Did you know your pouch probably has "default settings"?

I swear I am not lying to you.

 

In the past few months I have figured this out and have been trying to find a way to word it so that it makes sense outside my own head!

 

For the newer folks, I know you can’t imagine how you ever could or would fall off track, but it happens. After a time, the weight stops falling off and workouts seem bothersome. In the face of overwhelming food stimuli you begin to indulge…perhaps a bit too much. You say to yourself, “I’ve done well. I don’t have to be so vigilant all the time."

Whether that is the right or wrong thinking for you is a personal decision, but for some of us, we wake up to find our old friend(wink) the scale has become our adversary once more.

 

When that happened to me I worried. I thought, “Now what? I’ve done the most drastic thing I could do and here I am. What do I do?"

 

And it sounds cheesy when people say “mind over matter" but honestly your mind is where a LOT of this stuff rests.

 

For me, I was eating far too much for a time. I’d convinced myself I “needed" the calories to fuel my workouts. In reality, as time goes on the calories in/calories out theory becomes more significant. The reduced caloric intake our surgeries encourage stands to help, not hurt, us in the long term. Granted I am talking REDUCED caloric intake. Not intentional starvation. For those of you who practice the latter, you are well aware of the distinction.

 

When I realized this, I was quite afraid. Had I stretched my pouch? COULD I even eat less if I wanted to?

 

I posted a few weeks ago about my little experiment: sitting with hunger. I allowed myself to be hungry. And I survived. And somehow my body “got" that hunger, ultimately, is not an emergency. I have AMPLE fat to protect me. But it wasn’t my body that needed calibrating, it was my mind. In response to hunger (or the fear of hunger) I did crazy things – things I am not proud of.

 

By sitting with my hunger, I realized that I am not Chicken Little. The sky won’t fall on my head it takes me an extra hour to get to dinner.

 

But another thing happened as a result of this experiment. My pouch seems to have gone back to some default setting. The last few weeks I’ve felt restriction I haven’t felt in many, many months. And because I stared the hunger in the face, I don’t have many feelings, one way or the other, about that restriction. I know how many calories I should get a day (I still bug the hell out of my NUT, even 3.5 years post-op and she still helps me). I get them. But when I’m done, I’m done.

 

I throw that out there because many folks try to do “pouch tests" and other things to try to “shrink" your pouch. It doesn’t need to be shrunk. Your brain can override the fullness feeling you get when you are trying to satiate a hunger that has nothing to do with the body. Over time, you  just get used to that yucky feeling and it becomes “normal." When you go back to eating less, you become more cognizant of that yucky feeling and want to avoid it at all costs.

 

So what does this mean for you? I have no clue. I share this as a realization I have made about myself. But I hope that by sharing some of my struggles, I can help you think differently about yours.

As always, great post, Nikki... and very timely for me.

Some interesting food for thought.  I need to try to sit with hunger.  I find that I "feel" it much more often than I like, and I know it's really just my head telling me I'm bored and need to eat.

Thank you for a great post!

Will you please get out of my head??? 

I recently (a couple of weeks ago) was weighing between 110 - 112.  I realized something's not right here, and really paid attention to my eating.

My psych and I realized that I wasn't absorbing all the Wellbutrin I was taking, and was starting to self medicate with food again.

My dosage was upped and I am truly recognizing when I am full, and it is with much less food than I was consuming.

Today I am back in my comfort zone of 105.  Much better, my clothes fit better and I *feel* better.

Something to think about for those of you who are on anti-depressants....

I think the only way I'd ever see 105 is when they weigh my skeleton.

But that's neither here nor there.

Congrats!

Thanks - my point wasn't my weight, but when something else is off how easy it is to slip into the bad habits.  That because I was so distracted my not feeling myself (and didn't realize till I *did* feel myself again) that it was very easy to eat to self medicate that, and ignore that I wasn't hungry or that I was full.

I mentioned it because once I got back on track I dropped the excess, which I had chalked up to "bounce back" and not bad eating habits.

You look great, Nik!  And your shake recipes rock :)  

Great Post.   Still being a newbie (less than 2 months) I am still trying to figure out what hungry feels like. 

Thank you for this very thoughtful post.  I just want to give great thanks for being here every day and posting and helping me/us in so many ways. 

Thank you for sharing and just for being you. I know that even preop I have problems about eating when I am not hungry. I need to recalibrate my brain.