Weight Regain After Bariatric Surgery: How You Can Rebound From It
July 28, 2017What I Know About Weight Regain After Bariatric Surgery
- Weight regain is not inevitable.
- Weight regain happens because you are eating more calories than your body requires to maintain its current weight.
- Weight regain is highly emotionally charged. To deal with regain successfully, you need to move past the emotion and self-judgment.
Weight regain is an important topic, but one that so many of us are embarrassed to discuss on the ObesityHelp message boards and social media.
It’s as if by talking about regain, one admits defeat. I say, NOT SO! Talking or posting about personal regain requires facing your truth, looking at perceived failure, and takes more courage, in my opinion, than getting weight loss surgery.
Statistically, the average WLS patient maintains a 50% excess weight loss at the 5-year mark post-surgery. Since that’s the “average,” some people gain more, and some gain less. Heck, some don’t gain at all. But, regain doesn’t make any single person less successful than the next. It’s how we learn to approach regain that will determine future success, maintaining a healthy weight and, even more importantly, a healthy self-image.
Look, I’ve had my share of weight ups and downs on this WLS journey. After getting back to a healthy weight after regaining, I encountered some major life stressors, and my well-honed and comfortable coping skills kicked in. My coping skills – food abuse.
As a result, I regained the weight I had lost, plus an extra 10. Sound familiar? Sort of like the old pre-WLS days, yet, so very, very different. Having had WLS regain offered a new level of shame. It was a bit like I was a double failure - I couldn’t keep my weight off even with this wonderful opportunity and tool I’d been given. I admit there were moments of despair and hopelessness.
To meet the challenge of weight regain again required continued self-reflection and acceptance of my eating issues on an even deeper level. I had to reach deep. I started by going back to some basic truths I discovered for myself.
5 Ways to Combat Weight Regain After Bariatric Surgery
- You must be honest with yourself about your eating
The best way to do this is to log what you actually eat. Once you have a baseline of your actual eating, you can make changes. Without knowing what you are doing, it’s hard to make sustainable changes. - Learn your triggers and accept them
Don’t fight them. Learn to work with them. Cookies are a huge trigger for me. If I want a cookie, I know what’s coming my way - cravings that won’t go away, cravings that can drive me to eat uncontrollably. If I choose to open that door, I need to live with the outcome. - Understand that cravings and compulsions are not a failure of character or lack of willpower
There is ample scientific evidence that proves that physiological, hormonal, and chemical changes occur, especially in those who are obese, to trigger uncontrollable and insatiable cravings. When you grasp that, it’s much easier to stay away from your trigger foods. It is possible to break the cycle, but it takes work and concerted effort. - Create a plan you can actually follow
Think about what that means. I can’t follow a liquid diet for more than a day - if that. To me, a liquid diet is punitive, and I want no part of it. What I can do is cut carbs way back and eat tons of protein, salads, fruits, and healthy fats. I can live that way for months and months. - You have to track your intake
End.Of. Subject. Without tracking, you are flying blind. Sorry, it’s the truth. Wrap your head around it.
I read and reread those five things and realized there had to be even more to it. For those of us who are or have been morbidly obese, our relationship with food and our bodies is multifaceted – sometimes, I think of it akin to Dante’s 9 concentric circles of Hell! Seriously, think about those levels: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. I’ve felt pretty much all of those feelings when it comes to my eating and weight.
I’ve lusted after food, I’ve felt the self-directed wrath for not being able to do something as “simple” as lose weight and keep it off - eat less, move more, right? Could it be any simpler? I’ve accused my body of betrayal and treachery. How could I possibly be this way when so many of my “normal” friends are not? The heresy of my body in its steadfast position of needing fewer calories to survive than my peers who never suffered from weight gain and obesity was nothing less than accursed. And these feelings are just the easiest to find and label.
The layers I need to peel back to deal with 40+ years of emotion that connect my childhood need for self protection, my eating and my body image are daunting. Daunting, yes, but also completely realistic and attainable.
I wrote earlier that regain does not make one less successful. That may seem an odd thing to say to someone whose life has revolved around weight and the quest for normalcy in appearance, eating habits, and weight. I look at it this way: I was wildly successful at post-WLS weight loss. It came off steadily without a single stall. I lost 108 pounds. I learned very little during that time except how to stay focused on a number I wanted to get to. It wasn’t until I started gaining weight that I started to LEARN. My quest to beat obesity and not be a statistical average has helped me in profound ways.
Weight Regain After Bariatric Surgery & Binge Eating Disorder
My own regain gifted me with knowledge about myself and my eating and reasons for eating that I would not otherwise have. Like an alcoholic needing to hit bottom to get sober, regain has been my bottom and has helped me to gain clarity. Understanding that there are drivers behind my eating that are not defects of character or a lack of willpower has been an integral part of this portion of my journey.
Learning that I fit the profile of someone who has Binge Eating Disorder (BED), as outlined by the DSM-5, gave me comfort and hope. I’m in the process of getting medical support from a psychiatrist who specializes in disordered eating and will be able to monitor my depression associated with BED. The knowledge I gain from looking at "why" instead of just "how" and "what" I eat is powerful.
With this power comes hope. My hope propels me forward. Hope gives me the strength to continue to seek my truth. Hope lets me believe that I will find the answer for me.
There are different approaches to deal with regain. Some people say, “get back to basics.” Others support super low-carb restarts (I certainly have!). Some rely on returning to a liquid diet or the All-Meat-All-Week approach that has gained popularity. These approaches are food-based. I’d like to go out on a limb and suggest anyone struggling with uncontrolled eating and regain to take a moment to consider an approach that is based on healing the soul.
As obese people, we have berated, loathed, and abused ourselves for our shame of being fat. We learned we were slothful, people of little self-control and that we were gluttonous. We learned to turn our anger inward. Food was our enemy. It also became a weapon of self-preservation. Those things don’t go away because you’ve had bariatric surgery.
In Conclusion
If you have regained, know you are not alone. Remember, there is no shame in regain. Regain is not inevitable, but it is understandable. A lifetime of obesity and the emotional life behind obesity doesn’t vanish with the excising of most of our stomachs.
We have a powerful tool, a gift from medical science that will help us deal with our regain, limiting our capacity and hopefully minimizing hunger while we take the time to forgive and accept, and get to know the wonderful people we have always been behind our masks of obesity.
 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR Devon struggled with weight since early childhood. In his 30s, his weight was a serious health issue. After his VSG in 2011, he's lost 108 lbs. He is passionate about nutrition for WLS patients and is an advocate of working to heal the emotional scars left by obesity. It is this work he credits with his successful weight loss after regain. Stay in touch with Devon at A Fat Mans Journey. |
