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The Loser's Bench



Behavior may be the real key to...
October 7, 2008 11:22 pm

Just about everyone we run into has a story of a friend, aunt, co-worker, etc... that had 'the surgery', lost the weight and gained it all back.

The good news is that statistically, after 10 years, 80 percent of patients maintain a weight loss the excess weight loss that they acheived with their WLS. However, 10 percent will experience a regain significant enough to no longer be considered successful (at least 60 percent of their excess weight) and another 10 percent will experience a regain of every single pound that they lost.

After extensive studies, they have found that while structural or 'mechanical' issues account for a very small percentage of these failures, the vast majority are due to behavioral issues.

To address this, I found a program called the "Beck Diet Solution" developed by Dr. Judith Beck. It's not a diet, but a 6 week program that you step through to learn to 'think thin.' To be honest, it took me much more than the 6 weeks to work through it, but it has been and continues to be an invaluable tool in my arsenal to try to ensure my longterm success.

If you are interested, you can get if from any of the major booksellers or online. It comes as a book and workbook and it's really best to get both.

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Habits: Good and Bad
October 2, 2008 4:26 am
There are good habits and bad habits. I know for myself, I had many bad habits that significantly, negatively impacted my weight over the years. Honestly, I didn’t have many good habits in place that might help me maintain a healthful weight in the long term and that made me nervous because once you get the weight off, statistics indicate that it is generally behavior that makes or breaks your long-term success.  Like you, I want this to be successful in the long term. We have all had too many weight loss boomerangs and I don’t want that to happen to me anymore than you want it to happen to you. I decided that since habits, good and bad are the foundation for so many behavioral changes that I needed to address them head on. It has helped me a great deal to identify both bad habits that need to be eradicated and good habits that need to be cultivated. Bad habits are part of the reason that we ended up needing to explore the possibility and finally decide to have WLS. Taking a look at these behaviors and trying to conquer them is something that I’m working on to try to ‘stack the deck’ in my favor so that I’ll be able to maintain the significant losses and gains that I’ve enjoyed as a benefit of my weight loss surgery journey.  Good habits are probably as important to long-term success as eradicating bad habits. It isn’t always easy to know what good habits should be, so I look at how others before have succeeded and try to leverage the habits that they have incorporated into their lives.  I have two lists that I use; The Bad Habit List and the Good Habit List. The Bad Habit list allows me to look at the Bad Habits I have, try to assess how ‘dangerous’ they are, why I do them, why I’d be better off if I didn’t and actively think about what to do the make a change. The Good Habit List allows me to take time to think about what I’d like to do for myself, why it’s good for me and how I can make it regular part of my healthier life. Bad Habit List 
  1. Make a list of Bad Habits that you think might negatively impact your ability to reach and/or maintain your weight loss goals.
 
  1. Use scale of 1 to 10 to rate how seriously is this bad habit likely to threaten your weight loss or maintenance goals?
 
  1. Identify the reward you get when you exercise each of the bad habits you have identified.
 
  1. Identify the reward for breaking each of the bad habits you have identified.
 
  1. Create a plan of action to change the bad habit.
 
  1. Select 1 or 2 of your Bad Habits from the list to try to change. Conquer those and move on to the next on the list.
 

Bad Habit

Rate the threat this Bad Habit might have on  your Success  Reward for indulging Bad HabitReward for Breaking Bad HabitAction Plan to Change Bad Habit
     
     
 Good Habit List 
  1. Make a list of Good Habits that you think might positively impact your ability to reach and/or maintain your weight loss goals.
 
  1. Use scale of 1 to 10 to rate how effectively this good habit likely to support your weight loss or maintenance goals?
 
  1. Identify the reward you get when you exercise each of the good habits you have identified.
 
  1. Create a plan of action to establish the good habit.
 
  1. Select 1 or 2 of your Good Habits from the list to try to establish. Conquer those and move on to the next on the list.
 

Good Habit

Rate the effect this Good Habit might have on  your Success  Reward for establishing Good HabitAction Plan to Change Bad Habit
    
    
 
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Barbara C.
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