Hi again, Heather. I commented on your other post, but let me say welcome to the group. We're happy to have you.
So you're having the sleeve and you think you can undo the process you get with it. Sure you can, but you really have to work on it.
It's better for your entire sake to focus on how you're going to deal with the eating disorder that led you to obesity. You'll only have a tiny pouch, but you'll still have a big, loud voice in your head, trying to convince you that a life of overeating and junk food and low self-esteem is what you were born to have.
Apologies if you already know this, but you should have two blank journals. In one of them, write down all your thoughts related to your mental and physical health. In the other, keep a food diary listing amounts, times of day, dates, grams of protein and calories in every single crumb you eat.
You can also maximize the benefit of the journal by employing a technique advocated by Sondra Ray in "The Only Diet There Is." Divide a page with a line down the middle. On one side, list the failure messages you're getting in your mind or in your surroundings. On the other side, write the truth about what that lie is trying to do to you. So, on one side of mine, I wrote, "You're fat and ugly." On the other side I wrote, "You are beautiful, inside and out."
The voice will speak again, probably saying the same thing. So you will counter with the truth in the opposite column. You may write the negative down a thousand times, and a positive response to it each time. Somewhere along the line, you accepted that you are somehow defective, like fat and ugly. You may have been told this by people. You may have compared yourself to people you see everywhere. This failure message is so strong, it guided your life down a path to self-loathing and destructive eating.
It's so strong, you'll think you can't beat it. Your entire consciousness has come to believe it. Your body reflects it back as truth and then reinforces it until it's bigger than you. And your trained brain immediately tries to reject any good thought you use to fight a bad one.
But the beauty part is that there is a part of your mind that desperately wants to believe in you. For those of us who have suffered for so long from negative and abusive treatment, it's hard to grow that part of your mind that loves you and sees what a cool chick you really are. Right. It's hard. But not impossible. Behavior modification isn't just about going on a food diet. It's putting your mind on a diet from negativity, as Ray writes in her book.
You may not believe it now, but don't let the voice keep you from trying to change your thinking. Keep fighting and repeating. It is through repetition that we learn everything, from penmanship to mountain climbing. Choose a negative thought and vaporize it. Never, ever give up. Once the negative thought realizes the positive thought has power, it will retreat and eventually fade away.
This is the power of affirmations, and there are a lot more than I just pointed out.
As to your fears that raise questions, remember that any surgery comes with pain attached. But for some of us, it's a breeze, while others seem to feel the ache for a long time. A lot of how you get better is determined by how committed you are. You'll have some pain, your appetite might get wonky, you might experience vomiting, diarrhea and a sense of revulsion toward all food--for a while. In my opinion, there's rarely enough trouble post-operatively to crab about. Then, suddenly, your pants will start falling down because you've lost too much weight to make them stick to you. And it will continue.
Follow your doctor's orders to the letter. Make sure you have a nutritionist to assign you a SPECIFIC diet for after. Get a therapist and support group tailored to those thoughts and use everyone listed, along with your two journals, and ignore anyone who tries to tempt you off your path. The surgery won't fix you. It will just empower you to fix yourself.
en.wikipedia.org
