Two days from now will mark one year and 11 months since my Gastric Bypass Surgery. That 2nd anniversary is right around the corner.
Today I think back to one of the regular check ins I had with the surgeon. I told her that I was having some issues with pain. I would eat something, then a few hours would go by and I would start to get a bad stomach ache. Am I doing something wrong?
No, she said. It’s normal. You’re hungry.
Huh… hungry, eh? That’s it?
Yup, you’re hungry.
Sure enough, when I get that type of stomach pain I have something to eat and it goes away. That’s all well and good except… well… I don’t want to eat. I want to not be hungry. I want to have breakfast and then not have anything else to eat until lunch, then not have anything else to eat until dinner, then not have anything else to eat until a pre-bedtime snack. That’s not how it works though.
Today I started feeling it about 2.5 hours after breakfast. I started feeling it about 20 minutes before my lunch break. I started feeling it again two hours and 50 minutes after lunch. It was probably 45 minutes before dinner. I had to have a snack. It was a small snack and it made me feel better, but not completely better. Now I’m having dinner so that should hopefully fix things for the next few hours.
Like I said though, I don’t want to be tied to food like this. I don’t want to feel hungry. I just want to take advantage of the fact that my bypassed stomach pouch is a little tiny guy and doesn’t require a lot of food to fill it.
I am not complaining. Not even a little bit. I am fine with all of this. I just didn’t expect it and I wish I had another way around it. I don’t though and it’s okay.
Dinner tonight is salmon and it’s delicious. Given all of the grief I used to give my mother when she tried to give us fish for dinner, she would be shocked that I am loving a nice piece of fish tonight. Who even am I?
Inside the Red Head's Head 
I think you’re at the tricky phase of learning physical hunger vs mental hunger. It’s healthy to have 3 small meals and 2 snacks/day.
I found that my problem has never been hunger. My problem is never feeling full or satisfied… 2 different things. I only have proof of this cause pondamin, back in the fen/phen days, was the first/only time in my life when I experienced both. I’d love to jump on the ozembic trend (it apparently causes the same result) but can’t afford it. Plus, I remember that it took about a year for enough people to have heart damage for the FDA, to completely ban it. Like most, I was willing to risk the damage. Once it was gone, my weight returned… again.
So… I’m curious… pre-surgery, did you ever feel full?
I hope you work out an eating pattern that works for you! I share my fails as a warning of what to watch for.
Happy 23 months!!
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