After weight loss surgery especially early on, your food portion sizes can be tiny, you may or may not feel hungry and you likely aren't able to easily meet your nutrition targets without eating small regular meals during the day and supplementing. When you speak to a few people, your surgical team and get onto your favourite Facebook support group you may end up confused as to whether you should be eating 3 meals during the day, 4-6 meals or just grazing all day long. It may even seem like you are eating and drinking all day! (A strange phenomena since all your life the emphasis may have been to not eat much...)So what is it that you should be...
Are you having or have you had weight loss surgery (also known as bariatric surgery or metabolic surgery)? Making the decision to have surgery likely wasn’t one you made overnight, in fact you probably watched others who have had surgery and did your research. You may have spoken to others, read experiences on the surgery forums and spoken to your doctor or a few surgeons. Weight loss surgery changes your life and you really need to be prepared for it physically, emotionally and mentally. So doing your research is important. But once you’ve done your research and got your surgeon, you may wonder if you really need to see a dietitian, especially if your surgeon hasn’t said anything about seeing...
Can you think of all the times you achieved something before surgery? It may have been that you finished school or a course, won some sort of competition or event, or you got promoted at work. Likely, 9 out of 10 times the reward involved a celebration with food whether it was going out to dinner, having cake or getting a box of chocolates. For some reason food seems to be both an essential for life but also a reward for achievement. But then you have bariatric surgery and food just isn’t the same anymore. Eating out isn’t what it used to be in that you can’t really eat much and have to be selective of your food...
At this time of the year, many make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. While deciding to do something is nice, we all know what can happen to resolutions a couple of weeks down the track… After having bariatric surgery you generally are losing weight and while this is great, there’s a lot to think about in the post surgery ‘after life’ so to speak. After surgery, it is difficult to eat much and so you need to be choosy about your food choices to get the nutrients you need each day. You should also start exercising (if able to) to maintain muscle mass and improve cardiovascular health. Not getting adequate nutrition can affect not only your weight loss and long-term...
Have you ever gotten on the scales after being so good during the week and it hasn't moved or worse, it's gone up? It happens to everyone and while it can be disappointing, it's completely normal to have weeks there that nothing happens so expect it once in a while. When it happens, rather than dwell on the disappointment, focus on your other goals and working on your nutrition and exercise routine. What other goals I hear you say...? It's important to have several goals after surgery. In fact the more the merrier! I've had patients tell me that they start a big goal list and tick things off as they go throughout their whole weight loss journey, that way...
