Make your environment conducive to weight loss
The big losers do not necessarily have more willpower or desire. The important difference between the big losers and the re-gainers may be how easy they find the journey to be. Surprisingly, you can control a large part of how easy or hard it is to lose weight. The weight loss journey is not just about changing your digestive system through surgery. It is also about changing your entire lifestyle to facilitate weight loss.
Weight Loss Surgery is a Weight Loss Tool, Not a Cure
Weight loss surgery is a tool. It can make you less hungry by reducing the size of your stomach by inserting a band around your stomach (Lap-band), removing the majority of your stomach pouch (vertical sleeve gastrectomy) or folding or stapling away the majority of your stomach pouch (gastric bypass, duodenal switch, and sleeve plication). The vertical sleeve gastrectomy reduces hunger by reducing the amount of ghrelin, a hunger hormone, that your stomach produces. The gastric bypass and duodenal switch reduce nutrient absorption.
All of these surgeries can help you eat less and lose weight, but none of these surgeries are fail-proof. You can “cheat” by eating high-calorie foods, drinking high-calorie beverages, drinking beverages while you eat solid foods, and eating without measuring your portions. Successful weight loss requires good choices on your part, and making good choices is easier if you focus on your entire lifestyle, not just the part of your digestive system that was changed with surgery.
The Influence of Your Surroundings on Your Weight
Think about this scenario. You leave home without breakfast and order a muffin and ice coffee at the drive-through on your way to work. You grab a doughnut at your morning meeting, and go out for lunch with your friends. You order the lunch special with a salad, breadstick, fettuccine alfredo and cheesecake. You nibble on some chocolates from your secretary’s desk as you make your way to the vending machine for a soda in the afternoon. You pick up a pizza on your way home because you know that there is nothing else for dinner.
Now compare it to this second scenario. You wake up early to meet your friend for a walk before you get home for a breakfast of scrambled egg whites and spinach. You drive to work and have yogurt and some fruit at your morning meeting. Lunch with your coworkers consists of a green salad with canned tuna, and you have a hard-boiled egg for your afternoon snack. You are able to get dinner on the table quickly when you get home because you only need to defrost the meals that you prepared earlier in the week.
Which scenario do you think you can help you lose weight? The second one, of course. So why not make it a reality?
Do Your Surroundings Encourage Weight Loss or Weight Gain?
You have battled your weight for years, if not for your entire life before weight loss surgery. In all likelihood, your environment was set up for you to eat. Take a good, hard look at your environment. Is it more like the first scenario or the second one described above? You have the ability to make it more like the second one. Notice the following items from the two scenarios.
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Exercise was automatic in the second one because you planned to meet a friend – so you couldn’t back out.
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Preparing your dinners ahead of time meant that you could eat quickly without going to a fast food restaurant.
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Packing your own snacks meant that you did not have to eat a doughnut in your morning meeting or chocolates in the afternoon.
Make the “Right” Choice Automatic
The fewer tough choices you have, the less likely you are to make poor decisions. Set up your environment so that the healthier actions are easier.
To make healthy eating easier:
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Prepare plenty of meals ahead of time so that you always have a ready-to-eat, healthy option to prevent you from opting for take-out.
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Throw away the take-out menus that you used to store in the kitchen. The extra time it takes you to look up the phone numbers and menus online may be enough to let you come to your sense and realize that you don’t want fast food.
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Keep your kitchen stocked with all kinds of healthy foods, so that no matter your craving, you have a healthy answer.
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Do not keep unhealthy foods at home. If they are not there, you cannot eat them.
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Make sure that the healthy option is the default option. For example, measure your cheese and cut and wash fruits and vegetables ahead of time so that it is easier to snack on them than on cookies.
Also consider these ideas:
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Meet your friends for walks or shopping trips instead of for meals at restaurants.
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Park your car a few blocks away from work so that you have no choice but to walk those few blocks again at the end of the day as you leave work.
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Do not drive past drive-thrus if they are too tempting. Also, do not keep money in the car, and consider removing your car’s cup holders so that eating in the car is no longer an option.
All weight loss surgery patients have their own struggles. Far from being wimpy, removing these obstacles rather than fighting them is the best way to overcome them. The weight loss journey path will always have speed bumps and potholes, but it will be a lot smoother if you set up your lifestyle to promote better choices all day.
Alex Brecher
I am a native New Yorker who loves spending time with my children and working out at the gym.
I had struggled with my weight my whole life. Diets worked for me until I went off them and gained back more weight each time. Finally, a friend who used to be obese told me that he had gotten weight loss surgery. I could see how great he looked, and I got weight loss surgery in 2003. Thankfully, I can say that I have never looked back. It helped me lose more than 100 lbs. and keep the weight off since 2003.
I am the founder of BariatricPal and proud of everything that it means to the entire weight loss surgery community. Together, we can fight obesity and work toward living healthier lifestyles!
You can view The BIG Books on Weight Loss Surgery book series at the BariatricPal Store.
GREAT words. I can/could relate to nearly all of it.
FYI, I am posting your article on my blog on word press. LOVE THIS
Thanks!
What inspiring advice to 'veteran' post-op WLS people!!! The daily choices we make our what determine out long term success, health& happiness. A commitment to yourself to make the healthiest choices at every meal makes all the difference. I'm realizing that now 16 months post op. The struggle to stay away from high caloric, low nutrition food is a constant for me& I'm recommitting myself to healthier choices. Surgery is a battle. Maintenance is the war. Never give up.
This is an excellent topic! It's one that my husband and I tackle every day.
When I am at work or at home I have so many things around me that I just don't even desire.
At work I enjoy watching others come by eating girl scout Cookies and sneaking candy out of the candy bowl I keep on the file cabinets well out of reach but openly inviting for others.
The department just threw me a big birthday breakfast full of all kinds of things that my boss told them, "Lisa is not even going to eat any of that", and he is right. Bagels, donuts, danish, muffins, croissants, no longer my thing. I enjoyed the fresh brewed coffee and some fresh sliced fruit along with my daily Protein bar and I was happy to watch everyone enjoy the rest.
I feel good about myself knowing that the food is right there and I am not afraid to have it there because I don't even want to eat it. It helps keep me in check. I don't avoid the foods I just make better choices for myself and my banded lifestyle.
Edited by lisacaron
Great article….just because we have this great "tool" doesn't mean its going to be a piece of cake! (Yes, a pun 
)
At nearly 6 months out I'm seeing more obstacles in the way that I need to be more mindful of so that I continue to be successful….and I can't make anyone accountable for that success BUT ME!
Thanks Alex!
One of the best articles I've read in a long time and I read a lot of articles. Great job Alex!
Excellent, Alex!
I also find I have to prepare myself for other environments. The big one is....the grocery store! My RNY wife and I need to prepare our minds before we go. Thinking out a list at home..right after eating helps, not going in hungry, go for the things on the list and don't just go up and down all of the isles...especially avoid the end stuff.
It seems like an army preparing to go into battle. Awareness of the enemy and having tactics to combat the psychological warfare saves us from Cheetos. 
I wish we could give standing ovations on forums, LOL!
GREAT article!! This is something we can ALL learn from!
Great article! I've never understood the candy in the workplace thing -- bowls of M&Ms that some people pass right by but are torture for others. It's like setting up lines of coke or shots of whiskey. Just wrong! Or the way people try to feed kids candy. Hello?
As for our homes, we have complete control over what we have in our fridges and pantries. Getting junk food in for others in the family is just a mechanism for perpetuating addiction plus encouraging it in a new generation. Why would we do that?
Sorry. I'm cranky because of another incoming storm. No one needs high fructose corn Syrup or all the other crap. We are not denying people we love their pleasures; we are helping save their lives.
Great article! I've never understood the candy in the workplace thing -- bowls of M&Ms that some people pass right by but are torture for others. It's like setting up lines of coke or shots of whiskey. Just wrong! Or the way people try to feed kids candy. Hello?
As for our homes, we have complete control over what we have in our fridges and pantries. Getting junk food in for others in the family is just a mechanism for perpetuating addiction plus encouraging it in a new generation. Why would we do that?
Sorry. I'm cranky because of another incoming storm. No one needs high fructose corn Syrup or all the other crap. We are not denying people we love their pleasures; we are helping save their lives.
BANDISTA ..... I just read this and it goes hand in hand what you just posted... Stop eating CRAP :
C - Carbonated drinks
R - Refined sugars
A - Artificial foods
P - Processed foods
BANDISTA ..... I just read this and it goes hand in hand what you just posted... Stop eating CRAP :
C - Carbonated drinks
R - Refined sugars
A - Artificial foods
P - Processed foods
Oh my goodness I LOVE this!!!
Truer words have never been spoken. I am as guilty as the majority of society in the fact my 5 year old daughter now wants crap instead of nutritious food. As a baby, when she was too young to really ask for or get her own food she ate very well. Big on her veggies and fruits. But as she got older and I was being a lazy mom she was introduced to junk. I ate junk so she did too. I created the little food monster she is now. The only saving grace she has at this point is that she is not overweight. She tends to take after her father and doesn't struggle with weight issues. I did, even as a child. I am very aware of it and I am trying to turn the boat around, but it is like turning the Titanic. I know I would eat better and be less tempted if there was zero junk in our house. Yet I am still guilty, even after WLS, of wanting to buy treats for her. I have to really work on my mind set. I grew up in a family that ate a good, pretty nutritious home cooked dinner every night. But if you ate your dinner you got desert, so you cleaned your plate and then had junk after. I have to rewire my thinking that these "treats" are not a reward. They are not benefitting my daughter. The struggle is going to be now turning her away from the fast food, processed food and on to healthy eating. It is so easy to sabotage your life without even really knowing you are doing it. This post is a real eye opener and great advice!
☠carolinagirl☠ 18,721
Posted
GREAT words. I can/could relate to nearly all of it.
FYI, I am posting your article on my blog on word press. LOVE THIS
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