Expert Advice
Keeping your eye on the prize
by Sue Levy Walker, MSW
For both the pre- and post-bariatric patient, as a way to reach that bottom number, it is oftentimes a slow and steady process of engaging in conscious eating, meal planning, preparation, and choice. For many of us, this includes good days and bad days; what one would call a walk, not a sprint, to that finish line that is our final goal. For each of us, our goals are as different as the life circumstances that impact our eating day to day.
I often hear patients complain that real-life temptation — the pleasure of food, the mass marketing to our senses and the ease and access to those things that satisfy our taste buds — are all challenges that pull on us each day. The idea of “focus” and of “conscious and deliberate eating” sounds easy enough, but it is also easy for real life to come creeping in.
Oftentimes it is simply our day to day routine that pulls on our familiar habits and desires for certain tastes, smells, textures and large portions on our plates and it tempts us. Temptation can be a lunch with a friend, a backyard barbeque, a buffet at a function or really anything that creates a “rush” and a subsequent struggle, which moves us from “mindful eating” to a feeling of “What the heck … I will re-focus tomorrow.”
Behavior change, and the work that goes into restructuring both our thought process and behavior in order to create new habits, is what can help both the pre- and post-op bariatric patient to gain control in times when they would ordinarily feel out of control. These cognitive and behavioral changes require deliberate work in order for the new behavior to become what feels like a reflex; an instinctual place where one can find freedom through what has been practiced.
As you have all heard, and it is the central truth for the bariatric patient, the procedure is only a tool and cannot work without the mental preparedness of what needs to change within us both behaviorally and cognitively.
Short term counseling is often the best route to gain the tools needed for behavior change. This process usually starts with gaining a solid understanding of what food means to you, your individual relationship with food, and the role food has had and continues to have in your life.
The work then moves to identifying skills, thoughts and behaviors that can derail our impulses and desires around eating and move our behavior to a place that maximizes our chances of maintaining focus and ultimately achieving success … i.e. keeping your eye on the prize.
I will end with saying that support systems both formal and informal are instrumental in helping to keep each one of us focused and better guarded against the temptations that life throws our way. The staff at the Weight Loss Surgery Clinic at BIDMC remains a support for all of you as you move along in your journey. We feel that for some, counseling can be a helpful option in addition to online support, support from family, trainers, nutritionists and other medical professionals.
I invite all of you to become a part of our post-op support group series, which offers many opportunities for patients to learn from both staff and one another. You can find the schedule on our website (look for the "Events" section) and also in the clinic. Finally, I am always available as a resource for anyone who is interested in making a community connection to a therapist as a regular and consistent support person from the cognitive-behavioral perspective.
Sue Levy Walker is the Bariatric Social Worker in the Weight Loss Surgery Center at BIDMC. She can be contacted through the center at 617-667-2845.
Above content provided by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. For advice about your medical care, consult your doctor.
Posted October 2011
