My 25 Year Old Diet Journal - Still on that Merry-Go-Round

I thought of your post when I had a really hard day yesterday. I'm 15 months post-op and I've lost all my weight. There was a time before I was done losing and shortly after where I was almost euphoric because I did it. I remember making a post asking if the happiness was a permanent state of being because I didn't think I could ever feel another way.

Now I'm in maintenance and it's hard and I'm staring down the barrel of doing this for the rest of my life. It is a mental mindfuck and I'm holding on by my fingernails every single freaking day. My brain hasn't quit saying "You should eat insert delicious food here" every single free moment of the day. I just have to tell it no over & over again. It's exhausting, to be honest!

I come back to OH because I see there are others who have held on for so much longer and it gives me hope I can do it too. I am living the life of a recovering addict. But, much like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, I will always be a food addict and that merry-go-round is a real *****

My maintenance group has been having a discussion about food addiction recently. We believe that it IS a true addiction for most of us, so we are basically addicts in recovery.

I have an addictive personality. It's the reason I've always been terrified of drugs, including narcotic pain medication. I had never taken any oral narcotics until my plastic surgery, even with two c-sections and several kidney stones. There is also a long line of alcoholics in my family, so I've always limited my drinking, before surgery and especially now after.

I pretty much always have an addiction of some sort. At the worst of times it was food and cigarette smoking (which I quit 3+ years ago and will never go back to) and at the best of times, it's Diet Coke and gum. If I kick my gum habit I'll notice a major increase in carbonated drinks or vice versa. At one point it was mints but that had more sugar than gum.

Even now, with eating what I'm supposed to I become very attached to certain foods - yogurt, protein bars, peanut butter, etc. I have to religiously track and weigh them or make a conscious decision not to consume them at all. Right now I'm fighting the need to give up yogurt because it causes GERD, but I'm not doing it...

Interesting - I do that too (substitute with other seemingly harmless addictions, like gum, almonds, and then there is shopping...).

This is a great post and the message I was trying to get at. Those voices never go away, and the compulsive desire to eat may be quieted for awhile, but it comes back. It is one of the reasons transfer addictions (shopping, sex, exercise, alcohol, etc.) are common with post-ops.

To be honest, the OP's diet journals of decades past could still be written by many of today's post-op vets.