Sucess For WeightLoss.. Good Information To Remember

Many weight-loss surgery patients wonder whether the surgery will work for them. They've seen the before-and-after pictures of others, but they wonder whether they can succeed like that. Prior to surgery many have a vague feeling that they're missing something, or that they don’t quite have the whole picture.

While there is a formula for success, it doesn’t need to remain a mystery. If you believe that it’s important to work with your surgeon, and with your exercise physiologist and dietician, you’re off to a good start. If you want to be sure that you have every advantage working in your favor, keep reading.

The Seven Secrets

1. Build a Supportive Team

Few people succeed alone at any endeavor. Entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, scientists and weight-loss surgery patients all do better if there’s a group of people behind them. While you’ve got health care professionals on your side, you’ll benefit from an expanded team. Decades of research shows that family and friends are vital to well-being. In addition to helping you manage stress, the important people in your life can play a number of supportive roles in your weight loss efforts.

Sheldon Cohen (2004), a long-time researcher in this area, has outlined the many ways our social relationships affect our health. Table 1 shows some of the benefits of these relationships. Close family or friends reduce the effects of stressful events by offering fresh perspectives. Having a wide variety of social affiliations promotes positive feelings and healthy behaviors. Increasing your social participation can help you meet your weight-loss and health-improvement goals. The flipside, according to Cohen, is that poor relationships cause stress and increase the risk for disease.

Positive, health-promoting involvement with others can make a difference. After analyzing 122 studies spanning more than fifty years, DiMatteo (2004) made a remarkable discovery: patients in families that are warm, accepting, emotionally healthy and close are nearly twice as compliant with health recommendations as are patients from families that don’t function so well. If you’ve got a supportive spouse or significant friend or family member who is also participating in a weight loss program, you’re even more likely to stick to your healthy behaviors (Gorin et al., 2005). And, Gorin and her colleagues found that if your supportive partner loses weight, you’re likely to lose more weight yourself.

Given the epidemic of obesity among young people, finding ways to include your children on your support team may benefit them as well as you. Healthy eating and physical activity are habits that are essential to your child’s well being. For ideas on making your child’s lifestyle healthier while you embark on your own journey, see the suggestions offered by the National Institutes of Health at http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/over_child.htm.

2. Be Clear About Why You Really Had Surgery

Yes, you had surgery to lose weight and to improve your health in various ways. But, thinking about why you want to lose weight and improve your health will allow you to identify specific life goals that are especially important to you.

Too much focus on weight management and food can become boring. So, to get a fresh start toward your new life, think about what you want to be able to do that you can’t do now.

Here are some examples:

Walk on the beach

Attend a graduation

Work in the garden

Play with your children or grandchildren

Sing in the choir

Fly on a plane

Repair something around the house

Attend a wedding

Ride a bike

Watch your grandson play baseball

Volunteer at a local school

Go hiking or camping

Make a list of activities that you would love to be able to do, or that you would really like to do more often. In short, you want to lose weight in order to continue living, to be able to do more, to achieve personal goals and to enjoy relationships. This is what it’s all about.

3. Eliminate Uncertainty

People often have simultaneous contradictory attitudes about making changes to their eating. Everyone has eating habits and routines, and we’re often reluctant to give them up. While the food itself doesn’t mean anything (it is what it is), we sometimes project meaning into our eating and drinking routines, and these meanings can be woven into the fabric of our lives. On the one hand, we’d like to change our eating habits; on the other, we’d like to keep life meaningful. But a meaningful life does not require that we meet our emotional needs with food. A downside to emotional eating is that it has been shown to be associated with binge eating. And, research suggests that individuals who binge eat after weight loss surgery lose less weight and have more mental health problems (Larsen et al., 2004). By being aware of this concern, we can seek new ways to make life meaningful while also improving our eating habits.

We also object to being judged by our weight or appearance (“obesity stigma"). In our resistance to comply with society’s standards for looks or value we can, unfortunately, resist changing our diets, even though it would benefit us. The fuzzy reasoning goes something like this:

If an intolerant person suggests something, then I will oppose it.

An intolerant person suggests that I change my diet.

Therefore, I will oppose changing my diet.

Bravo for opposing those who would judge you by your weight or appearance! They are wrong. You are a wonderful person. But, you’re only limiting yourself by trying to fight intolerance by refusing to change your diet. It is not necessary to think about “them" as you move toward your goals. Instead, keep it positive and focus on what you want for yourself. This is about your health, your goals and your life.

4. Remember Who You Are—Who You Were Meant to Be

Knowing your strengths, developing them and using them to their fullest will lead to increased happiness, according to Martin Seligman. In his book, Authentic Happiness, Seligman (2002) introduces the concept of “signature strengths," those character traits that describe who we most are as people, who we were meant to be. Examples of such strengths include kindness, creativity, humor, optimism and generosity. There are twenty-four strengths in all, and you can find out which are your top strengths by taking the online VIA Signature Strengths Survey at www.authentichappiness.org.

After discovering your signature strengths, you might wish to find ways to use them more in your daily life. Scientific evidence shows that using one’s strengths increases positive emotions and happiness. In my practice I recommend exercises to increase positive emotion in clients who eat in an attempt to satisfy emotional rather than physical needs. Identifying your strengths and using them to increase positive emotion can contribute to your success in losing weight and improving your life.

5. Understand the Mind-Body Connection

“Change your thoughts to change your life," is a summary statement for this part of your success plan. A tremendous amount of research has shown that the way we think significantly influences our health (Ray, 2004). Such experiences as hope, optimism, assertiveness and beliefs can be remarkably helpful in the quest for improved health. The idea that thoughts are important to health has been around for a long time, but scientists are currently taking the mind-body connection very seriously. We now know that when someone says, “It’s all in your mind," they are not totally correct. “Because the mind is part of the functioning brain, the body responds to the brain," says Ray. Regardless of whether the beliefs or ideas are real or imaginary, or are positive or negative, the body responds. So, our thoughts make a difference—sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

If you find that you are having trouble combating negative thoughts, you might want to explore the self-help books listed by the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy (AICT) (http://www.cognitivetherapynyc.com/readings.asp?sid=258). In addition, counseling or therapy is a helpful resource for those who would like to work with a mental health professional.

6. Don’t Stay Depressed or Pessimistic

Despite the old myth, obesity is not associated with being jolly. Roberts and others (2002) found that obese individuals, on balance, were worse off than non-obese participants on indicators of mental health.

Depression also places adolescents at increased risk for becoming obese and having difficulties losing weight, according to Goodman and Whitaker (2002). Obesity is also associated with depression in adults (Roberts et al., 2003). To stop this vicious cycle, people can work toward becoming less pessimistic or getting treatment for depression if needed.

A pessimistic view, which is often associated with depression, can be dangerous to your health. The deleterious effects of pessimism have been shown even to impact coronary heart disease (CHD). Kubzansky and others (2001) found that “viewing the glass as half full," lowers the risk of CHD in older men. In another 30-year study of the effects of optimistic versus pessimistic views on health, Maruta and others (2000) found that having a pessimistic style was associated with a 19% increased risk of early death.

This mind-body connection, of course, does not mean that if you simply think positively the weight will melt off. Instead, we know that bariatric surgery patients who lose more weight understand before surgery that success will depend on them seriously changing their diet and exercise routine (see, for example, Gentry, Halverson & Heisler, 1984). But, reducing unnecessary negativity and pessimism while using your strengths will help you stay on course in pursuing your goals.

7. Be Assertive

Since you’ve made the decision to lose weight and improve your health and life, be determined to advance toward your goals. This determination, and the behavior to back it up, is a form of assertiveness that’s good for you and for those around you. Expressing yourself and your rights does not mean that you are violating the rights of others. In fact, by being appropriately direct, open and honest in your communication, you will allow others to better understand you and to better support you in your goals. And, to the extent that your family and friends are assertive in their communcations with you, you will be better able to appropriately respond to assist them in reaching their goals. By acting assertively you will begin to feel more confident and will gain greater respect from family and friends. Another benefit of assertive behavior is that you will begin to feel better about your self-control in everyday situations. This, in turn, will improve your ability to stick with your life improvement program and will further promote your success.

Perhaps you’ll want to incorporate these into your personal plan to lose weight and improve your life. Regardless of how you proceed, enjoy the benefits of exerting more control in your life. Be determined to stick with your plan. If you do, you’re much more likely to increase your actual weight loss. To the extent that you overcome barriers, you will be moving ever closer to that better life that you imagine.