WomanvsMirror wrote: »

The no hunger period is over for me, good thing I have this permanent restriction.

Please do not rely on the restriction to tell you when to stop eating. Always stop BEFORE you feel it. *DECIDE* how much you should eat, eat that and stop.

The problem is that (1) you can stretch your stomach out a little - eating always to your "limit" and carbonated type drinks are ways to make that happen sooner, (2) carbs "slider" foods dissolve very very easily so that by the time you have been eating for 15 minutes, the "bulk" is gone and you can easily fit more in - for example, you will look at 6 rice cakes and think "no way will that fit", but it will - by the time your mouth and saliva finishes and you swallow, each rice cake is like 1 tablespoon of "food" in your stomach. It is not hard to eat all 6 - at 45 calories each, you just ate 270 calories (almost all carbs) and are likely to still be hungry not long after. Now - take 6 Tbs of tuna or other dense protein and eat it all. You will be FULL, and it will likely be awhile before you are hungry again because it takes longer to digest and move on no matter how much you chew it first. 6 Tbs tuna is about 150 calories. So it is very easy to fall into the trap of eating higher calories for less satisfying food and being hungry again sooner (leading to "grazing").

The "restriction" will NOT keep you from gaining weight forever. It will certainly help, but the choices of food you make and how responsibly you eat determine whether you continue to lose, stall or start gaining again. It is very, very easy over time to eat more calories than you burn, even if you think you are not eating "a lot".

Think more of it this way - your "stomach" dictated what you ate all your life... it told you when you were "full" and when to stop eating. And look what happened - you were overweight enough to need WLS. So clearly your stomach is a TERRIBLE indicator of how much to eat. From now on, let your BRAIN decide how much you SHOULD eat, eat that and stop. If you are truly hungry after that, make a conscious decision on what else you will eat and how much and start planning your meals better to be more filling. You will definitely need more calories as you are longer out and are more active, but you should be in control of how many those are and what makes them up. Letting your stomach decide is like going to a grocery store while starving and not having a list. BAD IDEA. Go to the grocery store after eating, and with a meal plan laid out and shopping list to match it. Get what is on the list and get out. That is how you should be eating... That "honeymoon" is a learning time, and once it is gone you are just like everyone else - calories in has to be less than calories out. You just have a slight advantage in that it is harder for you to eat large volumes at once. But grazing and drinking during meals and drinking carbonated drinks and always eating to "fullness" will eventually catch up with you and put you right back with the rest of the world struggling to lose weight.

Edit: having WLS is kind of like a permanent diet pill of sorts... you get used to it over time and it loses its effectiveness. People who have WLS have tried every diet there is - and generally fail because they cant stick to the restrictions in food and are hungry. There is no "magic' in the surgery that changes the laws of physics so that you dont have to eat less than you burn to lose weight... it just makes the "eating less" part DOABLE. You still have to "diet" the rest of your life (hopefully in a manner that is a "lifestyle change" not fad diet), the difference from before WLS is that you can STICK TO the diet now (whatever diet you choose). That is the "magic" of WLS - the mechanics of losing weight are still the same as everyone else here. You just have a little help with "motivation" or "self-control" you didnt have before ...