Please don’t believe the lies, it is hard work

Unrealistic expectations

I will have the surgery, preferably this week, and I will lose all the weight. I will be slim and toned and that’s it. I will eat what I want, ok, in moderation, and the weight will take care of itself for the rest of my life. No hard work is needed.

This is what many people believe before they undergo the surgery. Then they are very unpleasantly surprised that the real thing cannot be further from the requirements they face. The bad part of the story is that this surgery is not reversible. It is forever.

Repeated experience

I have heard many people complain that they can’t enjoy the food like before. But when I was going through the posts and focused on the details and real meaning of these complaints, it was obvious. I could rephrase it as I can’t eat as much as before and I can’t eat all the unhealthy food as before.

And this is the problem. These people didn’t get it in the first place. They were expecting something that was not possible. This is not how the surgery works. You will never be able to eat the same amount of food as before. That is the first essential thing. Your stomach was cut away, it is not there, so you physically can’t eat a whole pizza and flush it down with a liter of Coke.

New life, new you

I am not saying that you will never ever again be able to eat pizza. Almost everyone eats it. SOMETIMES. Maybe two slices. And that’s it. We plan our meals. We became strategic managers of our food intake. At times also crisis managers. Why? Because it works.

Thinking that you will be able to eat everything you crave, just in moderation, is a little double-edged decision. The thing is that this will work in the beginning. You have your stomach so small that whatever you eat, it will be so small that there is no chance that you will gain any weight.

End of fun

The story changes after the first year. The stomach is settled down, it can take in more food already, and you are not sick after every meal anymore. Sounds like heaven on earth, right? Too good to be true. And it is exactly this. The moment you stop counting calories, check your protein and liquid goals… what will happen? You will start eating more and more. At first without even noticing it. Old habits die hard.

But because you don’t eat what you should be eating, you don’t weigh yourself and you don’t do any exercise, there will be a pretty nasty surprise the day when you won’t fit in your clothes anymore. I don’t want to be the messenger of bad news here. But I have seen it so many times that I stopped counting it.

What went wrong?

What happened here? It is pretty straightforward. You never changed. You keep eating the same food, you keep doing the same things. And you expect different results. It doesn’t matter that in moderation. It is the same unhealthy fuel you keep stuffing inside. So the result will be the same no matter what you think. And that you will keep eating more and more, it is obvious and inevitable. It happened many times before. It is not likely that you will be an exception.

You didn’t change

You had almost two years to work on your new habits, to tame your food demons, and to address your traumas, depression, and anxieties. The first year of the pre-op time, and then the first year after having the surgery. Did you do it? That’s the question. If you didn’t, you are still the same emotional eater, you still calm down your unpleasant feelings with food, and you still numb your anxiety with cakes. It is a ticking bomb. And before you know it, it explodes.

Did you do something about moving your body? No need to hit the gym 6 days a week. Do you use stairs? Do you walk? Do you do any kind of exercise at home? No? Not good either. You didn’t build this new habit and now you are paying the price.

Your stomach slowly starts to stretch again, oh yes, this is easily possible, you keep eating the same “bad” food, you don’t control your intake, you don’t do exercise. And the weight will do what it must do. It will start going up again. Five pounds, ten pounds… and before you know it, it is 50 pounds. And now what???

Blaming the wrong culprit

You will be very angry, disheartened, frustrated, you name it, and you will blame the surgery that it failed you. But the one to be blamed is… yes, you are looking at him/her in the mirror. You never did what you were asked to do. That is why it never worked. Bari honeymoon can be so incredibly deceiving…

The surgeon, the nutritionist, everybody in your team kept telling you: eat right, do the exercise, be accountable… they don’t say it just because. They mean it. These are not empty phrases. They know better than anyone. They have seen it all. And they know that if YOU don’t change, nothing will even change. You will gain it back.

Negotiation process

You will try to negotiate some weight loss injections to restart the weight loss. But… how this can work in the first place? There is a huge debt from your side. The change. It never happened. Now things are falling apart and you are scared to death that you will gain it all back. To tell the truth, you are on the highway and it is gluing all back at Fast and Furious speed.

I never meant to write such a depressing post, it somehow happened. A few months back a girl wrote me a really angry mail that I see all very black, that I am so incredibly negative, that I tell people to change when they don’t want to. And yesterday I saw her post in one of the forums I am following that she gained 20 kilos back in the past 6 months and that the nasty endocrinologist doesn’t want to prescribe her any weight loss injections. She is doomed, not knowing how to solve this, it is all spiraling out of control and it is almost certain how this will end.

I feel sorry for her. I can only imagine how horrible this must feel. But the truth is that she wasted the second chance we were given by the surgery. She refused to change and now it is backfiring at her in the worst possible way. I don’t want to say anything like: serves you right. At all. It is very sad what is happening to her. But it will be almost impossible to start doing all the changes she was supposed to do years ago. The tool is failing, she is anxious, depressed, and scared. This is not a good starting place for a deep re-doing of yourself.

All I wanted to say was that if we embarked on this journey, we should really mean it and do our best to use this opportunity for the best possible outcome. Cutting corners from the very beginning is not a good idea at all. We should listen to what the tour bari team is telling us, and do what they want us to do. Yes, sometimes it is not comfortable, it can be annoying, sometimes limiting. But if we don’t do that, if we don’t change, no surgery will save us. That is the ugly truth. Let’s use her story as a learning lesson so that we don’t have to live it in our lives…