Things have been going reasonably well, but I am facing a few challenges.
The first is that, apparently, sugar does not trigger dumping syndrome in me. During our educational sessions, our teacher explained that–for many people, after surgery–eating a significant amount of sugar in one sitting causes “dumping syndrome”, which can manifest as severe, sudden, and uncontrolled diarrhea, light-headedness, sweating, vomiting, and generally feeling like you’re going to die. Obviously that’s awful, but some bariatric patients regard it as a benefit-in-disguise; by providing a strong aversive consequence to unhealthy eating, it makes it that much easier to eat more healthfully.
I avoided sugar almost entirely for the first four months after surgery, out of fear of triggering this awful stuff. But recently, I decided to test it–gently–and see how things went. So I had a very small amount of sugar-sweetened yogurt. No problem–how about a spoonful of ice cream? Oh, that was delicious. And no problems!
As it turns out, I still have a serious sweet tooth. And for me, sugar doesn’t seem to be a problem. That’s good, of course…but I’m finding that a lot of my bad eating habits are still there, and now that I know sugar won’t make me want to die…I want it. So now comes the real work. I’ve lost about 90 pounds, and I feel generally great. I’m just shy of my main goal (200 lbs). But the weight loss has started to slow (more on that in a moment), and my appetite is returning, and now I know I can have sugar.
Now I need to start finding the willpower and motivcation, as well as putting in the mental and emotional work of finally breaking my link between emotional comfort and snacking.
For example–I’ve observed that if I am sitting and watching something with my wife and kids, I crave snack foods. Seriously crave them. And now I realize I always have, and have just continuously munched on things. And that’s *just what I need to stop doing*. Unfortunately, the habit is still there–so now comes the hard part.
I haven’t been able to exercise as diligently in the last two weeks or so, and I noticed several things. First, my weight loss has slowed significantly. That’s probably mostly due to a gradual increase (not just junk, actual healthful food, mostly), but it’s undoubtedly also connected to less activity. I know that weight loss can plateau at times during this process, and I am still losing *inches* at my waist, but not much actual weight. I think that the solution is to dig in, maintain healthy eating, get back to exercise, and have faith. Honestly, even if it stopped here I am, that would be OK–but I want a few more pounds gone.
I’m slightly more disturbed by a few other things in the last two weeks. One was a serious reappearance of depression–severe at times. My current job is very stressful, and I had been decreasing antidepressant dosage as an experiment, so those are probably part of it. It’s possible that release of hormones from body fat may have contributed as well. But whatever the cause, it was a low like I haven’t seen in at least a year. I’m coming out of it now, which is good.
It was accompanied by feelings of despair at the weight loss plateau, though, and an upsetting combination of feeling hopeless that I couldn’t lose more, terror at the thought that I might regain weight, and feelings that I’d almost rather die than regain it. I’ve read about the higher prevalence of suicidal thoughts some folks experience post-surgery, and these never rose to the point of seriously considering or planning action in that direction, but they were definitely there, and they worried me. It feels like there is a real risk of developing a whole new eating disorder, this time oriented around obsessing over weight loss.
The healthy thing would be for me to focus on eating well, finding sources of emotional satisfaction that aren’t food, and enjoying the fact that I can do more things than I could before. (For example, there has been significant improvement in erectile dysfunction…) That’s where I’ll focus.