How I Used A Stomach Operation To Quit Nail Biting

Here is an example in my own life that while not a direct comparison to nail biting, is an example of turning something in my life into a positive by taking advantage of a situation that I faced.

In addition to being a lifelong nail biter I’ve also had a love affair with food most of my life. I’ve never been noticeably overweight and I have a slim build, but I like eating. I’m the kind of guy who likes sugar and can’t just eat one cookie. If they’re lying around, I’ll eat 5. Or maybe 10. I won’t run out and buy sweets but if they’re around the house they won’t last long.

As I got older I did notice I was (unsurprisingly) putting on a pound or two each year. And I had a bit of a gut on me already which I’ve had most of my adult life truth be told. I worked out at home with some home weights but I seemed like I was treading water at best and didn’t put on muscle but added a bit of fat each year.

But as mentioned above I also faced a minor situation that was bothersome but wasn’t really a major health problem per se: Chronic heartburn. It came on at about age 30 and didn’t go away. I’d get it every few days and started chewing antacids to deal with it.

In my case, I had bad heartburn that got worse over a period of time. Like over a decade. I went to the doctor and was prescribed various protein pump inhibitors to deal with heartburn and got stuck on those for about 10 years.

But I couldn’t believe this was the answer and that there wasn’t something I could do to fix the problem, not just mask it by using prescription medication.

I finally decided to do something about it and found through research that surgery was possible to permanently address the problem. I wondered why it hadn’t been brought to my attention sooner!

My stomach operation led to a positive unexpected benefit

I escalated things past my doctor to a specialist and eventually booked an operation called a fundoplication to fix it. It’s a pretty big operation that takes about 4 hours and involves making five small incisions in the stomach area, putting medical tools and a camera inside and stitching part of the stomach around the lower esophageal sphincter to strengthen my weak stomach valve.

So I had the operation and it was a success. No more heartburn and several years later, I’m glad I did it. I wish I’d done it sooner.

Because it’s a stomach operation, it meant that I couldn’t eat food the day before the operation and couldn’t eat solid food until several days after it. I was told I’d have to avoid many foods like meat and breads for at least a month.

And for the first week or so afterwards, food was generally limited to pudding, yogurt, blended soups and anything that I didn’t have to chew basically.

I knew this in advance and although I’d done research that showed that one year after the operation, most men and women don’t lose any weight by having the operation, I knew I was going to lose weight. I was determined to make myself lose weight because I knew I had weight to lose and I was going to use this as the opportunity.

After the operation, it took several weeks to get a real appetite back. I stuck to drinking my food, only eating the aforementioned foods like pudding and yogurt along with broths and blended soups. I couldn’t do exercise either, as I had five sets of stitches in my stomach area that were still healing.

I didn’t eat meat or breads or anything crunchy for over a month. No soda or alcohol or fizzy drinks full of calories either. Just stuck to basic foods that didn’t need to be chewed.

My weight loss was pretty dramatic

I also set up an Excel spreadsheet where I tracked my weight loss beginning the day before the operation to establish a baseline.

The day before my operation I weighed 86.8 kg.

One month after the operation, I was already down to 81 kg.

I could see the difference as my pants were letting looser and my belt was tightening. I started feeling pretty good about how things were going and kept doing what I was doing: Limiting my food intake while doing no exercise whatsoever. I started to get really excited about losing weight.

Two months after the operation, I was down to 78 kg.

Three months post operation, I weighed 76 kg.

Six months after the operation, I was down to 72 kg and by year end I weighed 70 kg on the nose. That was now seven months after the operation.

I was now exercising again but from memory I had probably dropped 8 kg before ever picking up a weight, post operation.

2.5 years after the operation I still weigh in the 70 kg – 72 kg range. In other words, I’ve kept the weight off.

What was the major factor that enabled me to lose weight and more importantly, keep it off?

In my case, it was persistence.

And willpower.

I could have easily gone back to my old eating ways. I’d been eating that way my whole life, eating an entire bag of cookies rather than a few or just eating too much food in general each day. It was easy for me to do.

In fact I was kind of thinking in the back of my mind that I was probably going to fall off the wagon and after losing weight, would quickly put it back on and give up.

But I didn’t.

I generally eat a bit differently than before the operation. Specifically, I eat less and take better care to notice everything I put in my mouth.

I had never counted calories before. So I started counting them. I suddenly realized that my 4-6 lattes I made on my home coffee maker (I work from home) were adding about 700 calories each day (!) due to the milk and sweetener content alone.

So I cut down to 1 coffee with milk per day (if that) and now drink espresso instead. I added cinnamon to the black coffee for a bit of flavor.

I looked for “hollow” calories to get rid of like butter, salad dressings and things of that nature. Cut them out too.

Truth be told, I really didn’t cut out a lot of foods. I just ate less of them and still do.

So, what does all of this have to do with biting nails?

I had the stomach operation in May 2019. I stopped biting my nails for good around September 2020. I effectively used the same thing to lose weight that I used to stop biting and picking my nails.

Persistence and willpower.

Losing weight and quitting nail biting isn’t something you can do overnight. It takes willpower, motivation, persistence or whatever you want to call it.

You need to do it for the long haul and change your actions just liked how I changed my eating habits.

Plus, you try to use the success you see – losing weight and growing nice long nails in my experience – as the benefit.

I found that quitting nail biting was harder than losing weight because I had a reason to eat less food for at least one month after the operation: No appetite. My stomach and body was repairing itself and I didn’t feel like eating so I lost weight. Once the weight starting noticeably going down, my motivation went up and I lost more. When I plateaued which I did a few times, I kept my food intake as normal, worked out more and the weight loss continued.

It should be noted that I had weight to lose. I wasn’t starving myself per se and I was losing fat. My loose pants are a testament to that. I dropped a fair bit of body fat that’s for sure but have since put on muscle from the weightlifting too.

When I stopped biting and picking my nails for good, it didn’t happen overnight. It probably took about 2 weeks by the time I decided consciously that I was going to quit that I actually quit for good. Every time I would instinctively try to bite or pick them, I had to catch myself and not do it. Over about two weeks, it became easier for me to not do it.

Pretty soon, biting my nails was not even something I considered. To this day, I’m kind of amazed that I actually quit. In the end it actually wasn’t much effort.

It did take me until age 50 to quit but once I put my mind to it, the quitting part actually came quickly and easily. But it did take persistence and willpower to get started.