Weight Regain: What's It All About?

Weight Regain: What's It All About?
A year ago I asked all of you via a survey what keeps you up at night, what you are most concerned about. Seventy percent of you responded that you fear weight regain more than anything. And that is understandable. After years and sometimes a lifetime of battling morbid obesity, through surgery we have been able to experience weight normalcy and we fear that it will slip through our fingers.

Before surgery we heard stories from concerned family and friends about all of the people who died from the surgery. Now after we have had surgery, we hear all the stories about people who have regained all of their weight. You can't help wondering if that will be your fate.

So why is some weight regain so common after surgery? Here are some thoughts:

1. Problem: After gastric bypass surgery, weight loss is so easy that we don't learn the lifestyle changes necessary to maintain our weight.

Remedy: Recognize that weight loss will never be this easy again. Lose as much as possible during the Window of Opportunity period which is the first 12 to 18 months. Don't delay your weight loss during that period because of a cruise, the holidays, vacation, a party or wedding, a stressful period, or a host of other excuses. Your job during your first year is to eat properly and exercise. Do everything you can to reach your goal.

Remedy: Get nutritional counseling on how to eat in order not to regain weight.

Remedy: Journal. Writing down everything that you eat is recognized as the most effective way to control weight.

2. Problem: We don't exercise often because our excess weight has made it impossible. We have bad backs, bad knees, or bad feet. We have learned to associate exercise or even movement with pain. To now embrace exercise is difficult.

Remedy: Make a list of exercise possibilities for you. Some of them might include to hire a personal trainer for a few sessions, join Curves, walk through the mall, dust off the old exercise equipment and use it, take an exercise class, do water aerobics, or buy a WII Fit.

Remedy: If you aren't accustomed to exercise, do it in baby steps. You will not be able to exercise like a pro for a long time. Start slowly - just a few minutes a day. Exercise is something that you have to build up to.

3. Problem: We don't deal with emotional eating issues. Part of why we are the way we are is that we eat our way through our problems. We live to eat. Eating is such a part of our lives that not having what we eat as the center of our world is a hard place to get to. Although right after surgery we have it under control, after 2 or 3 years the emotional eating issues can return.

Remedy: Seek counseling to deal with those emotional eating issues. Get to the bottom of why you deal with problems through food. Read about emotional eating. There are a lot of books to help you.

4. Problem: We get to a point where we are hungry. This can be from eating too many carbohydrates which will start carbohydrate cravings. It can also be because we have stretched our pouch or stoma.

Remedy: Avoid simple carbohydrates which are found in sweets, white breads, white pastas, etc. After protein, diet of complex carbohydrates is important. Complex carbohydrates include fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Build your diet around these.

Remedy: If your pouch and stoma are stretched, there are surgical remedies that will make those smaller. A lap band can also be put around the pouch.

Whatever the source of weight regain, the most important thing is to catch the problem as early as possible. Don't let it get out of control and don't panic. You can find a way to deal with the issue no matter what it is.
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