Revelation for a new bandster: It's not Thanksgiving

This thought has been brewing for a few weeks or maybe longer. I finally decided to put it down in writing. It comes from something I heard someone say earlier on, maybe right after my surgery. She said when we're seeking that full feeling it's like we're expecting Thanksgiving or something. And having lap band is NOT thanksgiving. It's been a really slow process and certainly 8 weeks out from surgery I am not "there" yet but I try to keep this mantra in mind when I might tend to overeat.

Repeat after me: It's not Thanksgiving, It's not Thanksgiving, It's not Thanksgiving...

What does this mean?

My entire life I have been chasing this feeling of fullness, which to me translates into "I cannot possibly eat one more bite." which in turn makes "yeah, I could probably eat one more bite" feel like hunger - which it's certainly not!

My overeating has been primarily due to my love of yummy food and my constant "hunger" which I now know may not have been as constant as I thought. There is a difference between being full and "not hungry" but I never knew that. No one ever told me and certainly no one ever taught me by example. As a kid I was always being told to eat less, which of course only made me inclined to sneak food and eat more as an act of rebellion and as a way to assert my own control over my body. Now I see that the psychology of it all is not healthy. It doesn't nourish my body better and it certainly never kept me from being "hungry."

If you have a hunger for anything (food or any activity or substance) that cannot be satisfied no matter how much of it you get, then I would venture to say that the food (or other issue) is not really what it's about.

If my body had really been hungry all those years then eating would have made some sort of difference. Yet I was the type of person who could never really be full no matter how much I'd eaten. So it's taken 26 years and a major surgery to realize that I never was really hungry after all. I mean sure, sometimes I had to have been, but the majority of the time I wasn't hungry. I wasn't "full" either but you're not supposed to be. You're not supposed to walk around like you've just eaten Thanksgiving dinner after every meal.

I guess I just figured everyone else except me did.