The 6 Steps I Used to Lose Weight Regain
June 13, 2016I had my VSG in June of 2011. Between weight loss prior to surgery and post-op, I enjoyed great success, losing 232 pounds. I was on top of the world, and to be quite honest, I thought I was invincible and would never gain weight back. After all, I had changed my lifestyle and isn’t that what everyone told me I had to do in order to maintain the weight loss? I ate small healthy meals, ate protein first, drank my water, and exercised every day. I even rushed into plastic surgery, doing my whole body, and firmly believed that the surgery was going to be my insurance policy against regain. I was in therapy, figuring out my triggers, and started to learn new coping mechanisms.
I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. But yet, despite that, I somehow found myself at 4.5 years 70 pounds over my comfort weight and over 90 pounds above my lowest.
Even during this regain, I never gave up trying; I struggled and struggled to keep the weight gain from happening. I struggled even more to get it off. I never made it more than a week on a diet and never lost more than a couple pounds. My problem: I could not put down the sugar and other binge foods. I was constantly head first in the food, and the cravings and obsessions for sugar were uncontrollable. It took me until December 2015 to figure out that I had a much bigger problem than I ever thought. It took me until that time to realize that I had a disease that could not be cured by self-control and will-power alone. Since mid-December 2015, I have managed to drop over 40 pounds of the regain.
The 6 Steps I Used to Lose Weight Regain
- Join Overeater’s Anonymous - This has been the biggest contributor to finally being able to stop gaining weight and beginning to lose the regain. OA has taught me that I have a physical allergy to certain foods (ie, an abnormal reaction to things like sugar and flour) and a disease of the mind that manifested itself as these serious, uncontrollable obsessions with food, and more specifically with sugar and flour. OA promotes more than just physical recovery (weight loss); it addresses physical, emotional, and spiritual recovery. I have come to believe in a power greater than myself. I have developed an action plan with several tools at my disposal. I follow a food plan, abstain from certain foods, go to meetings, read literature, write, meditate, talk to others who share my disease and are recovering from it, and finally, be of service to others.
- Going to meetings - I attend anywhere from 2-4 meetings a week. These meetings offer unconditional support and fellowship. They reinforce the principles I learn from my daily readings. They show me a solution through others who their experience, strength and hope in recovery. They also get me out of my head and keep me from isolating myself. When I am in my head, things get dangerous, and I don’t see or think clearly. In my disease, I prefer to isolate myself which is a big danger/ warning sign. Isolation is both a cause and reaction to the out of control eating I was doing. The more I kept to myself, the more I ate. The more I ate, the more I isolated myself. Being able to go to a meeting, get support, talk to others, and make friends has been an instrumental part of my recovery and getting the weight off.
- Reading and writing - I have found these tools to be extremely useful when trying to deal with causes and conditions of why I eat. Every day, I try and read several daily readers such as daily meditations for overeaters, and a book called Voices of Recovery. When something bothers me, I write about it. When I can’t figure out what’s bothering me, I write. Sometimes I find writing difficult, so I have some workbooks to help me get my thoughts down. For some reason, writing helps me process things in a completely different way than just talking about them.
- Follow a food plan - This is something that even during my successful weight loss, I was never very good at. I typically ate 5-6 times a day, following the basic WLS rules, but I never thought twice to take a bite here and there, or graze in the evenings. It wasn’t until years out of surgery that this really became problematic for me. As I started to pack on the weight, I was eating all day with no real meal times or set times for eating. Now, to recovery and lose the weight, I have a specific plan to have 3 meals a day and 2 optional snacks. I plan my food out every night for the next day and 90% of the time, I have my food ready to go, pre-portioned for the following day. One of the most important things I do with my food plan is commit it to my sponsor through OA. My sponsor is someone who helps me work the 12 steps of OA. With rare exception, I stick to the plan I make. Sometimes life interferes and I have to make a choice, but I limit it to true emergencies. I consider myself very fortunate that I am not having to track, weigh and measure every bite right now. I did that obsessively for 4 years straight. Having done that, I have a solid idea of what and how much I need to eat in order to lose and maintain my weight. While I fully encourage weighing and tracking, not doing so has allowed me to maintain peace and serenity around food that leads to less compulsive eating, a critical element of my regain.
- Abstain - From all flour, sugar and personal binge items. When I took a good look at where my problems stemmed from, flour and sugar were the top culprits. I came to realize I had no control over foods with those ingredients, as well as things like sugar-free desserts, popcorn, cereal, and peanut butter. I gave them all up, and they are non-negotiable. While it was hard the first few days, the miracle set in shortly in that I found my cravings were suddenly gone, disappeared, with only rare instances where they pop up. Every single morning I make a commitment to abstain. It’s not a “forever” thing; rather, it is just for today. Focusing on the present and focusing on one day at a time has helped me deal with so many other situations that I once thought were too big or too difficult to navigate.
- Less is more - This idea seems simple enough, but the less cooking I do, the more my weight increases. I cooked a lot as a new post-op, but then stopped, and the end result was a substantial regain. The less I cook, the more I eat out, order in, and consume processed, high calorie foods. I now cook regularly, prepare my foods for the week, and portion everything out. I now buy mostly fresh meat, fruit and vegetables, making these the main components of my meals. I do not necessarily follow a low carb diet, as I will occasionally eat rice, potatoes, quinoa, and other “carbs” but they are a very small portion of my meal. By focusing on protein and vegetables, I find that I am better able to use my Sleeve as it was intended to be used. There were a good couple of years where I felt like I had a bottomless stomach again (and I did when it came to sugar and flour-based foods). It wasn’t until I started following some of the basic WLS rules that I realized I still had my restriction.
Losing the weight initially, and now the regain, make one major point clear to me. I absolutely need a tool box with various tools available to me and that I actually need to reach in and use them. Letting them get rusty, broken down, or lost serves no purpose and derails my forward progress.
 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alison Brown has been an avid member of ObesityHelp for over 5 years. She has lost over 230 pounds since weight loss surgery. She is an advocate and a strong supporter of the weight loss surgery community. |
