When having weight loss surgery, you commit yourself to certain nutrition and dietary requirements. You become dedicated to a healthy lifestyle with habits that support your weight loss. Weight loss surgery is a tool to use but you must choose to use that tool. Unfortunately, weight regain or a stalled weight loss can occur. If you want to avoid the dreaded return of pounds, become aware of the pitfalls on your journey to weight loss success.
Wouldn't it be nice to wake up and have your excess weight gone? Many people believe that weight loss surgery is similar to waking up thin. Some even consider that bariatric surgery is the "easy way out" to lose weight. Once the surgery is performed, the work begins to change your life by changing your unhealthy habits. Weight loss surgery success is yours by avoiding a few simple steps.
When having weight loss surgery, you commit yourself to certain nutrition and dietary requirements. You become committed to a healthy lifestyle with the habits that support your weight loss. Weight loss surgery is a tool to use but you must choose to use that tool.
After the early post-operative stage, you can regain weight or stall at a weight before your desired goal. Some of the reasons are familiar to many of us. To maximize your weight loss surgery success, here are some unhealthy behaviors to avoid:
* Testing old habits. After we've had surgery and lost excess weight, we feel great and look great. We think that maybe, just maybe, we can return to some of our old habits. We test once, twice, and before you know it, that old habit has crept into our lives again. The result can be weight regain or a weight loss stall. If you return to the old habits that made you heavy in the first place, you'll run the risk of becoming heavy again. Creating new healthy habits that replace the old habits is a big step to ensure your weight loss success is permanent.
* Grazing. Grazing is quite possibly the main cause of weight regain from bariatric surgery. After you've had surgery, you can out eat the procedure. Grazing is the mindless, hand to mouth type of eating. It is nibbling a little bit for long periods of time. You aren't full but continually eating. Grazing is for cows on a pasture, not successful bariatric post-ops.
* I'm cured syndrome. You're not. Weight loss surgery does not provide protection for never gaining weight again. Weight loss surgery doesn't give you a permanent state of goal weight and maintenance. To maintain your weight loss, along with the habits that allow you to lose weight, are reflective of the choices you make every day. Don't get into a false sense of security that you can eat whatever you'd like and keep your weight off from surgery.
* Stop exercising. Once you've lost your weight, you're done, right? No. The habit of exercising allowed you to lose weight and it continues to allow you to maintain your weight loss. The exercise that you did to become successful, will continue your success.
Bariatric surgery, or weight loss surgery, is a fabulous tool for losing weight, maintaining weight loss, and allows someone that is morbidly obese to achieve a second chance at regaining health. You can have a beautiful, expensive hammer that sits in your toolbox. Your impressive hammer doesn't do much on its own without you using it. The same applies to weight loss surgery. It is a very effective tool when we choose to use it in our lifestyle changes and choices.
Success with weight loss surgery is very possible for the short-term and long-term. Weight loss surgery doesn't guarantee success; you guarantee your success through your choices and healthy lifestyle. Enjoy your success, you deserve it.
Being Perfect On Your Diet As Set Up For Failure
It's very important that you begin your healthier lifestyle with an understanding that there will be days when you will stray from healthy eating and exercising. You will not be perfect in your diet and exercise program, nor should you be. Success doesn't come from being perfect. Success comes to you from a balance and moderation of healthy habits.
It Is About Why You Eat, Not What You Eat
Your weight and body issues don't have anything to do with food. It isn't what you eat but why you eat. One of the problems with weight loss surgery and diet programs is our belief that they hold the answer. If only we can follow them, they will work for us. Unfortunately for many of us, we didn't experience long-term weight loss success. Did we fail? No. Absolutely not! The diets failed because they are not the answer.
Commitment List versus Wish List
Do you want to lose weight? Are you hoping for a way of life that includes losing weight, feeling good in your body, wearing a smaller size, and have strong sense of confidence? You can have it. To reach any goal, you need to be committed. To lose weight requires persistence and consistency. It requires saying no to food choices when you'd rather indulge. It requires a commitment to your diet and along with a promise to yourself.
