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Your drastic weight loss has brought drastic improvements to your life. You’re sleeping better, feeling healthier and like many patients exclaim, “Enjoying this new lease on life!” With that being said, we know that the idea of weight re-gain can be very scary; the possibility of losing this new and improved life.

No matter what stage of the journey you’re in, we want to give you the tools to prevent weight regain and continue with weight loss or maintenance of your new healthy self.

Monitoring Your Weight With Weekly Check-in’s

If you want to manage your weight, then monitor it… Like anything you try to manage (kid’s schedules, your job, and your home), it means paying close attention to it.

Monitoring your weight means observing a number on the scale. We recommend that our patients step on the scale at least 1x/week. Most studies and research suggest that daily weigh-ins are optimal for long-term weight loss and maintenance; however, one’s weight can fluctuate due to water retention and hormones. So, take those tiny up’s and down’s from day to day with a grain of salt. A weekly weigh-in will be more accurate in monitoring your weight overtime.

The benefits of monitoring your weight is gaining quantitative insights to how your body and mind are responding to your day to day habits – what you eat or drink, how much sleep you got, or how much you exercised. If you were to see the weight increasing one week, you may be able to easily pin-point the reason why. Maybe that pizza and piece of cake from your loved one’s birthday party?

Monitoring your habits and your weight closely allows you to pivot your efforts. Of course, you want to, and very well should, enjoy your loved one’s birthday, but when you pay attention, you will know to be even more vigilant in the following week to stick to the health lifestyle changes you have implemented for yourself – such as including protein and vegetables at every meal. You can also decrease your starches or increase the exercise that week. You don’t have to do all of these things, but one or two tweaks may be enough to help bring the weight back down to your usual weight.

So, weekly weigh-in – CHECK!

Keep Daily Food Records of Your Meals

As stated above, going hand in hand with monitoring that number on the scale is monitoring what goes into your body. It’s simple, if you bite it then you write it.

Track your meals, snacks and any beverages you have. If you just can’t stand the idea of writing down what you eat every time you eat then we recommend ending each day by pre-planning your meals and food prepping for the next.

Everyday;

  • A healthy Breakfast
  • Lunch
  • Dinner
  • One snack option – for if you get hungry

This will help you set good intentions and healthy eating for the next day. This pre-planning can possibly jump-start you to prep a few items you had in mind for the next day. Such as: preparing some hard boiled eggs, putting away dinner leftovers for lunch, packing a bag of baby carrots and hummus for snack

Daily food monitoring – CHECK!

Lifestyle changes

Remember that long list of Lifestyle Changes you got in your Post-op diet packet? Take it out to review, and read through them again. Happily check off what you are still doing (great job)! And then highlight the things you have forgotten about. Old habits creep back, and you may have forgotten a few of the lifestyle changes that help keep the integrity of the small stomach pouch following bariatric surgery.

Last but not least, come to a Support group, visit with your surgeon or Dietitian to get some further assistance in preventing weight re-gain.

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