Food cravings can derail your weight loss efforts. The next time a craving hits, try thinking about your smaller stomach as a set of training wheels instead of a set of restrictive rules.

In the forum, I've seen a lot of concern about cheating on the pre-op diet and eating certain foods too soon after surgery. I understand these temptations. (Oh, boy, do I understand.) It is natural to crave what we can't have. Foods like pizza and pasta suddenly seem preternaturally delicious. If we give in and eat something that's not on our diet plan, we react with guilt and shame--and we usually realize that pizza is not as awesome as we remembered.

Unfortunately, cravings come back again and again, promising a taste explosion. If we don't learn to resist most of these cravings, we can derail our weight loss efforts.

The next time a craving hits, try thinking about your smaller stomach as a set of training wheels instead of a set of restrictive rules. Your current body--your bicycle--is functional, but you have your heart set on that sleek racing model or muscular mountain bike. You yearn to zip down the street or take that rugged path through the forest. Before you can master the better bicycle, though, you have to learn to balance on the one you have--under all road and trail conditions. You have to be ready for the challenges ahead.

Training wheels are boring, but they help us avoid the worst of the bumps and bruises that can happen when we lose our balance and fall off the bike. We can still slip up and take a spill, but it's likely to be much less painful than if we were careening down a street unchecked, with no extra wheels to keep us upright.

Our smaller stomach does the same thing for us: it helps us maintain our balance while we're learning to nourish our bodies again. Before surgery, most of us had the freedom to eat a large variety and amount of food. We lost our balance repeatedly, and we paid for it with increased weight and medical problems. We injured our body--and mind--over and over.

We've already invested a lot of resources in our weight loss surgery, and we have a limited amount of time to make use of these training wheels. If we take the extra time and effort to learn the fine art of balance, we will be better prepared to handle the freedom that comes with the new, better models of our bodies. The excitement and adventures waiting for us down the road are worth a little boredom with the training wheels now.

Great point!

@Josey Quinn,

Thanks for this great article. The training wheels analogy is a really good one! We need to learn to use our new tools properly without rushing them along. I agree, you are so right that cheating on the post-op diet by caving in to cravings can lead to continued cravings and more cheating later on, not to mention possible complications and safety concerns.

I think there is another relevant point here: the need to build good habits. The pre-op and post-op diets last long enough for us to build new, healthy habits, and get out of the habits that got us to need surgery in the first place. It takes a few weeks to build new habits. If we cheat on the diet early and often enough, we will never have that chance to break the habit of having cravings and giving into them.

Thanks for this perspective on why it is so important to be good post-op!

Thank you for the great article. I like to think of my new stomach like a precious gift. a golden egg.