible for all progress, from the wheel to writing to computers to, yes, WLS.

Poor food choices will sabotage you after WLS, too. You'll still have to do the work of making good choices. Exercise helps get and keep you healthy, and boosts your metabolism. Still necessary after WLS.

I'm convinced that most people can lose a lot of weight with any form of WLS. What's hard is keeping it  off long-term. That's why I suggest you look at all your options before you make your final decision.

Aime-kay - you may want to also post this on the VSG surgery-specific board so that more VSGers see your post and respond.  I post on both boards so I'm glad I saw this.  

The surgery reduces the amount of ghrelin (a hunger hormone) in your stomach so it does tend to reduce the physical appetite that you feel.  It also reduces the size of your stomach so you can't physically eat as much.  

However, the surgery does NOTHING to reduce how much you want to eat or would like to eat.  There's the danger....the surgery is on your stomach, NOT your head.   You will still have head hunger and you will still want to soothe yourself with food, regardless of the surgery you have.  And you will find all the sneaky ways to eat around the surgery, including "slider" foods that go right through and don't fill you up.  Unfortunately, most of those slider foods are the nasty carb-heavy foods that got us fat in the first place.  

So, my suggestion to you is to get yourself some therapy and into an Overeater's Anonymous support group NOW so you can start looking at those issues and dealing with them.  Because all the things you discussed are guaranteed to sabotage your long-term success with this surgery.  Surgery is simply one of many tools that you'll need in your tool belt to combat the life time disease of morbid obesity.  

Thank you Tracy D.

That over eater anonymous support group is surely something would want to look into. Also thanks for letting me know that struggle doesn't end with surgery only, I will have to do effort on my part as well. And I should since I have been the one ending up regaining more weight that I even lost, this time I really want to loose and stick around my dream weight . :)

ps: Gherlin sounds good to me :) would that help in stopping binge eating by reducing appetite?

A popular saying here is that surgery works on your stomach not your head. It sounds like you're an emotional eater as well as just loving food. You might want to include therapy to get a better handle on the emotional part of eating so that you won't use food as a crutch. That head hunger will be there no matter which surgery you go for.

The surgery does put a leash on physical hunger, but head hunger will have you eating when you don't need to. You can still love food, but you just eat a lot less of it. There are posters on here that put up pictures & recipes for food that are wls friendly,egg face & frisco come to mind & they kept their weight off!, so you're not alone in your love of food. Chef Graham from that tv show master chef had vsg & maintains his weight loss & still cooks, runs his own restaurants & still plays a judge on the show. Good luck with whatever surgery you choose.

Thanks a lot for your out 1 lasttime :)

does the head hunger go away when your stomach doesn't really accept food from being small in size? I mean does  the pain , bloating or nausea/vomiting make  it go away?

What I can understand is that everybody suggesting that Head hunger should not be satisfied with wrong choices and too many times, right?