Changing Relationships After Weight Loss Surgery

Weight loss surgery can have a more significant impact on your life than you think! Sure, the everyday things change – the scale, your clothes, your health. But can weight loss surgery have an impact on your relationships? ABSOLUTELY! This is an important aspect of the weight loss journey that isn’t talked about nearly enough!

Going through any huge life change can have an impact on our relationships. The most noticeable changes may be with those you live around. Whether it’s parents, a significant other, children, or a roommate, the people we live with know us the best. One of the most important things you can do is educate them about the weight loss surgery process. Learning about the prep, healing process, dietary changes, etc., helps them know what to expect and how to be a pillar of support. One of the best ways to ensure your long-term success is getting the whole household on board with eating healthier!

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Healthy Desserts to Try After Weight Loss Surgery

You may think that embarking on a weight loss journey means you have to give up all your favorite sweets. I remember wondering if I would be able to do it. Would I have the willpower? How would I handle cravings? Would I ever enjoy food again? Thankfully, I’ve learned that living a healthy lifestyle post weight loss surgery DOESN’T mean always depriving yourself. If you’re like me, your sweet tooth is REAL! I love having dessert at the end of the day. Needless to say, I was grateful to learn that I can still enjoy sweet treats while staying on track!

The key is to be smart about your choices. Your stomach is significantly smaller post-op, so you must be wise about the choices you make for it. Thankfully, there are tons of options for low-carb, low-calorie sweets these days! By keeping them low carb and low calorie, the treats will have minimal impact on your weight loss goals.

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Getting Into Pre-Op Shape

Many people incorrectly assume that life change starts only after bariatric surgery.  Life change should start quite a while BEFORE weight loss surgery to have the best outcome!  Read on to get some great tips on how to get yourself into pre-op shape!

Surgery of any kind takes a toll on our bodies.  So, it only makes sense to prepare our bodies for it as much as possible.  Getting into pre-op shape helps build heart and lung health.  They will be working overtime after surgery to heal and repair us, so we should help them out as much as we can!  It is also wise to build the strength and stamina that we will need, especially in the early days when our mobility might be affected.  Strengthening our arms and legs will help us not use our abdominal muscles to move around, allowing them to heal.

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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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