Dealing With Excess Skin After Weight Loss Surgery

If you’ve done any research about weight loss surgery, you’ve probably come across some startling photos of people with large amounts of excess skin. If you are considering weight loss surgery, the fear of unsightly loose skin may understandably make you reluctant to pursue it. Thankfully, there are several tips and tricks to mitigate excess skin and surgical scars.  In this article, we’ll share a few strategies to combat it.

The first step is to understand the structure of our skin.  The innermost layer of our skin is made up of collagen (which provides structure and firmness) and elastin (which allows for elasticity and bounce). Our skin is designed to naturally expand with body changes such as childhood growth and pregnancy. However, our collagen and elastin can become damaged if our skin has been significantly stretched for a long time due to obesity. Then, when we rapidly lose weight, our skin is unable to return to its former size ultimately. The result is excess loose skin.

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Grocery Shopping After Weight Loss Surgery

Life after weight loss surgery truly is a whole new world!  Even the most mundane things like grocery shopping will now likely be very different experiences.  Let’s look at some strategies for grocery shopping to help keep you on track with your goals.

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Tips for the Pureed Diet Stage

The pureed diet stage can be one of the most difficult of the bariatric surgery process.  When and for how long you will be in this stage is up to your physician, so be sure the follow the directions you’re given.  Since this stage can be challenging, make sure you’re prepared for it!

The biggest challenge of the puree stage is probably the unappealing look of the food.  Knowing that the food is not going to LOOK particularly pleasant, try focusing on your other senses.  Make sure that it smells and tastes great!  This will make the meals far more pleasant to eat.  Herbs, spices, seasonings, and extracts are excellent ways to add familiar fragrance and flavor to pureed meals while not adding unnecessary fat and calories.

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Going to Restaurants After Weight Loss Surgery

Odds are that, going through the journey of weight loss surgery, you’ve been eating at home a LOT!  But, inevitably, at some point, you’re going to get invited to a restaurant.  Whether it’s a family outing, a holiday celebration, a work function, a date, etc., the day will come!  It can be a scary idea if you have been mindfully preparing your own food for many months.  But, fear not!  You can, in fact, stay on track and still enjoy a meal at a restaurant.  Read on to get some tips.

First things first, make sure you’re ready.  If you are still in the early stages (for example, on a pureed diet), it’s probably best to avoid restaurants.  They’re unlikely to have many (if any) options for you.  Even if you are just barely back to eating normal foods, you may not be ready.  Make sure you’re fully healed and have successfully re-introduced a variety of foods to your diet to ensure your stomach tolerates them.  Nobody wants to get sick in the middle of a restaurant!

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Dealing With Body Dysmorphia

Body dysmorphia is defined as a focus on perceived flaws in one’s appearance.  Often these flaws are exaggerated in the mind of the patients and may be unnoticeable to others.  In the most extreme of cases, this can reach the level of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD).  BDD is so severe that the embarrassment or anxiety about one’s physical flaws causes them to avoid social situations altogether.

Body dysmorphia exists for some who are on the journey toward significant weight loss.  The very nature of weight loss surgery (and the diet and activity changes that come with it) patients will naturally become more focused on their physicality.  They will be closely monitoring food intake, exercise, weight, measurements, etc.  The focus is literally on improving one’s physical body.  Given those circumstances, it is not a big leap to enter into body dysmorphia territory if left unchecked.

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The Benefits of Home Exercise

A vital component of successful bariatric surgery is regular exercise. If we’re not careful, we can put too much emphasis on our diet, neglecting the importance of physical fitness. But often, it can seem overwhelming to know how to get started! With all different types of classes and gyms, where do we begin?

One of the least intimidating ways to get started working out is with home exercise. At the beginning of our weight loss journey, we may be worried about overdoing it or not being able to keep up with a class. We might feel intimidated or self-conscious being in a room with a bunch of buff regulars. By starting our fitness journey at home, we avoid a lot of those fears which frees us to try a variety of things!

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Buying Clothes During Weight Loss

One of the most exciting parts of your weight loss journey is fitting into new clothes!  It’s such a tangible example of your success when you can fit into a smaller size.  Plus, it’s fun to try out new styles and stores that you may not have been able to before.  Be careful not to go overboard though!  It’s easy to waste a LOT of money this way!

One of the simplest ways to avoid wasting money is to try clothes on!  I know, I know.  We all hate to do it.  But body dysmorphia is a very real thing (especially in the early stages when you can be losing double digits worth of weight each month)! Simply holding a shirt up and eyeballing if it will fit isn’t going to work for quite a while.  Your body changes WAY faster than your brain.  And we all know how inconsistent sizes can be between brands.  Do yourself a favor and try the clothes on.  I guarantee you will be surprised more than a few times!

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How Journaling Helps Bariatric Patients Be Successful

When embarking on the journey of weight loss surgery, the plethora of information can seem overwhelming. Monitoring fluid intake, exercise, food tolerance, etc. is a lot! Keeping a weight loss journal is one of the best ways to ensure that we stay on track for the long run!

One of the key concepts of maintaining long-term weight loss is mindful eating. In our fast-paced lives, it’s all too easy to snack on something in the car, while we’re working, or in front of the TV. Although at times it may be unavoidable, eating like this should be the exception, not the rule. Journaling everything that we eat automatically makes us more mindful about what we are consuming during the day. It can help us be more cognizant of the choices we are making and the effects those choices have on our success.

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Five Ways to Mitigate the Thanksgiving Splurge

Holiday time is a wonderful opportunity to gather and reconnect with family and friends, but it usually revolves around food. For someone with a normal BMI, this isn’t a terribly scary prospect. However, for someone who has undergone bariatric surgery, there are variables and unknowns that can make these kinds of get togethers anxiety inducing. As we have said elsewhere in this blog, the point of bariatric surgery and the postoperative diet is not to end all enjoyment in your life. Rather, it is to normalize your lifestyle.

The only way that you can do so is through moderation. When we think of moderation, we think of eliminating all the stuff that doesn’t conform to our diet. However, we rarely think of moderation as avoiding the elimination of everything we enjoy. Following are a few tips to help you enjoy Thanksgiving without a splurge and the resultant feelings of frustration and even shame.

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Patient Spotlight – Natalie

Not all the patients that we see are here for elective surgery. In fact, as part of his privileges, Dr. Tsuda must be on call at the hospital periodically. When we get the call, it’s usually something urgent. In fact, Natalie arrived at the hospital with potentially life-threatening diaphragm and intestinal issues. Dr. Tsuda was called into take care of the problem.

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