Even though the standard of presurgical education has been raised for bariatric patients seeking obesity treatment with weight loss surgery, some nonsense prevails among patients and the public suggests that surgery is the easiest way to lose weight . Popular perception of surgical weight loss suggests that lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, are not necessary to lose weight; surgery does all the work for the patient by restricting caloric intake.
The truth is that to lose weight and maintain the healthy body weight resulting from weight loss surgery (gastric bypass, gastric lap-band, gastric sleeve) significant lifestyle changes must be made that include a high protein diet , the elimination of processed foods. carbohydrates and carbonated drinks, and avoid or at least control nonsense snacks or meals. In addition, patients must engage in daily physical activity beyond the physical movements of the routine day. Patients should exercise. A failure to adhere to the activity or dietary requirements of bariatric surgery will cause weight loss to cease and can potentially cause weight gain.
The notion that simply eating less of the things we ate at the height of our obesity as a means of losing weight is absurd. However, I have heard the hearty laugh of a postsurgical patient more than once when he explains, “I can still eat the same things I used to eat, but less!” Okay, how about we check back with that person in a year or so and see how he’s working? The last thing you want to talk about, let alone laugh, is likely to be weight-loss surgery. Patients and the public who want to believe that weight loss surgery is easy to lose weight don’t want to hear this simple truth: If the foods you ate before your surgery made you fat, then you will continue to eat the same foods, even less. , after surgery. to keep you fat. It’s that easy.
Most bariatric programs explain to their patients that the stomach pouch is “just a tool” for weight loss, and some programs have patients sign a contract stating that they will use their tool correctly. To use the tool correctly, the patient must follow the prescribed diet and exercise program. Not just for a few weeks or until the target weight is achieved. Surgery is a permanent alteration of the human digestive system, so the patient must make a permanent alteration of their behaviors in a conscious effort to use the tool to control the metabolic disorder that we call obesity.
Even with surgery, patients must diet and exercise to lose weight. To maintain that weight loss, they will continue to follow the high-protein diet and exercise requirements for the rest of their lives. Patients who do this are very successful with their “easy” weight loss surgery. Patients who from the first stitch ignored these requirements in the hope that the surgery would do the work for them now don’t laugh much as they try to disappear into the background doing the same things they have always done in the hope of different results.
In my work, I counsel weight loss surgery patients who often ask me if it’s okay to eat this or that. My job is not to feed these people with a fork, my job is to give them the power to rule their own fork. So I answer this question like this: “When you’re looking at or craving that fried food at the county fair, use your dietary sensitivity and remember that if it made you fat before surgery, it will surely make you fat after surgery.”
