At Goal
Staying On Track
by Terry Simpson, MD, FACS
Summer is over, or soon to be, the kids are back in school, in college, or finally back to their house, and vacation is done.Did you weigh yourself yet? One of the most common habits of patients who make it to goal and stay there is weighing themselves weekly. If you do not measure it, you cannot manage it. Are you afraid to weigh yourself? Don’t be! This is the first change to make as you look forward to the fall.
Weighing yourself will give you a simple idea about whether what you have done is working or not. When patients come into the office and they have not lost weight, our first task is to find out what is going on. Here is a list of questions to ask yourself:
- What are the liquid calories you are consuming? Are you drinking fancy coffee drinks, soda, fruit juices, or even protein drinks with too many calories? Starbucks is an easy habit to fall into. But compare the difference between a simple cup of coffee (about five calories) with one of their iced lattes (about 300 calories). The calories are so easy to drink, but burning them off means walking three miles in 45 minutes (a fifteen minute mile).
- Are you eating high-fat foods like nuts, peanut butter, sesame seeds, bacon, cheese, or sausage? Cheese, nuts and peanut butter are not “diet? snack foods that lead to weight loss. Often patients assume that these are proteins or complex carbohydrates—they are not. These are calorie dense fats, essentially the same as eating butter.
- Are you eating soft foods (yogurt, ice cream, mashed potatoes, avocados, soups, French fries)? These foods don’t stay with your upper pouch too well. They go through easily, so that instead of feeling satisfied for a long period of time, you become hungry again.
- Are you eating out at restaurants too often and not taking a portion of the meal home with you? Do you ask for the “take home bag? first, putting that food aside, or do you allow temptation to sit in front of you? Cruises and vacations are not a vacation from fat storage. So if you got into the habit of eating out, remember those excess calories have to come off, and sometimes it is a lot easier to simply have the food put aside rather than work them off. To walk off a pound of fat you would have to walk 4 miles a day for nine days.
- Are you measuring out your portions of food, or are you being a victim of whatever someone is putting in front of you? You can always choose to eat less.
In short, ask yourself what it will take to get back with your program. Getting off track is easy, but getting back on track requires accountability, accounting, and persistence.
To learn more, see Dr. Simpson’s book Weight Loss Surgery: A Lighter Look at a Heavy Subject.
Click here for the PDF version of this article from its appearance in OH Magazine
Click here for the PDF version of this article from its appearance in OH Magazine
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