Weight loss surgery patients biggest worry

There is lots to worry about. Getting insurance to pay for weight loss surgery, financing weight loss surgery, finding the best weight loss surgeon, pain after weight loss surgery, extra skin after weight loss surgery, and more. After 20 years of experience I can share that the biggest worry from a weight loss surgery patients perspective is whether they will get long term weight loss success or eventually regain the weight.  Often family members or friends have voiced the concern as well... which kinda hurts. 

How to get long term success with weight loss surgery is the most misunderstood area of weight loss surgery. After surgery I have rarely seen the "eat this, not that" strategy work.  What works?  I will share a statement that probably needs read several times to sink in. "Weight loss surgery is a tool and one only get the long term success to the degree or how much one changes their long term eating habits." Easy to say, yet hard to do.  After a year or so, if a person has changed about half of their eating habits they will get about half long term weight loss success.  

Weight loss surgery and the sleeve gastrectomy specifically changes intestinal obesity related hormones the night of surgery. After surgery your body chemistry is working with you to help you change eating habits. Those changes gets a person over a nearly impossible hurdle and that makes changing eating habits much more doable. 

The problem is day to day life gets in the way and we revert back to old ways of eating particularly on busy days and with unplanned events. That gets us to the real problem. Change is difficult. The surgery helps tremendously yet change is still difficult.  Learning how to change and enjoying the journey and eventually getting to the point of thinking of food differently and enjoying the taste and texture more than ever is the goal. Dr. Thomas teaches how and patients that embrace the journey eventually  wonder why they resisted the change and why they ate any different as this way taste better and feels better. 

The next blog will dive deeper into change and basic eating habits.