If the many diets that you have tried over the years don't help you lose weight, weight loss surgery may turn out to be the only strategy that is able to get you to your goal weight. Still, weight loss surgery is just a tool, and your weight loss depends on your hard work over the years from when you first plan your surgery to when you are maintaining your goal weight. A healthy lifestyle includes eating right, exercising regularly, and silencing the doubtful voices in your head and of your family and friends.

Measuring each bite of food, and getting up before dawn to take a walk, and passing up your aunt’s homemade peach pie can get tiresome. Motivating yourself and setting good goals can help you consistently make the right decisions for your health. These are a few tips to help you.

Why Are You Losing Weight?

It’s easy to remember why you want to lose weight when you are having trouble finding small-enough clothes or your weight is above the limit for a theme park ride. It’s harder to remember why you want to lose weight when you and a group of friends are at the dinner table with a large chocolate cake. Making a list of the reasons why you want to lose weight and looking at the list often can keep the reasons fresh in your mind and strengthen your resolve to resist temptation.

These are some of the common reasons for getting weight loss surgery.

• Live longer.
  
• Be healthier – get off medications or manage your health conditions better.
  
• Participate in more activities with friends and family.
  
• Go shopping in regular stores with great clothes.
  
• Fit comfortably into car seats, restaurant booths, and movie theater and airplane seats.
  
• Feel better about yourself.
  

Make It Personal

Deepen your motivation even further and use it to help you stay on track if you think about some of the reasons why you are losing weight that have to do with people in your life. These might be some of your reasons.

• You want to be an active parent who is able to play with your children.
  
• You want to be alive and healthy when your children graduate from high school or give you grandchildren.
  
• Obesity is making you miss out on important moments like family hikes.
  
• You watched an overweight parent or aunt or uncle suffer from diabetes or heart disease at a young age, and know that you may be headed in the same direction.
  
• Your siblings also suffer from obesity and its consequences, and you want to break the pattern.
  

Think About the Short, Medium, and Long Term

The weight loss journey is a long and difficult process, to say the least. You need to spend months or years preparing for weight loss surgery by getting the payment sorted out, choosing a surgeon, and following the pre-surgery diet. Then there is the actual surgery, followed by months of recovery that can include pain, nausea, and complications.

As you recover, you need to learn an entirely new way of eating and living, and may be hungry, cranky, and tired. Finally, there is the rest of your life, as you lose weight and stay on your new eating plan. Every day can be filled with challenges such as tempting but forbidden foods, the need to exercise, and how to deal with people who may not be supportive of your surgery.

Goals give you something specific to work towards. The long-term goals are the big ones. They may be the ones that you have in mind when you get weight loss surgery or that you tell other people. Some long-term goals might be losing 100 pounds, or jogging five miles without stopping.

Those long-term goals can take years to accomplish, and setting some short-term goals can keep you focused as you work toward the long-term goals. They can include losing 5 pounds this month or speed-walking for a mile. These are some other short-term goals that can keep you on track day-to-day.

• Lowering your blood pressure or cholesterol or blood sugar levels enough so that your doctor tells you to lower your dose of medications.
  
• Going for a month without going to a fast food restaurant.
  
• Hitting your protein and water goals every day for a week.
  

Vary Your Goals

Victories can be few and far between if your goals are too narrow, and this mistake can leave you feeling unmotivated. Consider what happens if the only goals that you have are to lost certain amounts of weight. What happens if you do not hit a certain weight loss goal? Does that mean that your hard work has been pointless? Of course not, but you might feel that way if that was the only goal that you were working towards.

Learn to look for and recognize all kinds of progress by setting goals that go beyond your weight. When you achieve them, you have earned a non-scale victory (NSV). While a lower number on the scale is easy to see, NSVs are what make life worth living. They can include the following.

• Getting in good enough shape to be able to walk briskly with your husband.
  
• Making it through an entire dinner at your parents’ house without taking offense at any negative comments about your surgery.
  
• Going out with your friends and enjoying their company without giving in to the food.
  

Celebrate!

We’re all a work in progress. With weight loss surgery comes years of working on improving your health. The only way to keep up the effort, and the only way to make the effort worthwhile, is to celebrate! Celebrate the small victories to be sure that you realize how valuable your efforts are. Buy yourself a new kitchen scale, get your nails done, go out for coffee with a friend, or plan a hiking trip. You are worth working for, and your victories are worth celebrating.

You can lose more weight and keep it off when you stay focused, but that can be challenged. Remind yourself of your motivations and celebrate all kinds of victories to keep yourself in the game.

Thank you Alex!

Victories can be few and far between if your goals are too narrow, and this mistake can leave you feeling unmotivated. Consider what happens if the only goals that you have are to lost certain amounts of weight. What happens if you do not hit a certain weight loss goal? Does that mean that your hard work has been pointless? Of course not, but you might feel that way if that was the only goal that you were working towards.

Learn to look for and recognize all kinds of progress by setting goals that go beyond your weight. When you achieve them, you have earned a non-scale victory (NSV). While a lower number on the scale is easy to see, NSVs are what make life worth living.

Celebrate!

We’re all a work in progress. With weight loss surgery comes years of working on improving your health. The only way to keep up the effort, and the only way to make the effort worthwhile, is to celebrate! Celebrate the small victories to be sure that you realize how valuable your efforts are. Buy yourself a new kitchen scale, get your nails done, go out for coffee with a friend, or plan a hiking trip. You are worth working for, and your victories are worth celebrating.

You can lose more weight and keep it off when you stay focused, but that can be challenged. Remind yourself of your motivations and celebrate all kinds of victories to keep yourself in the game.

Words of wisdom from the Yoda of weight loss surgery!

I love this article, Alex.

I love this article, Alex.

Thanks!!

I like "FOCUS". Thank you, Alex!

Soooo true about NSV's!!

Thanks for sharing

I really enjoyed this article & hope to incorporate it into our next N Denver Chapter Meeting

Thanks for sharing!

Fran

Something for me to keep posted on my wall to keep me focused on my journey AND for the rest of my life. Thank you for posting this Alex!