My understanding was that since the stomach is a lot smaller, you can only handle small portion sizes and that’s how you end up losing weight and having it stay off. I do coding for a medical clinic and I see a fair amount of chart notes of people who had the procedure done (and not the temporary one where they can remove the band, either), and they end up gaining a ton of weight back a few years later.
How/why does that happen? Is it the body adjusting somehow?
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I’m a nurse who actually used to take care of people post surgery for this. The stomach is a muscle. Unfortunately that means it can stretch and get bigger or it can shrink and get smaller. So even though they originally make a much smaller pouch, the fact remains it’s still a muscle that can stretch and unfortunately bariatric surgery doesn’t solve the problem of why somebody is heavy in the first place so the need to eat is still there and a large portion of these patients go right back to it. They will slowly start eating more and more, even vomiting because their body can’t handle it, until they finally get their stomach stretched out enough that they can go back to eating how they like to eat. This is one of those surgeries I feel very mixed about because I realize it can be life-saving but I also realized it does absolutely nothing to solve the problem of why somebody became heavy in the first place and until that gets solved, obesity is going to remain in their future.
Interesting fact, for some of the people who remain thinner they develop a different addiction like alcoholism or gambling or whatnot. The emotional release they need from eating the food isn’t there anymore so they find another way to release it.
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