Weight Loss Surgery: The Easy Way Out? SERIOUSLY?
May 29, 2014I’m so tired of hearing that people who have had weight loss surgery are somehow taking the easy way out.
While at the beginning, weight loss surgery provides much more support or help than it does later, it is the individual who must provide a lot of effort long term – and I mean a lot of effort -- in order to be successful. For those of you who have already taken the plunge, you’ll remember the early admonition to first eat only soft foods, then mushy foods, and so on, and that takes thought, that takes effort. (I remember a call I got from a patient somewhere toward the end of week three whose opening line was, “Give me something to eat or I’ll kill you!” Thanks to Progresso Soup and a Magic Bullet, I’m still here.) Getting all your water in while remembering to take little sips – no chugging -- that takes effort, too. And as time passes, if you’ve done it right, you’re not looking for a way to jump off the train. However, even when most of the new behaviors have become second nature, there are those who don’t want to think about it every day, don’t want to be accountable, don’t want to have to check the rule book. If you come to a point in your journey when you say, I don’t want to play by the rules anymore, I’m just going to do whatever this new body lets me do and that’s where I’m going to land, you’re going to gain the weight back.
America is overweight, with more and more people qualifying as obese and morbidly obese, so even the average person out there who is putting in the effort to maintain his or her weight may be losing the battle. To add insult to injury, we lose muscle mass as we get older and gain more fat. In fact, the aging process is a fattening process, so no matter who you are, whether you have an operation or not, if you want to maintain your muscle mass and stay lean, unless you are part of a tiny minority who are genetically built that way, you’ll have to work at it. Simply put, if you do not want to be obese, you’ve got to watch what you eat. The natural tendency of our bodies is to collect more calories than what it takes to maintain what we consider to be a healthy weight. And that’s the same thing for most people who are post-weight loss surgery. It doesn’t take away your responsibility to try to be healthy.
That’s why we say having weight loss surgery is not the end, it’s the beginning. In the U.S., because luckily, food is not in short supply, we’re always going to be at the risk of gaining weight unless we’re constantly trying to prevent it. And in preventing it, you don’t have to give yourself away to a higher power, you just have to decide to eat healthy. These are foods that I’m going to eat most of the time and I don’t want to deprive myself, but I win nothing if I’m subsisting on McDonald’s. You’re not winning the game by eating junk food every day and, by the way, it won’t make you feel better. You may feel better short term, it may taste better to you right that second, but you have to create a mindset where you say Ok, I’m eating to live and I want to eat in a way that’s going to make me healthy. There are treats, there are desserts, there are celebrations, but every day can’t be a celebration where we just pick whatever our brains say is going to taste the best today, because that’s when we pick the most caloric things on the menu. And if we do that for breakfast, lunch and dinner, then I guarantee we’re not going to fit into our clothes at the end of the year.
 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Scott Cunneen, Director of Bariatric Surgery Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles. Author of WEIGHTY ISSUES: Getting the Skinny on Weight Loss Surgery. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, a master’s degree in physiology from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in human nutrition from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.. Read more articles by Dr. Cunneen! |
