How to prevent bariatric weight regain

Clear division: before and after

Your life can be now divided into two parts: before the surgery and after. What happened before surgery is largely irrelevant because it is a closed book and you decided that you don’t want to go back to it no matter what. It seems like a good idea.

You are firmly convinced that you will do everything exactly as the bari doctor will tell you, you will measure all the grams and milliliters, you will meet your protein goal every single day and you will be all over the perfect patient. Does this sound familiar to you? Think that I am not very far from the truth.

The reality hits in

Well, now they parked a bed with you in a hospital room, you are freshly operated on and it is time to start fulfilling all the things you had planned for yourself. To your huge surprise, your body is sabotaging you, doesn’t want any water, only looking at a protein shake makes you nauseous, you can’t eat a third of the calorie intake you are supposed to, protein goal is somewhere far away. You feel miserable and angry because you are failing from day one.

Then things get a little better and you are at least approaching what you are supposed to get. The weight is slowly disappearing and it is motivating you, so you keep going. Then comes the first stall and it is a whole month before the stupid scales show you some lower number than before. You are frustrated, demotivated, angry, grumpy and you regret having the surgery.

Keep going!

But because the scales started to move again, you surf on a new wave of motivation and you keep going. You are now some six months out, you have finally survived all the nasty pures and protein shakes and weeks of scrambled eggs with cottage cheese and you finally can eat something that resembles normal food. Obviously, in mini portions, but it is something you can chew, so you are happy.

Then one day you try a bite of cake while going out with your friends, then a bite of pizza here, a little bread there, and if you are lucky, it all goes unpunished, so it seems to you that all is fine and you are tolerating everything, you feel great and you still keep losing weight. No surprise here, your restriction in the stomach is still so incredibly big that you barely eat a handful of anything you can imagine.

 

Life happens

And then one day you get angry with someone, kids make you jump through the roof, you boss in an idiot, and before you know it, you are buying yourself a bar of chocolate in the vending machine so conveniently placed in front of your office door. You eat it all as if it were a piece of bread (and then you feel horrible, because dumping is a very real thing – no, you didn’t die, even if it felt like it).

So for this time, you are cured from solving your emotions through food. But for how long? Life happens and emotions come in waves. They never fail and they are here all the time.

Unfortunately, you never learned how to deal with them and when they become too much, you unconsciously go back to your old eating habits and you simply eat them off. A few times you get sick, but then the restriction is slowly getting loser and loser, and your stomach bigger and bigger, so you can eat larger portions of everything and before you know it, you are very slowly sliding back into the habits that you thought were long forgotten.

Bad habits die hard

They are not. They are still there, they are only leaving and waiting. They are patient and they show up exactly at the moment when you least expect or need them. What you thought you would never do again is now slowly becoming part of your life. Again.

You are some year and a half, maybe two years out, you have lost all the weight you wanted, and you are happy, slim, and healthy, all is like from an American movie. This is what you wanted, right? This is why you underwent the surgery, suffered everything and now you are reaping the fruits of your hard work.

You are lying to yourself!

You put down your guard. You are confident, you believe that you learned everything about your meals, that you are eating right, that you have only a very few exceptions, and that all is under control.

You couldn’t be further from the truth. One day, you step on your scales that are happily collecting dust in the corner of your bathroom and you stare in disbelief at the number that is smiling at you. No, it is not your lowest weight. At all! You gained something. Maybe 5, maybe 10 pounds but they are back!

You are scared, frustrated, angry, and all that together and fifty-way around. How could this happen, you ask yourself. You are doing everything you should and you are gaining weight. This can’t be! The whole surgery is a lie, it doesn’t work! You are trying to find a culprit to blame, but the truth is that the only person to blame is the one you see in the mirror.

What happened?

You were not careful. You didn’t do what you were supposed to do and you started to cut corners. You didn’t use your kitchen scales to weigh and measure everything, you didn’t weigh yourself every week, you didn’t prioritize your protein and most likely you are eating very little of that, you are again eating all the bread, pasta, rice, potato, you know, the yummy carbs…

And this is exactly where the disaster happens. I know it is annoying and time-consuming to keep measuring and weighing everything you put on the plate. By the way, where is your smaller plate to eat from? You slowly start to eat with your family, you go out with friends and you eat the same as you used to. You think you can, you are slim now.

Big fat lie…

But you can’t be more wrong. You have just got out from a so-called bariatric honeymoon. You were given some extra time to work on your habits, building up your stamina, and your endurance. Because if you thought that the worst part was when you were losing weight, when you couldn’t eat this and that, when you had to double-check everything so that you weren’t sick, trust me, that was the easiest part.

The time of the truth comes now when you have your ideal weight and you have lost all the fat that never seemed to go away. It is gone.

Nothing is like before/after the surgery

But you can say the same about the tiny stomach you had after the surgery. It can now manage much more food than before. You are not sick after three spoons of food. You are not nauseous all the time, salivating and hoping you won’t puke at once. All this is gone. Now it is only you and the new good habits you built in the time after the surgery.

If you didn’t work hard on this all and you started cutting corners and felt overly confident, the weight will start to pile up again. It will happen. Buddha once said they say: what you think, you become. So if you think pizza, you will soon look like one. But you had been there before. Remember?

Remember where you come from!

I am adding here: memento mori. I still have a nasty-looking me in a pic on the fridge. Right next to the handle. I still see myself as I used to be several times a day. I remember that all the time. I don’t want to go back to where I started. I remember so well how horrible my life used to be, how bad I was feeling about myself, how my body was failing me all the time. It is my personal nightmare. You may say that it is long gone and that there is no need to keep reminding yourself and beat yourself bloody.

I think that this is crucial. Our memory is fragile. We have a memory of a goldfish. If you stop reminding yourself, you will forget. And this is what you don’t want. This is where you come from. These are your roots. If you forget, you are likely to repeat your past mistakes.

Change or die!

I am “guilty” myself

This happened to me as well, I am no saint, I failed a little as well. But I see it as a little slap I was given, a wake-up call. It was still in time for me. I was able to revert it without major problems. I just needed to go back to square one, start eating right, the amounts I am supposed to eat and exercise a little more. That was it. There is no magic in this process.

Keep doing what you are supposed to do, and you are fine. It works. There is no secret magic in this. But if you start slacking a little here and there, it quickly adds on. This surgery is no fast sprint about who loses the most in record time. It is only the very beginning.

The real game is elsewhere!

The real game starts when you are done with losing and you need to keep the correct weight. This is where you are tested and looked under the microscope. This is where all the work you have put in pays off. Losing weight after the surgery is easy, you have a brand new tool and the freshly cut stomach thinks for you. Whatever you do wrong, you vomit. Simply as this. Again no magic.

But when all the restrictions and nausea and feeling bad all the time are gone, you will be on your own. This is where the real test starts. Make sure you know about this and that you prepare as much as you can. Because slipping at this point is easier than you could ever imagine.

Have you gained some weight back? Is real the famous regain? Has this happened to you? Were you able to revert it? Hopefully, it didn’t get completely out of control. But even if it is the case, you can still act. You have the tool. Use it. You know what to do. Just do it!