My Biggest Fear

By Dave Loomis

When I first began thinking about WLS, I knew that once I had the surgery there was no going back. I began thinking about the consequences of that decision, trying to imagine how life would change afterward. Of course, all of my doubts and fears surfaced and had to be dealt with. One of those fears, my biggest, was hunger. I knew from past attempts at dieting that there were (for me) times when that annoying deep down hunger would just not go away and as a result the diet would invariably fail. So as the date of surgery approached, I wondered if this would be just another of my diet attempts that ended in failure.

Yes, the classes I attended pre-surgery explained that the surgery inhibited the production of the hormone ghrelin, which causes that annoying hunger. Not to mention that the effective size of the stomach would be severely reduced which meant that you would feel fuller faster and that would also stop hunger. All of the information and encouragement I received did little to assuage this fear.

What finally made up my mind was just the fact that I was out of control. I knew that my life would be over sooner if I continued into my sixties with an extra 150 pounds on my frame. So I went ahead, willing to accept whatever I had to endure as long as I lost weight. Even though I made the right decision, I was still not sure about that nagging hunger.

That was a little over a year ago. Since then, the most amazing thing has happened; no, not the overall loss of weight I was expecting (see my last blog posting) but the fact that in this time I have had never once experienced the nagging hunger I so feared prior to surgery. Regular, mild hunger, yes - the kind that goes away and stays away after eating a regular meal. The surprising thing was that everything I was told pre-surgery was actually understated. My hunger fear was groundless.

Which brings up the subject of my biggest revelation. I’ll talk about that next time.

Resources

To learn more about diet and eating, check out these titles from Amazon.com:

Breaking Free From Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth

The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why by Jonny Bowden