BODY & MIND!

Changing your life!

When I work with patients who are getting bariatric weight loss surgery, I may have one or 6 consults with them prior to surgery; the surgery that will change their lives.

This allows me to help the patient visualize what will come to them as a Life-Changing Experience!

It has always been said that if you can visualize it, you can make it happen.

With the bariatric patient, the change usually occurs the other way around, and that is where the challenge is.

So much is involved with learning how that 2-hour operation will affect a person’s world and how they live in it.

This is what we call the Lifestyle Change! Unfortunately, this phrase is bantered about as if it is something everyone knows how to do but as the patient states: “I know what I am supposed to do, but I don’t do it.”

Really?

I find that the bariatric patient needs to adjust how they think about food and eating, but they also have to fill up that time they used to think about food with other thoughts and activities.

As we get to work, I find that setting up goals and making specific behavior changes to reach those goals help the patient connect to what a real “Lifestyle Change” means to them.

Not looking for food when you get emotional and learning to be proactive with your hunger and being in charge.

I work at preparing the bariatric patient for what is to come by setting up goals and specific projects for them to reach those goals.

My goal for each and every patient is to make sure they know how to deal with their new anatomy and to help them adjust their brain to allow for successful weight loss.

Bariatric weight loss surgery is a tool, and there is work to be done for the patient to make a success of it. I feel the more the patient is aware of the steps they have to take to get to their Life-Changing weight loss, the better it is for their life long success.

Susan