WLS Support: Beyond the Bariatric Center's Paper

After your weight loss surgery, were you given a piece of paper with food lists and instructions to guide you and sent on your way? As an online bariatric dietitian, I have seen and worked with many clients who have had wonderful support after their bariatric surgery. On the other hand, I've also worked with and received lots of feedback from, many people about their experiences of having very little nutritional support after having their weight-loss surgery.

They may have gone to a center in their own country that focused on doing the surgery, getting them to the point where they are healing well, and sending them on their way. Alternatively, they may have left their country to have their surgery and received limited support once they returned home.

Why Is It So Important To Get WLS Support?

Receiving great nutritional support is not only to improve your 'experience' in your post-weight loss surgery journey—but also to feel supported and get the answers you need when you need them. It is also to ensure you get the most out of your weight loss surgery, to achieve the most weight loss and the most health benefits you can because that is why people do the surgery, right?

Why wouldn't you want to get the most out of your surgery?

1. Learning How to Reach Your Protein and Fluid Goals Comfortably

After weight loss surgery, you cannot eat as much food due to restriction, and it's very common in the early to medium days to have very little to no appetite. So, how do you reach your protein and fluid goals with such a low appetite? This requires expert support and knowledge. Knowing how to estimate and track your protein intake and understanding how this will change over time is important.

In this phase, we can be tracking a lot more routine protein intake, as opposed to further down the track after your weight loss surgery. Your individual protein needs will also need to be assessed and have an individualized protein goal.

Your protein goal can change over time, and what it will be and what's right for you six months after surgery may not be the right amount of protein to be aiming for two years after your surgery. Fluid intake is another key area that people struggle with after their weight-loss surgery, but getting fluid in can be much more challenging, and adequate fluid intake is so important. Drinking adequate fluid is essential for how you feel.

2. Establishing a Great Eating Pattern

A wonderful foundation to establish in the early days after your weight-loss surgery is a great eating pattern. When I'm working with clients, people can have different eating patterns because their lifestyles are different. Their workplaces vary; some work from home, others travel to work, and each has a different working environment.

Your personalized eating pattern should fit in with your lifestyle. Additionally, learning how to plate up your food and make better food choices is crucial. As you move further from surgery, both things change because you can eat more over time in the first 12 months after your weight loss surgery. Having great WLS support to help you navigate these changes is crucial to getting the most out of your weight loss surgery.

3. Relearning How to Eat

Relearning how to eat involves developing habits that ensure you do not overeat, such as taking small bites, eating slowly, chewing well, and, importantly, relearning to listen to your body. Let me give you an example. When we start introducing solids to a baby, you can provide them with a spoonful of food. They take it, and when they've had enough, they push the spoon away and want to get on with things.

We are born with the practice of listening to our body and stopping eating when we're satisfied, and we lose that over our lives. We get told to finish what's on our plate. So, not listening to your body, eating what's in front of you, eating what's in the environment—all these factors guide us to eat more.

So, one of the key areas after weight loss surgery that will benefit from great support is learning how to eat and listen to the body, listening to your hunger and fullness cues. For many people, this can be a challenge, as a lot of practice is needed to return to the zone. Yes, your sensations are different after weight loss surgery, you don't always have the same hunger and fullness cues. Still, I encourage you to listen to your body's hunger and fullness cues and see what you can feel and where you can feel it because tapping into those sensations of when you've had enough is super important to ensure you don't overeat.

4. Increasing Your Meal Planning and Preparation Skills

Many people think that after weight loss surgery, they will be able to think about food less and not worry about it. They're going to be eating less, so they won't be thinking about it as much. But actually, the reverse is true. Much more preparation and planning go into your food choices and your meal choices after your weight loss surgery.

Developing skills to ensure you have good food choices that you're prepared for is important, and this can take time to develop knowledge, skills, and support. With this greater requirement for planning and preparation comes increased effort that goes into your nutrition, which can be very tiring and can get people down. Good dietetic support after your bariatric surgery can help you fine-tune the meal planning and preparation process.

5. Finding Balance in Your New Life

Support to help you find balance in your new life is crucial. The old dieting mindset—what are you bringing into your post-weight loss surgery journey? What are you bringing in with your approach? Bringing past dieting behavior and the same approach into your post-weight loss surgery journey can throw you off track. One example is fixating on the scales. You work hard, and the scale doesn't move down, or it goes up a little bit, which can make you feel deflated and like you're failing, which is just not true. It's normal for weight loss to stop and start after surgery.

Learning to get balanced in your diet, learning to eat out, enjoying your food, having a treat, and moving out of that all-or-nothing thinking—the good and bad foods—and moving towards an intuitive eating pattern is important. Not a restrictive eating pattern or an overeating pattern, but an intuitive one, listening to the body, enjoying a variety of foods, working towards your goals, and enjoying your life.

6. Navigating Challenges

You need and deserve support to move through any challenges that come up after your weight loss surgery, and that is very individual. Having support on how to navigate those challenges, manage them, and know they are normal is important. Getting support to move through challenges is crucial, not just for how you experience your journey but also for the big overarching goal of getting the most out of your weight-loss surgery—achieving the most weight loss and the biggest health benefits you can after your weight-loss surgery.

Conclusion

If you have had WLS or bariatric surgery and want to supercharge your success, get my WLS success starter kit. With this kit, you’ll learn what habits slow down your weight loss, and how to identify the key behaviors to focus on for your success.

Written by Jane Stoltze, Bariatric Dietitian, RD