After time and consideration, you moved forward with your sleeve procedure or another metabolic surgical procedure such as gastric bypass or duodenal switch. The procedure itself went well, and you want to do everything you can to use this tool to its advantage in your weight-loss journey. So… what now? Here at Nevada Surgical, we work closely with our patients to ensure success, starting with these two tips immediately after weight-loss surgery.
First Things First
Having a plan and a support team means that you are going to hit the ground running and be phenomenally successful in achieving a healthier long-term weight. Initially, the procedure will involve some time off and a period of recuperation. For most people, this does not have to be excessively long, usually in the neighborhood of two weeks. Most of the procedures involve an overnight facility stay, so the first few days at home may be the ones in which there is still post-surgical discomfort, and a slow progress from a clear liquid diet to smoothies and proteins shakes. But each day, you should plan to get up and walk even if it is just around the house. Five or six small walks a day is a good start, and each day, begin venturing out to longer distances, down to the driveway mailbox, around the block, and then longer, increasing at your own pace.
A Structured Nutrition Plan & Support System
Most programs recommend a diet plan that starts with clear liquids that advance to a thicker consistency, and eventually to soft foods and back to regular meals. The science supports reduced carbohydrates as the best weight maintenance approach, so this means less sweets and sugary beverages along with less chips, crackers, bread, bagels, tortillas, muffins, and crusts.
We are social creatures. Having a support group helps one stay motivated, having a walking partner helps one continue exercising, and having a dog helps one stay active. Wearing a fitness tracker keeps us encouraged to stay on a goal of 10,000 or 12,000 or 15,000 steps per day.
Our program seeks buy-in from everyone on a 90-day post-operative diet plan that will result in some significant early impressive results and pounds lost. After that, a maintenance diet plan is just a healthy diet that emphasizes green and purple vegetables alongside proteins and tries to reduce carbohydrates – simple as that. Most people feel more energetic and inspired to be active and engaged in life.
Life after weight-loss surgery should be a virtuous cycle of losing weight, feeling better as a result, becoming more active, improving health, losing more weight… and so on. With modern metabolic surgery having little in the way of side effects or nutritional concerns, life is what you make of it. Investing more time into the program, into the exercise and activity regimen, and into understanding what food choices will ensure long term success will pay tremendous dividends. Last year, sleeve gastrectomy was safer than an appendectomy in the U.S., yet the long-term quality-of-life benefits are incalculable.
Ready to learn more? Contact the Nevada Surgical team in northern Nevada today, and let’s get all your questions answered.
