I may have posted about this before, but here are my keys to success around bariatric surgery:
- Do the mental work to distance food from comfort, celebration, and boredom. Work with a therapist if you need to.
- Set up your support people. Set boundaries by telling people who love you that negativity is not allowed.
- Set realistic expectations. Don’t pin all of your hopes on a particular goal weight. Set some goals that are NSVs, like being able to fit in a theater seat or to walk a mile or reduce your diabetes meds or play tag with your kids.
- Recognize that this will not make you happy, it will make you smaller. Period.
- Make changes that are sustainable for the rest if your life. This is not a “diet” like you’ve done before. It’s changing how you will eat for the rest of your life. If you aren’t committed to that, don’t start this journey. I think the only thing worse than not losing weight, is losing weight and then gaining it all back, which is a distinct possibility if you don’t change the way you eat for the long-term.
- Everyone loses at a different pace. Don’t compare your journey to theirs. You will have stalls where you don’t lose for a while; just stick with the program.
Here’s a test: can you eat a post-op diet now, and maintain it? What I mean is, protein first, veggies second, carbs after that, at least 80 ounces of water, at least 75 g of protein. Do that for a while and see if you can maintain it. Don’t worry about the amount of calories or anything at this point, because after surgery you’ll be eating a lot less. But eat in that way and see if you can be satisfied in the long term. Develop new habits. Then, and only then, are you really ready for this journey. I started the journey, changing my eating, but didn’t have the surgery for almost a year because that’s when I was mentally ready.