Most bariatric patients are terrified of regaining their weight. Surgery is a dramatic intervention, and essentially a last resort. If that fails, what is a person left with? The thought alone is disheartening and stressful.
Why Regain Happens:
Post-surgery regain is usually the result of several factors: some behavioural, and some medical. From a psychological perspective, regain can be an indication that the patient never connected with the enormity of the internal work required for long-term sustainable bariatric success to be achieved.
Bariatric surgery is sold as a medical solution. But this is only part of the puzzle. Bariatric weight LOSS is the medical solution. Bariatric weight MAINTENANCE is as much a feat of the mind as it ever was pre-surgery, with or without a sleeve or a pouch. The difference, though, is that most significantly overweight people struggle to even get to any sort of goal weight without surgery, let alone to stay there.
We often only understand the enormity of the compulsive issues at hand when the weight is piling back on and there are no further (dramatically effective) medical solutions available.
Of course, we can try appetite suppressants, or have a revision surgery with varying rates of efficacy, but nothing is likely to have quite the success rate as the initial operation. And so, one might, at the point of regain, feel to be up the creek without a paddle.
However, there remains an intervention – and one which offers sustainable hope.
The only real solution is to go back to the drawing board, and in full earnestness do the mental, emotional and lifestyle work that has always been required.
What To Do When Regain Happens:
So, there is indeed an answer, but the answer is counterintuitive.
In the midst of the PANIC induced by regain, we want to rush around seeking pills, potions, coaches, trainers and miracle cures.
The answer, in fact, is to slow down.
Step number one is to get in touch with a specialist in this field.
And to commit, not to LOSING the regain, but to STOPPING any further regain. And these are two quite different things.
Why STOPPING THE REGAIN Is More Important Than Losing It (At First):
In any medical emergency, the first imperative is always to stop the bleed. Medics cannot race into intervention mode whilst the patient is haemorrhaging. Nor can they intervene effectively until they have properly assessed what is wrong. So, when regaining, step 1 is to STOP THE “BLEED”; the rampant accumulation of excess pounds.
And step 2 is then to figure of what the problem is, and to strategise for a solution. The URGE is to haphazardly do everything that we think might fix the problem. But, sadly, these interventions will likely compound the problem and make it worse. We’ll rush to restrict and diet, which history tells us causes a sense of deprivation, indignation, rebellion and ultimately overeating and bingeing.
Focussing on stopping the regain fosters a sense of calm. This feels doable, for most. You're going to quell your anxiety. By pressing ‘pause’ on the rampant return of your weight, you will connect with the deeper truths around the nature of what's been going on for you for decades. And in connecting with that, there will be a more sustainable, lasting change, and the work that you do will be permanent.
When clients reach out to me, desperate for solutions, and typically looking to enrol in my BARIATRIC MIND MASTERS program, I usually nudge them gently towards my BACK ON TRACK mini course, as a first port of call. The REASON is that BARIATRIC MIND MASTERS is a slow-and-enduring, tools and skills-based intervention, focussed on long-term “forever freedom” from compulsive urges, and mastery over emotions, food and eating.
But this mastery takes time. And my sense is that FIRST this person needs to feel a sense of control return. They need a QUICK WIN, to dig in and do the more sustainable work.
BACK ON TRACK helps to STOP THE BLEED…
Bariatric Mind Masters intervenes at the level of injury.
