It hurts me to read these stories because so much of it hits home for me and stuff that I went through to different degrees. While I wasnt a fat kid in school, I was a sugar addict. My mother was a sugar addict but not overweight for the majority of my life. She would eat chocolate spread on bread or cake, she adds sugar to ice cream... in fact, she added sugar to just about everything.

When I was around 12 or so my mother began sending me to the store (across the street) alone sometimes. She would give me money and I would spend part of the change buying junk food. My mother also owned a bakery which didnt help because I would always go there and eat junk or even hide it and take it home with me and no one would know or say anything.

I would always try and hide what I would eat because I would never want anyone to see me and I would eat massive quantities of junk. I could eat a whole cake or an entire box of cookies by myself. I would try and hide the wrappers of boxes. I would cut them up into tiny shreds and mix them in the garbage so no one would notice (not that people looked through the garbage, but more my own paranoia and shame in what I did) I would fold things into tiny piecs and shove them behind my dresser or bed or in the backs of my drawers and I would freak if people entered my room without me being there, again, because I was scared someone would see all the junk I ate that I was hiding there.

Any time I got money that was what I would spend it on. The amount I could eat was sickening and it would always be alone. In public no one would see me eat a thing. People would wonder what was wrong with me. I couldnt even eat around my family.

It was as though I was a bottomless pit, when I would eat sugary junk food I would never feel full, never feel satisfied and other times I would buy huge amounts and eat it all because it was there and I couldnt store it uneaten anywhere because I didnt have the space to hide it, so I would force myself to eat it even if I felt sick (later on this led to purging). I didnt know how to save something for later and my body would rarely send me signals I was full. It was almost like a vacuum and could suck up everything.

I began starving myself to lose weight and maintained this starvation for years with bouts of extreme binging till I was sickened and beyond. It was as though something else would enter my body and take over and I would have no control at all over what I was doing for those couple of hours and then I would destroy the evidence and go back to normal as though none of this ever existed.

It is a dysfunction to some degree. I dont get that way when I eat low carb. Sometimes low carb junk food will trigger me to eat more low carb junk food, but nothing like what I would do. I actually learned how to tell when my body is satisfied or hungry. I dont feel overstuffed anymore and even when I want to eat a lot of something because it tastes good I cant. My body sends a message to my brain that I am satisfied and I was done. Before I either wouldnt get full and eat till nothing was left or just never get a satisfied message even though I would sometimes feel overstuffed, I would still want more.

This is the first time in my life I have a healthy relationship with food and feel great.

As for how people starve themselves after the operation. My friend who did it would get physically ill. If she ate more than her tiny amount she would vomit. If the food wasnt chewed fine enough she would vomit. She would constantly get sick so no matter how hungry she may have felt, it was just physically impossible for her to eat a normal amount of food. She lived on beanie weanies and martinis. She wasnt supposed to drink but did anyway.

My aunt is considering the operation now and I am trying to do all I can to stop her.

Here is some more info about recovery

http://www.mills-peninsula.org/obesity/now_a.html