atelux17

Yum! Tried it right now! W/Chike choco powder!

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I instaneously lost my 2 best friends(1 about 50lbs overweight the other was 350lbs)when I started losing weight& am less close with my mother who is obese. We had less of our normal activities to do together since binge eating & eating unhealthy foods was not on the agenda for me. There's also a jealousy factor. People do not see how much of a social issue food & appearance is. People who would never even socialize with me at work are now clamoring to be the 'funny' girl's friend & attention from males is astounding. That being said, I feel like sometimes people who don't know me well, look at me as just the girl who has lost weight. A supportive social circle is a blessing. Thanks for the great piece, Alex!

I instaneously lost my 2 best friends(1 about 50lbs overweight the other was 350lbs)when I started losing weight& am less close with my mother who is obese. We had less of our normal activities to do together since binge eating & eating unhealthy foods was not on the agenda for me. There's also a jealousy factor. People do not see how much of a social issue food & appearance is. People who would never even socialize with me at work are now clamoring to be the 'funny' girl's friend & attention from males is astounding. That being said, I feel like sometimes people who don't know me well, look at me as just the girl who has lost weight. A supportive social circle is a blessing. Thanks for the great piece, Alex!

I instaneously lost my 2 best friends(1 about 50lbs overweight the other was 350lbs)when I started losing weight& am less close with my mother who is obese. We had less of our normal activities to do together since binge eating & eating unhealthy foods was not on the agenda for me. There's also a jealousy factor. People do not see how much of a social issue food & appearance is. People who would never even socialize with me at work are now clamoring to be the 'funny' girl's friend & attention from males is astounding. That being said, I feel like sometimes people who don't know me well, look at me as just the girl who has lost weight. A supportive social circle is a blessing. Thanks for the great piece, Alex!

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Are your friends and family helping you lose weight or standing in your way? Don’t let your social network hold you back!
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Your friends and family can affect whether you lose weight as quickly as you’d like. You are more likely to become obese if your sibling, spouse, or friend is obese, and more likely to want to lose weight if your friends want to. Ask your friends to join you in eating well and exercising so that you can all get healthy and enjoy life more together!



If You Want to Lose Weight, Keep an Eye on Your Social Network


One of the first things you learn about weight loss surgery is that you need a support system. The more friends and family you have around, the more likely you are to lose weight. At least, that’s what you’re told.
It’s mostly true but it’s not completely right. The truth is that your friends and family don’t always help you lose weight. If you have anyone sabotaging your efforts, you already know that. But your friends and family may be dragging you down without trying to. You may not even realize it’s happening. Once you do, though, you can resist the bad influence.
Effect of Friends and Family on Weight
Take a look at your friends and family. Are they overweight? If they are, they may be getting in the way of your own weight loss. Part of it may be genetic. If one sibling gains weight, the other is 40 percent more likely to also gain weight, according to research described in the December 2011 edition of the Harvard Men’s Health Watch.
You might point to genes to explain why you can predict people’s weight gain based on their siblings’ weight gain. That may be partly true, but consider this. Spouses are 37 percent more likely to become obese if their spouse does. Okay, live together, eat together, gain or lose weight together. That makes sense, right?
But do you know whose weight is most closely related to yours? It’s not the weight of your siblings or spouse. It’s your friends’ weights! If you have a close friend who becomes obese, your risk of becoming obese increases by a scary 57 percent! And, if your friends want to lose weight, you’re more likely to want to lose weight.
How Your Friends Affect Your Weight
You don’t live with your friends, and you don’t share their genes. So why should their weight affect yours? Part of it is just from trying to be a good friend. Your friend’s job is to cheer you up and accept you for who you are. That’s great in most cases because we all need someone on our side.
Unfortunately, it works against you when you tell your friend that you just ate a half a pizza because you had a bad day at work, your friend may just tell you that you deserved that pizza. Worse, she might invite you out so that the two of you can split another pizza.
Also, your perception of what is normal and acceptable might shift towards what your friends do and think. If they are overweight or obese, you may not see yourself as unhealthily overweight even if you are. If they share a few boxes of doughnuts every Sunday, you might not see any problem with those extra hundreds of calories. But continuing to do what they do can get in the way of hitting your weight loss goals.
Make New Friends…
When you’re getting started on your weight loss journey, think about making a few new friends who are going to support your new commitment to health.
Other weight loss surgery patients: they’re going through exactly the same things that you are.
Exercise buddies: find them at the gym, in the park, or through craiglist.com or meetup.com. Don’t be shy about asking if you can join them for a workout or two. If they say no, ask someone else. You might end up making a few new friends that you can hang out at other times during the day.

…And Keep the Old
You don’t have to ditch your old friends and stay away from your siblings and parents if they’re overweight. Ideally, you can be open with them. Explain how hard you are working to get healthy, and let them know how they can help.
If you’re lucky, they’ll be willing to change some of their behaviors to support your goals and get healthier themselves.
Meet to go shopping or take a walk in the park instead of to eat at a restaurant.
Order an egg white omelet instead of pancakes with butter, syrup, and sausage when you go out for breakfast.
Meet your friends to do crafts or pack lunches for a homeless shelter instead of baking and eating cookies.

If your old friends and your family are unwilling to change, you don’t need to avoid them. Even being aware of how friends and family can affect you can protect you from following their leadwhile you’re hanging out with them. Be on the lookout for unhealthy behaviors, and make your own healthy decisions.
Skip the table’s appetizers and enjoy your glass of ice water.
Order what you know is right, like chicken breast or fish and vegetables, while everyone else is ordering pasta or steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy.
Savor coffee while everyone else is digging into dessert.
Lean on them for sympathy when you’re struggling, but don’t use them as eating buddies anymore.

Eventually, they may see how happy and successful you are, and they may be ready to ask you for help losing weight.
Your friends and family are there to support you, but sometimes their love for you isn’t good for your weight loss journey. Ask them to help you out by setting a good example, and keep yourself from following their lead if you know they’re eating badly.

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6 months

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Choose: How Easy Do You Want Losing Weight to Be?

Weight loss surgery is a substantial step in the battle to control your weight. It is proof of your long-term commitment to eating better and becoming healthier. Research clearly shows that weight loss surgery can be far more effective for significant long-term weight loss than diet and exercise, so why don’t all weight loss surgery patients achieve their goal weights after weight loss surgery? Why do some people find the journey easier than others, even though both sets of individuals are motivated to follow the weight loss surgery diet?


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.
Exercise was automatic in the second one because you planned to meet a friend – so you couldn’t back out.
Preparing your dinners ahead of time meant that you could eat quickly without going to a fast food restaurant.
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:
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.
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.
Keep your kitchen stocked with all kinds of healthy foods, so that no matter your craving, you have a healthy answer.
Do not keep unhealthy foods at home. If they are not there, you cannot eat them.
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:
Meet your friends for walks or shopping trips instead of for meals at restaurants.
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.
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.

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