More Advice to Newbie Post Ops -- Not in Denial and You Know It

This is a post I wrote to someone who had a lap band recently, is struggling, she is making wrong food choices and is at a loss as to what to do.


This is a hard one, to be honest it's easier to advise someone when they are in total denial. You are not in denial, not in the least.

There is a natural mourning for food after surgery. We tend to replace food for other things, anything from simple joy to personal relationships. It's hard to give up something so very important to us. Let's face it, food is a big part of our lives or we wouldn't be in the position to need surgery.

There is only one surgery type that gives us one shot at serious weight loss and that is bypass. All the other surgery types give us all the chances we need for success. Bands, sleeves, and DS. You have a band, better for you in this case, right?

Sometimes we have to make choices. Do we want to be the thinner person we dream of? Or do we want that 2nd, 3rd, and 4th bowl of food? This isn't a judgement call, this is personal decision. There is no right or wrong answer, there is your answer. You really have to get to the point that you need to make a decision. On one hand you have the desire to be a smaller and healthier person, IN the other hand you have an extra bowl of food. Only you can decide which one you want. And to be very honest you have to want weight loss more than you want extra food.

Clearly you are still in the mindset of living to eat instead of eating to live. Don't let anyone fool you, we were ALL in that mindset at one time. Sometimes just recognizing that this is the issue you need to work on puts the focus in the right place.

You self paid for a band, right? Sounds like you wanted a thinner body pretty bad, eh? Everything of value in life "costs" something. A fancy car... heck, any car costs money. A personal relationship costs compromise, a child costs your hair after you pull it out. Everything worthy costs something. Your band cost you money, weight loss will cost you compromise. But, just like everything worthy costs something what we get in return is like a dream come true.

So it really comes down to how much you want weight loss. It's okay if you prefer the extra food, I can't stress to you how much this is not a judgement call, this is a personal decision on your part. When you decide that you want to pay the price for weight loss with compromise, you'll get what you want. It's a mental thing that I think we all go through.

Then there is a touch of self discipline. Sometimes we just have to say no. We say it to our kids, we say it to our employees, sometimes we have to say it to ourselves.

Who does the cooking in your house? You or your spouse? New rule for the house... only enough food for what is necessary for one meal per each. There is no reason for leftovers because let's face it, around our population are leftovers an actual reality? ;o)

I think you have done a great job of beating yourself up. Tell me, has that worked for you? I don't think so. It's damned time you face reality and understand through and through that you have a disease called obesity and not a character flaw. Enough of the bullshit, get with reality. You are treating this as a weakness. It's really hard to deal with a weakness but we seem to have more strength when we fully understand it's not a weakness, it's a disease. There is no cure for obesity, but there are fantastic treatments, surgery being the best of them all.

My suggestion for you is to do five days of protein shakes. Low carb protein shakes. Have as many as you wish, just don't go over 40gms of carbs per day. My shakes have 2gms carbs each (I buy the kind meant to be mixed with water and not milk). That would mean you could have 20 shakes a day if you wanted.

This will do two things, it will show you that you are indeed in control of food issues and #2 it will get you off that zog awful carb craving cycle. When you aren't craving carbs like a dehydrated person craving water then you can assert a bit more control over your eating habits.

Maybe it takes you 2-3 attempts before you manage the full five days. That's okay, we aren't treating a weakness here, we are treating a disease called obesity. There are sooooo many factors that go into play with obesity, a gazillion of them. So, we take one factor at a time and deal with it then we move on to the next one.

You have to break this whole thing down in manageable parts and deal with it one at a time. If you take on the whole darn thing at once, you fail. It's like trying to stop a bunch of bad habits all at the same time. Take someone that wants to quit smoking, stop biting their fingernails, stop over eating, stop drinking, stop doing drugs, stop road rage... if they try to do it all at once it isn't going to work. If they break it down into pieces and work on one issue at a time it's far easier and more doable.

The same holds true here. Baby steps, that's all you need is baby steps.

If you take away nothing else from this post just take this, you are not a weak person, you have a disease. Start treating it as such and it's much easier to work through and manage.

(((HUGS)))