The time after WLS is a complex period in your life. Your body is changing rapidly. Often faster than you think and almost always faster than you can have the waistband of your pants taken in. You have to get new clothes, but what size? It can be an ongoing mystery as your body changes. But it also can be a lot of fun especially if you have been heavy for quite awhile. Seeing a different you in the mirror virtually every day can be life-changing. However, at the same time your body is changing on the outside it is also changing on the inside. You go through those first few healing weeks, thinking will I ever enjoy food again, as you sip those protein drinks that sometimes are not so yummy? I remember how incredibly good that scrambled egg tasted at week three as I transitioned on to soft foods and away from liquids.
It is really important during those first few weeks that you really begin to think seriously about your eating habits. Why did you have the surgery? What were you expecting to happen after the weight loss? Did you think it would be easy and effortless? Actually in all honesty these questions should have been seriously thought out before you had the surgery. Once you have committed to it, it changes everything, hopefully. And I meant hopefully. Too many people I have talked to in the last year are absolutely convinced that all people who have WLS will regain a lot of the weight lost. Insurance companies deny coverage because of the apparently high percentage of people regaining the weight. It really does come down to you and your personal reasons for having the surgery and losing the weight. Are the reasons you used to justify the surgery sufficient to carry you through to the successful weight loss and much more importantly, to the continued maintenance of that lost weight?
My intentions in the upcoming blog entries is to develop a more specific focus on the individual, and how much they eat. I will be looking at any recipes I provide and show you how to make them just for you. To provide you that defined amount of food that will help you maintain the weight loss. My suggestions for portion size and cooking techniques will be directed toward just the individual who has had WLS. I want to clearly show that you can maintain the weight loss by eating carefully managed portions, knowing when to stop, and knowing when you are eating to excess. You can regain weight if you expand the “pouch” the surgeon created to accommodate more food. More food means more calories. More calories goes to the laws of thermodynamics where calories in must equal calories out. You have a restricted input after surgery, but you can still sabotage the results by eating cheesecake and washing it down with a chocolate milkshake, or pureeing strawberry pancakes so they can go down easier, or just gradually eating a bit more than your stomach was redesigned to hold and allowing the stomach musculature to expand and accommodate more food. Again this goes to the reasons you had surgery in the first place. Were you over-eating because of stress or dealing with life’s issues? Did you eat too much simply because you enjoyed the tastes and flavors, and felt you needed to clean your plate? Did you just not balance the thermodynamics by getting sufficient exercise to balance off the calorie taken in? Did you eat a whole pumpkin pie with whipped cream just because it tasted so good?
My objective in these following blogs is to redirect you eating away from what you could eat to what you should be eating. I will describe dishes in light of the adequate levels of proteins you need and put the ancillary food items such as carbohydrates to the side. I am going to give you information on maintaining the portion controls you need to maintain your weight loss. I am not your keeper, but as a WLS patient I have seen the good and the bad that can result if you don’t take full control of your eating and your thinking about food. I am going to try to give you the tools you can use every day to meet not only your physiological and caloric demands but your demands for tasty, interesting, and exciting foods.
Portion control will be the emphasis that I will be working with. Portions are easily over-ridden if you wish, but I want my objective to be to give you sufficient good tasting food that provide you what your body needs and not to provide excess. This will force you to look at how you are eating, how much you are eating and maybe why you are eating more than you need in your after-surgery life.
So starting today I will focus on giving you the information I think you might need to make your new life satisfying.
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