My surgeon, the nutritionist and the RN who works with patients long term at the bariatric center are all aware of this and working with me. So while I am not looking for "advice", I am looking to hear from anyone else who regained their appetite in full! I am so depressed. Again, the "team" is working with me and will do anything within their power. This is a high powered hospital with all the bells and whistles and all the latest updated data.... but but as a patient I feel so alone. All of the people in my in person bariatric support group are brand new to having the surgery. No one who had it a year or more ago even come to the meetings. Again, just looking to touch base here with anyone who can understand an appetite returning to what it was prior to surgery! Thank you!
This isn't advice, but are you confusing "appetite" with "eating disorder?"
Bariatric surgery addresses the PHYSICAL aspect of obesity. It's designed to make your stomach into a pouch that only holds a tiny amount of food. If you were obsessed with eating certain amounts or certain foods before, that doesn't go away without some kind of mental therapy.
My approach would be to plan your daily diet every day, and weigh and measure everything that's going into your mouth. Don't eat more or less than that.
Make sure you get at least 6 glasses of water in all day, sipping and sipping all the time. Never be more than an arm's length away from your water bottle or glass. The water is SO IMPORTANT, and I mean water, NOT liquid. Do an internet search that includes information on the physical effect of water on metabolism and digestion. Again, it's so important to drink water.
Let me suggest that you keep a journal for 2 or 3 days where you do this precise thing. You should already have a list of foods and a suggested diet from your bariatric RN or doctor. Draw from that, creating 3, 4 or 5 meals a day (small bites so you can feel like you're snacking, not stuffing yourself), and use check boxes to make sure you've eaten or drunk the food you've listed.
For the most part, I still have the exact urge to overeat (or in my case, binge & purge) as I had before my surgery. Only the revision of the size of my stomach has saved me from being obese like I was before.
I've smoked cigarettes on and off for 50 years, sometimes quitting for 5 or 10 years, then starting up again. But I'm just lucky I don't have an obsession for tobacco that so many people have, where they need a pack or two or three a day. Still, I have it. The urge to light up might pop into my head a dozen times every hour. I just go, "Oh. Wish I had a cigarette." Then I move on until the next urge arrives. But I don't smoke.
A lot of people find some form of hypnosis helpful. Even a positive affirmation can be a hypnotic command. The importance in any of my suggestions is REPETITION. Get your desire in order, then turn it into an affirmation, and whenever an urge pops up, say your affirmation over and over until it goes away.
You have an eating disorder of some sort. If you didn't, you would be at a normal weight and food wouldn't haunt you. Like any disease, you can't make it go away magically. You will have to fight it for the rest of your life. But you can win the fight, just by weighing what YOU want vs. what your obsession wants.
You're not alone in this. Virtually everyone in the world has some nearly uncontrollable bad thought or habit that they have to fight all the time.
I had a friend I used to complain to about my struggles with overeating, and basically, she'd just suggest I give in to it a little bit, in a very deliberate way, savoring the food in order to make it last and taste more intensely. I'd argue with her about the bad things that would happen and she'd say, "What are they gonna do, take away your birthday?" She just cracked me up. Thinking of it that way always helped me put my obsession into a manageable perspective.
Look, you had the surgery. You have rules about what and how much to eat. You are supposed to drink a lot of water. And this will be with you for the rest of your life. But you can step up to the line and say NO, I will not be controlled by an obsession. I'll live with it, I'll feel pain because of it, but I want something else more than I want to pig out. I want health, life, high self-esteem.
So gradually you can gain ground and become the boss who struggles with the task but lives with any pain or discomfort that brings.
The alternative is giving up and giving in. How does THAT feel to you?
Babbling. Hope that made sense.