When you eat something with the Sleeve Gastrectomy, food enters the stomach as normal (unlike the band where it is slowed up by the band) and leaves the stomach through the normal, natural passageway (the pylorus). So food travels normally through the part of the body the gives you fullness. So fullness feels normal, and eating feels normal. This is not the case for the band or the bypass. So how does that help? No matter what you are feeling like, no matter how distracted you are, no matter how hungry, food goes down normally and makes you feel full quickly. So imagine you are inclined to eat really large meals when you are very hungry, especially after a stressful day at work, and you quite like a bit of drive-through convenient, fast food. (Nothing wrong with that in general, by the way, but perhaps you tend to do it too often.)

With a Gastric Band you are likely to get a blockage and find it difficult to eat and eventually stop eating the takeaway and be less inclined to get it next time you feel like this. The Sleeve Gastrectomy will let you eat the take away normally, but only a much smaller amount, the meal ending when there is simply no room left in your stomach to eat anything more. So both the band and the Sleeve help with impulsively high calorie eating, but for the person with the Sleeve the feeling is more natural.

And if there is a moment or a period in your life when you are determined to eat your take away, and you have a Gastric Band, you might find some way to get the food down so you can keep on eating, because at that time you want to eat more, even though it will mess up your weight loss. With the Sleeve Gastrectomy, no matter how hard you try, you will still only eat a small meal. This durability gives people with a Sleeve the comfort that the weight control is going to persist, no matter how they are feeling, and is less subject to sabotage. Neither operations are effective at weight control unless you have a calorie controlled diet.