Emotional eating and Bypass

I am having Gastric Bypass in May die to severe GERD. Am already worried about emotional eating messing me up. Tips for planning ahead to handle this once back on real food?

Start addressing your emotional eating NOW, before the RNY. There's no reason to wait.

Are you working with a therapist yet? Many people here find professional help to be very useful.

Definitely get a start on that emotional eating now. There are posts going back with a few solid steps to take, but if it were me (and it was once):

start logging every bite that goes into your mouth into a tracker. Even if you are standing at the counter and it is a spoonful of something you are cooking, log it. And do not take the smallest number that comes up. If you can, write down what was going on when you ate it. Try planning what you are going to eat in your tracker, and then only eat that.

Start now limiting liquids to at least 30 minutes after you eat.

Limit your number of meals, stop grazing.

Have a look at the menu thread and see what people are eating after rny.

Basically, my advice is to star****ching what you are really doing. And be willing ro tell the truth about it. I realize now, after my 18-month journey from rny, how very many stories I told myself about why I could not lose weight. I lied to myself so many times that I got really good at believing it.

Good luck to you in your weight loss journey. It is so worth it.

Therapy, therapy, therapy.

I seriously attribute as much of my success (so far) to therapy as to the surgery.

I have found that a therapist who specializes in eating disorders is invaluable. Now, a lot of them are also hard-core Healthy At Every Size proponents, so it can be tricky to find one who will not be negative toward the surgery. Or you have to hold a hard line with them that you are there to work on your emotional eating issues and NOT how you plan to stay/get healthy. I completely lucked out with mine. She's not thrilled about the surgery, but she didn't try to talk me out of it and has been very supportive of the process since surgery.

I can tell you I absolutely would already be regaining if we hadn't (mostly) reined in my emotional eating prior to surgery.

As many here will attest, the surgery is on the stomach/intestines and not the brain. Those of us with unhealthy relationships with food need to address the brain part as well.

Good luck!!

Very good point about Healthy at Every Size/Body Positivity biases. I totally get the outrage obese people feel when they experience our fat-phobic culture in so many ways. I also think these approaches ultimately do damage to their adherents. (Full disclosure: I'm a therapist). It's not healthy to support the metabolic disease that is obesity. Young people might not know it yet, but as one grows older with lots of body fat, the damage that's done is immense. Real body positivity means empowering others to make healthy choices, not enabling them to do harm.

I agree with HAES on a lot of issues.

Many doctors refuse to look at other diagnoses and treatment when a patient is fat. A fat person with an ear infection needs antibiotics, not to only be told to lose weight. A fat person with a torn ACL needs surgery and physical therapy, not to only be told to lose weight.

No one should have to put up with people abusing them about their weight. Or couching the abuse in terms of 'I'm just worried about your health, sweetie' either. If a person is not a direct caregiver to a fat person, or on their medical team, their diet and weight is none of their damned business.

Our society needs to accept people as they come. Shapes, sizes, abilities... none of these should cause someone to be judged for who they are as a person.

Fat people need to learn to love themselves. Hating yourself doesn't help you get healthy, it's counter-productive to that in fact.

I am a thousand percent behind all of these concepts.

What I have an issue with is people in the HAES/body positivity/fat acceptance movements manipulating the HAES message to mean your body doesn't ever need to change.

For instance: I was reading comments on a HAES activist's blog. A commenter stated that she needed to lose weight because she has severe lymphedema. Now, she wasn't saying that the weight loss would cure her lymphedema, she had gotten to a point where she physically was unable to compression wrap her legs because her abdominal fat tissue prevented it. She said she needed to lose weight enough to be able to compression wrap her own legs. The activist told her point blank that diets NEVER work, weight NEVER stays off, she shouldn't even consider trying to lose weight, her issue was that she needs to love and accept herself as she is.

I can't begin to express my rage at that. As a nurse I know that when someone is unable to perform their activities of daily living due to their weight, that's a problem. Telling someone that change in their body is hopeless, when they're trying to achieve that in order to take care of themselves is so inappropriate that it makes me sputter.

I have no place in many body positivity movements because I have chosen to "mutilate" myself (their words, not mine) in order to be prettier. Never mind that physical looks amounted to exactly zero percent of my reasons for surgery. I certainly am happy with the physical change, but that wasn't my driving factor. My health was on a downward spiral, and my specialists said that surgery had the potential to help some of my treatments work better. In fact, my primary autoimmune disorder is now in remission. So I have nothing good to say to people who want to push me out of body positivity because I chose to take care of my health.

My blood pressure rises just thinking about it, so I'll get off my soap box now. Especially since I'm likely preaching to the choir. :D

And I also want to say thank you for being a level-headed therapist. My therapist specializes in body image and eating disorders. She wasn't thrilled about surgery for me, but she expressed her concerns and then dropped it, and has been 100% supportive of me in the process. She said some of her HAES peers are hard core with their approach, and she believes that's counter productive and wants to be more gentle with her patients. I'm so glad there are therapists out there like you (I'm assuming, based on your posts...) and her. I wish there were more.

Many months before WLS I started following the post-op lifestyle. It was hard. I gave up a lot of things, such as processed food, sugar/sweets, alcohol, caffeine, carbonated beverages, artificial sweeteners, etc. Many of these items have been triggers for me to overeat throughout my life. I needed to get a handle on it. I felt like crap at first, headaches, fatigue, irritability, but eventually it got better. Starting my detox early made post-op easier, not easy, but easier. And I recommend therapy too.

You've gotten some really good advice and here's my $0.02. I agree 100% regarding therapy. I was already seeing a therapist when I made the decision to have WLS. We simply addressed those issues during our sessions (helped enormously).

Remember that they are only operating on your stomach, not your head. Any issues you have with food pre-op will still be there post-op. It's good that you recognize you are an emotional eater. Now it's time to address the reasons you are an emotional eater!

Good luck.

Adding another voice to the Therapy Chorus. WLS won't change the emotional eating, therapy can help.

Good for you seeing you are an emotional eater. Like the others have said seek therapy.

Knowing and being honest does help.

One tip that helped me was learning to love yourself.

Asking for help here is a good tip.

We may not always like what some have to say.

People want to help. The vets do know what you are going through and will help you.

This is a good place to come for support. To give and get. People here understand what we are going through. Someone who hasn't had the surgery or had been MO. have no idea what it is like.

Life does change. I am four years out and I am an emotional eater. I see my therapist regularly. I need to see and really look at myself. On why I do what I do to myself.

It is an emotional journey.

Best wishes to you.