HELP !!! Backsliding

[Buzzsaw]

Been a year and a half since my sleeve, Lost 120lbs, gained back 30. I'm back to my old eating addiction, eating just to be eating. I'm sure my pouch has stretched. DANG IT !!!!I need to get into a work out routine but I start my day at 5:00am and when I get home from work, I'm exhausted all I want to do is pop some popcorn and hunker down with computer and TV. CRAP!!! I need to go visit my doctors support group...too lazy to get off my butt and drive all the way to the office SHOOT!!!!
I CAN'T RUIN THIS!!!

[kenson]

Buzzsaw, you need to get your rump in gear! Remember why you wanted to have the surgery in the first place. You've done so well, don't give up now. Get back on the train!

[MicheleH]

You can do it! Seeing that you have lost 120 pounds (what an inspiration!) you already know that you are made of pretty strong stuff! The allure of food is strong, but you have already proven that you are stronger!
Did you watch any of the horrible show "My 600 Pound Life"? I didn't see it, but a lot of WLS people are talking about how this woman completely wasted this tool, and (as horrible as the show is) it has been a kick in the pants for a lot of us to do more. Might be worth the torture of watching it just to get the kick in the pants. You got this!!!

[Buzzsaw]

Great points Ladies, you are dead on!!! I can't waste this tool. It is up to me and only me. The addiction is strong, food is my heroin !!! I can't let it win.

[Grace]

I might suggest eating pork rinds instead of popcorn if you're going to snack, zero carbs there at least.
There's also a product called "Just the cheese". It's quite salty but delicious. It's literally cheese baked up in little packages.
The grilled cheese and nacho ones are terrific. All protein there, no carbs.

[Buzzsaw]

Sounds good, where do you find these hunger killers???

[Gordita]

you can decide to maintain your current weight if the thought of losing it again is overwhelming (if you're otherwise healhty) but maybe make a pact with yourself to turn your food addiction back around. get back to following the rules. and commit to not gaining even ONE MORE LB. i dare say the weight will come back off even if slowy. don't make it a race or time it so that you feel like a failure if you haven't lost x-many lbs in x-may weeks. just start fresh follwoing your postop rules. and no, you may not go crazy and have "one last meal" until you're ready to start. that is the path to 10more lbs gained (from experience!). you've got this!!!! hugs and good luck-gordita

[Gordita]

i also agree to think back to whatever low place you were in that prompted you GET this sleeve. you do not want to go back to that place and frankly i don't know what our options are if we waste our sleeve. just do it. you've proven to yourself that you can. be strong.!!! -gordita

[Terribj]

You are an inspiration to all of us - 120 pounds. That is amazing.
You have already done the right thing by being here. We can help! We've got your 6.
An idea : Take the batteries out of the remote control and put them somewhere so that you have to go get them if you are going to sit and watch TV. It then becomes a conscience decision (don't put them in the pantry with the popcorn )

[Grace]

Sounds good, where do you find these hunger killers???

Pork rinds are in any grocery store.
I'm in New England so not many specialty stores and I get my "just the cheese" from amazon.com
Amazon.com: just the cheese
but here is their website
Specialty Cheese Company :: Orders

I'd go with the 16 pack of .5 ounce packages. The 2 oz go stale if you don't eat them quickly enough and the .5 ounce pkg is small enough to stick in a pocket to go. If you like popcorn I'd start with the grilled cheese ones to try, they have a buttery taste.
There's 300 mg of sodium in each package which isn't terrible if you don't have bad high blood pressure. It's the same as 2 1/2 cups of microwave popcorn, but I'll tell you it will sure make you want to drink more as the salty taste is front and center.
They must be pretty good because I have to stop my hubby from eating all mine

It's really hard to not veg out and eat in the winter. The most important thing we can do to halt our weight gain is to stop eating mindlessly. No eating with the tv on. No eating at the computer. Only at the table. I get it. I've recently had to start eating separately from my husband because he eats in front of the tv every night and I gave in and joined him and piled back on 22 lbs in 3 months. So now I eat alone in the dining area, with headphones on for music and am working really hard to remember to think about the food entering my mouth. I realized I was eating so fast I couldn't even remember what I'd eaten 10 min before and was hardly chewing. For some of us, once we get to where our bodies stop losing the weight the real fight begins because nature and our brains really want us to gain that weight back. So we get a kind of amnesia, and our brains tricking us into almost blindly reaching for highly fattening foods. I'm so desperate to short circuit this that we are selling our home and moving 50 miles away closer to family and to a nice warm pool for me to get back to my swimming. Sitting home alone all day (I'm now disabled, partly from the surgery) is a recipe for weight gain disaster.
So what I'm saying is, don't beat yourself up. This is the hardest thing, not the surgery, not the sleeve magic time afterward. It's now. Keeping it off.
If you live alone, I highly suggest purging the house of all things carby. I wish I could....

Oh and yes, your pouch has stretched. More like "matured". In varying places I've read ours can't stretch as far as the bypass can because of the staples; but the sleeve (depending on start size) generally gets to about 10 oz or so.
After surgery we're tight from inflammation and scarring and later it all relaxes. I swear what stretched mine the most was salad. If I could do one thing differently I would not eat salad until I was done losing. Popcorn seems like it's really a lot of volume but put 2 cups in a bowl and add even a bit of warm water and watch it go down to almost nothing. You can fit a lot of popcorn in a 1 cup+ space once you chew it. Never mind ice cream or pudding or the other slider foods. It doesn't help that for some of us the foods we should be eating still hurt years later, like hmbg or even chicken breast pieces. It's easier and more comfortable to eat slider foods.
It's good of you to come here and share. There are realities to continuing "sleeve ownership" that need to be spoken of.

[dale]

Buzzsaw, your story could be my story! I had my sleeve surgery May 2, 2011. I lost 100 pounds the first year, about 20 more the second year, and have spent the last year gaining back about 30 pounds! I never lost as much weight as I needed to lose, but I lost enough to get completely off all diabetes meds and to feel 1,000,000 times better than I did at my heaviest. But it's my story, too, in that I have returned to my food addiction. When I decided to have this surgery, I swore to myself that I would never eat bad-for-you food again! That was naive of me! And, to be honest, I don't want to spend the rest of my life not enjoying the only vice I have! Still, I have done this before, and I know that I can do it again! And I am still in a much better, healthier place than I was before my sleeve. I will never be a young, beautiful hard-body, but I am now and will always be an old, okay-looking soft-body who is HEALTHY! That is the reason I had this surgery---for my health, NOT for my looks!

When I get to the point where I am ready to "work the sleeve" again, I will start with the 5-Day Pouch Test, and then eat like I am supposed to. If you don't know about it, just Google it or search for it on this site. I know that any weight loss from now on will be slow and difficult, but I am prepared for that. I REFUSE to be down on myself for not getting to my goal weight, or for gaining back some weight! You need to not be so hard on yourself, and be proud of what you have already done.

[amygayle]

I think we all have this fear of falling back into our old habits. I'm a VERY new sleever but I know that support is so important. Alcoholics have AA and meetings are vital to maintaining sobriety, so with our food addiction, you have to go back to support group. Form your own if you can. I go to the one that is set up by my surgeon's office, but I also set up my own because meeting once a month was not enough. I have several people I work with that have had bariatric surgery and having each other to lean on is VITAL. I have struggled with my weight my entire life and I always do the best when I have accountability and support. I believe in you and I know we all believe in you!!!! First step is coming back and doing just what you did...asking for support. You are more powerful than your addiction! YOU CAN DO IT!!!!

[Marvinator]

Buzz, the bright side is that you are still down a bunch. My appetite and capacity has come back pretty significantly at five months so I get how it can happen. Hopefully, you can get it under control. Getting off carbs via the pouch test or whatever method you use is probably a real good start.

[Buzzsaw]

You guys and gals are great, Dale has hit it on the head, I will look into the pouch test to try and shring it back a bit. The next few months, I'm getting my yearly physical and colonosocpy. After these, I will reach out to my support gal and surgeon, get some counseling. By that time it will be spring, time for golf and getting outside, in the gym, etc,

I'm a single guy, and would like to date again, so how I look unfortunatley is still important. Heck I'm only 61, but my grex drive is like I was still 30. You know what they say; "I ain't as good as I once was but I'm as good once as I ever was!!!"