It seems the ultimate way to MAKE yourself eat right. Whatever method –gastric sleeve, band, bypass, balloon, etc., and however permanent, the idea is to create a mechanism by which you feel less hungry and therefore eat less. If you overeat, there are immediate safeguard consequences. Surely that’s enough to make me stay on track, right?
Well, maybe.
Many people do lose weight markedly in the first blush of surgical afterglow. That’s great. That’s what it’s supposed to do.
Maintaining the loss, however, has been problematic for many. In fact, more than half my clients have come to me five years post surgery when they had regained their weight. Some are so broken over this that they don’t believe they CAN lose the weight—which means they likely will not. Most of our achievements come from believing we can do it. If you can’t believe, it’s unlikely to happen.
Here’s the issue with the surgery—it does not address the emotional side of eating. Good docs will ask you to adhere to a plan before they do the surgery. They may even do follow up afterwards. However, if we don’t address what is driving our behavior, a simple diet won’t cure what ails you, so surgery will only last so long. If you get in an emotional binge and stretch your stomach out again, or if they remove the balloon or other device that is keeping your stomach too small for too much food, and you go back to filling it to FULL, you will again gain the weight. You know the phrase: When we go back to doing what we always did —
It’s not so much about the size of your stomach as it is the size of your want and what you’re willing to do to fill that empty space in your heart.
That’s not about food, but we use food as the band-aid to get us through the moment. Address the issues, heal your heart, face your stuff—free your best self. When you’re acting from your best self, how likely is it that you will give in to temptation?
If you need a little help bolstering your belief or freeing your best, wonderful, and magnificent heart and self, give me a call. I can see you at your best, and I’d be delighted to help you heal your heart.
