Considering Weight Loss Surgery Because You Can’t Stop Eating?

---

Before or after bariatric surgery, Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous offers a free Twelve Step approach to addictive eating

If you are searching for bariatric surgery or weight loss surgery because you cannot stop eating, you may be looking for more than weight loss. You may be looking for a way to stop addictive eating.

Many FA members first reached this point after years of trying different diets, exercise programs, commercial weight-loss plans, medications, or surgery. FA is for people who still cannot control their eating despite gastric bypass, lap-band, or other forms of weight loss surgery.

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous does not offer medical advice and does not take a position for or against bariatric surgery. Medical decisions should be made with a qualified doctor. FA speaks directly to the experience many food addicts describe before, during, and after weight-loss attempts: the inability to stop eating, despite all your best efforts.

For some people, the problem is not merely weight; it's an addiction to food.

Dr. Carl Lowe, Jr., a bariatric surgeon quoted in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, puts it plainly: 

I’ve been doing bariatric surgery since 2004, so I’ve had eight years of meeting with hundreds and hundreds of people who have struggled with their weight. In my view, undeniably, food addiction is real. I see it every day.

Food addiction is not simply a physical problem. My patients know that they should not eat the foods they eat. They know their eating is taking them down a destructive road of weight gain and the medical problems associated with it—diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol—but they can’t help themselves. They have to eat as powerfully as other people have to have a cigarette.

You might be thinking my patients don’t know any better, that education is the solution, but ignorance is not the problem. Most of the people I see are more educated than I am about nutrition and dieting and low-calorie foods. Our nutritionist talks with them. We tell them what we want them to eat. We give them lists of the healthy foods, but they still can’t stop themselves from eating high-carbohydrate, high-fat, or calorically dense foods—flour and sugar foods, as FA would put it. People in FA are familiar with this experience.

My patients come to me because they want a solution, and they haven’t ever been able to find one. They’ve tried exercise. They’ve tried commercial weight loss programs. They’ve had personal trainers and tried every diet known to man—diets from books, green tea diets, cabbage soup diets.Unfortunately, looking at the scientific data, we see that there’s no easy solution when people can’t control how much and what they eat. The medical literature tells us that if someone weighs 100 or 150 pounds too much, that person has just a 1–2 percent chance of losing that weight and keeping it off over a sustained period of time.

In a gold standard study done in Sweden, researchers tracked about sixteen hundred people who were classified as morbidly obese.(Lars Sjöström et al., “Lifestyle, Diabetes, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors 10 Years after Bariatric Surgery,” New England Journal of Medicine 351 (December 2004): 2683–93.) One group of about eight hundred people were to lose weight under a doctor’s supervision, with a nutrition program, any medications that seemed helpful at the time, and advice regarding exercise and calories. After ten years, they were heavier than when they started. None of them had access to anything like FA during that time.

A second group of eight hundred had bariatric surgery. That group did much better, but the Swedish study and others indicate that surgery can be only one small part of a solution. It can potentially help people with medically diagnosed morbid obesity get down to obesity and then to a place where they’re merely overweight, but it’s highly unusual for anyone to reach what is medically considered a healthy body weight after bariatric surgery. Typically, a year and a half after the operation, people reach their lowest weight— about 50 percent of what they need to lose—and then, over the next ten years, they slowly regain some of what they’ve lost, until they reach a plateau.

I tell my patients all the time that they have to change their perception of food and how they relate to it or they will regain their weight. “We can plan surgery for your stomach so that you can’t eat large volumes of food,” I say, “but I can’t do anything to make you wisely select the kinds of food you put into your stomach.

When bariatric surgery feels like the only option

Many food addicts who later join FA have reached the point where weight loss surgery seemed like the only possible answer. Several FA members describe what weight loss procedures were like for them, and whether surgery cured the underlying problem of addiciton.

Surgery was my last throw of the dice. I had to cope with uncontrollable diarrhea, hair loss, gallbladder problems, stomach pain, and severe muscle cramps. After seven years, the doctors told me that I must have the bypass surgery reversed or I would die. The weight came roaring back like a tsunami. There was nothing I could do to control it. I soon gained back all of the weight I had lost, and more. Finally at age 71, I saw a small ad in our local community newspaper and I went to my first FA meeting. I knew from the first moment that this was where I belonged. I am a food addict. My program works. There is no magic out there—no softer, easier way.

Here is another story of what one person's addictive eating looked like despite bariatric surgery.

At 11 years old, I was up to 200 pounds; 250 by the time I was 16. When I was 26, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and tipped the scales at over 350 pounds. Then, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get below 300 pounds.

At 30, I heard about weight-loss surgery—stapling the stomach to make it smaller. I was willing to try anything. I was afraid that if I didn’t do something, I was going to weigh 500 pounds. I went ahead and had the surgery. From the first week, my new stomach didn’t want any food in it. Everything I tried came back up!  I lost 125 pounds in a year, but I had complications. The weight loss lasted five years, until I hurt my back at work. Because of my slow digestion and my being laid up, the weight slowly started coming back on and I couldn’t stop it.

The weight yo-yoed until I was more than 350 pounds again. I was over 50 years old, on disability, and fat. I needed medicines to keep my blood pressure and cholesterol down, and had many aches and pains. I knew that there was no hope left. I was losing feeling in my legs and getting fatter every day.

I came to an FA meeting to support a friend, never thinking it would change my life. That day I heard hope. I came back to a meeting every day that first week, got a sponsor right away, and got started.

With the help of all the FA members, my sponsor, and my doctor, we were all working together toward my goal. I’ve been in Program for two years now and have been given hope for a longer life. I am down 146.6 pounds, my blood pressure and cholesterol readings are normal, I have no diabetes, and I now take less medicine. All my life I had turned to food, whether I was happy, sad, worried, tired, or anything in between, but since I have been in FA, I have tools to use. 

These personal stories point to a pattern many food addicts understand: changing the body does not automatically change a food addict's relationship with food.

What bariatric surgery can and cannot do

Dr. Lowe does not dismiss bariatric surgery. As a bariatric surgeon, he acknowledges that surgery can help some people with medically diagnosed morbid obesity. But he says, “surgery can be only one small part of a solution.”

Dr. Lowe tells his patients they must change their perception of food and how they relate to it. Otherwise, weight regain is a real risk.

That is where FA may be useful for people who identify as food addicts, whether or not they have had surgery.

What is FA, Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous?

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous is a program based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are no dues, fees, or weigh-ins at FA meetings. FA is a fellowship of people recovering from the disease of food addiction through shared experience and mutual support.

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, FA, provides a daily program of recovery and network of support for people whose lives have been taken over by the addiction to food.

Why daily support matters

Dr. Lowe says that most bariatric surgeons offer support groups, but monthly or even weekly support may not be enough for someone dealing with daily cravings. In FA, he saw something different: sponsors, frequent meetings, and daily contact with people who understood the problem from the inside.

Another FA member wrote that she believed bypass surgery would never solve her problem because she would “stuff food down” whether she had surgery or not. That same member described food thoughts running constantly in her mind, leaving “no room for any other thoughts.” When she came to FA, she got a sponsor, followed suggestions, and began living one day at a time.

Before or after surgery: When can FA help?

Some people find FA before surgery. Others find FA after surgery. Some come to FA because they want to avoid surgery. Some come because surgery helped for a while but did not resolve their addictive eating.

FA is not a replacement for medical care. But the central question FA addresses is different: Can I stop eating addictively?

If the answer is no, FA offers a practical, Twelve-Step approach to recovery.

Dr. Lowe describes speaking with a patient who had successfully kept weight off after surgery. When he asked her secret, she told him: “until something clicked in my heart and mind, nothing was going to change.”

Questions to ask yourself when considering Bariatric Surgery or FA

You may want to learn more about FA if any of these questions sound familiar:

• Have I tried many diets, only to regain the weight?
• Do I eat when I am stressed, lonely, angry, happy, or celebrating?
• Do I know what I should eat, but still find myself unable to stop?
• Am I considering bariatric surgery because I feel desperate?
• Have I already had weight loss surgery but still struggle with food obsession, grazing, bingeing, or regain?

For a full set of questions to ask yourself, visit our Questionnaire: Am I a Food Addict?

There is a free meeting you can try

FA is free. There are no dues, fees, or weigh-ins. You do not need to decide whether you are a food addict before attending a meeting. You can simply listen.

Many people arrive at FA after believing they had exhausted every option. Some have had weight loss surgery. Some are considering it. Some have never been medically obese but cannot stop thinking about food, weight, and dieting. What they share is the desire to stop eating addictively and live free from food obsession.

See the full list of FA meetings online, in person, or over the phone.