Major weight loss might deliver your dream body, but the part of you that used food for comfort will not be instantly 'fixed'. In fact, writes Nicole Gaviria, it's sometimes after you shed the kilos that the real work begins.
When it comes to weight loss, there's a common belief that surgery or medications like Wegovy and other GLP-1s are the easy way out. I understand why people think that. But it's a myth, and one I understand from the inside, as someone who in 2018 had 80% of her stomach surgically removed for the exact reasons you might be considering these tools today.
I understand the expectation, because I lived it. The hope that this time, something will finally work. That you'll feel in control. That the food noise, that endless chatter about what you should and shouldn't eat, will finally go quiet. Underneath all of it is a longing for relief, for safety, and to finally feel like a “normal” person around food and be free to get on with your life.
The least understood eating disorder
From about the age of 20, I felt out of control around food, but I didn't have a name for it. I assumed the problem was me, that I was lazy, that I just hadn't found the right diet yet. I never would have called it 'binge eating disorder', and most people living with this wouldn't either, because it feels like a personal failing more than anything else.
When my GP eventually named it for me, I was floored. Like a lot of people, I'd assumed eating disorders only happened in smaller bodies. I was shocked to learn that binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder, with a higher prevalence than anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa combined. Despite this, fewer than half of us ever get treatment. We're the least likely to reach out, and the most likely to be dismissed as people who just aren't trying hard enough.
The truth is, those of us in this struggle have likely tried desperately hard for years. Reports show that women have reportedly attempted 61 diets on average by the time they turn 45. We do this as an attempt at control, to find peace with food and in our bodies. I was no different.
Bariatric surgery and the honeymoon period
When my health team suggested gastric sleeve surgery, I said yes. I wanted it to be over. I wanted peace from the endless tug-of-war of the next plan, the next fat burner, the next round of weight-loss shakes, which only ever landed me heavier than where I'd started and in a deeper pit of self-blame and hopelessness. For the first time, relief felt within reach.
For the first six months after surgery, I had the honeymoon period described by those who've had bariatric surgery, and those on but on GLP-1s, too. The food noise went silent. The weight came off. And here's a truth we don't say out loud enough: when you lose a significant amount of weight, the world treats you very differently. It became painfully clear just how much being in a bigger body had quietly shaped my life, the way I treated myself, the way others treated me, the opportunities I put myself forward for or quietly talked myself out of.
New body, same old brain
Eventually, life's challenges arose and I did not have tools to manage them. The cravings came back, the urge to use food to soothe, the pull towards food became louder and louder.
I may have had a completely different body, but I still had the same relationship with food. Because no surgery changes your nervous system, or rewires years of diet culture conditioning. It cannot touch what food is doing for you emotionally or teach you how to build a peaceful dynamic with eating. In fact, a new study has found that approximately one third of people with eating disorders have used GLP-1 medications to maintain rapid dietary restriction, a sobering reminder that these tools, without the right support and monitoring around them, can deepen and maintain the struggle rather than resolve it.
What I wish someone had told me is this: losing the weight was never going to guarantee me a calm, nourished relationship with food and my body. It was just the beginning. And right now, in this Ozempic age, many people are hoping this new wave of solutions will fix their eating, and finally hand them control. It's just one more thing diet culture has glamorised and sold us, and there's so much more to the puzzle than that one piece.
Three big questions to ask yourself
Here's what I eventually discovered actually sits underneath binge and emotional eating. Understanding these three things changed everything for me, and they're also the reason why “quick-fixes” like surgery and injectables, don't get to the root of the struggle on their own.
1. Are you eating enough?
You don't have to be on a formal diet to be under-eating. Skipping breakfast, going hours between meals, or talking yourself out of food when you're genuinely hungry all create a quiet pressure that tips the body into an urge to eat. A GLP-1 might silence the food noise for as long as you're using it, but it doesn't teach your body and mind that food is safe and consistently available. When the medication is no longer there and food noise returns, will you be able to trust yourself?
2. Are you still a slave to silly old 'rules'?
The beliefs that diet culture taught us about 'good' and 'bad' foods, guilt, and the morality of eating get absorbed so early in our lives, we don't notice it happening. The more forbidden a food feels, the more power it holds. No surgery or medication touches that conditioning. When my urge to eat returned after surgery, the foods I had the strictest rules around became my binge foods, again.
That conditioning has to be actively unlearned.
3. What does bingeing really do for you?
Is the binge at the end of the day the only thing you genuinely look forward to? The only thing on your list that feels like it's just for you? Has food become your most reliable way to soothe, to ground, to decompress? This is the piece that tends to resurface once the honeymoon period of any quick fix wears off. When life throws its curveballs, and it will, do you have a toolkit to reach for, outside of food?
When I finally attended to all three of these pieces, as well as doing deep work on myself, everything shifted. I've been binge-free since 2019, and have a calm relationship with food and my body that I didn't believe was possible for someone like me.
I'm now a registered counsellor and have supported more than 400 women through this same journey, including women who are pre and post surgery, women who are on or considering GLP-1s, and women recovering from a lifetime of yo-yo dieting. What I know for certain from my journey is that no tool, injection, or operation does the work for you. The mindset work, the behavioural work, the nervous system work: that's the foundation to creating peace with food that actually sticks.
Nicole Gaviria is a registered counsellor and host of the Binge Free Bestie Podcast.
WHERE TO GET HELP: For a directory of public eating disorder services in New Zealand, go to ed.org.nz.
SHARE ME