Originally Posted by Meaghan

Carol,

I noticed you are in Irvine, I'm in Long Beach myself, and was wondering if you knew of any support groups closer than San Diego. I would love to attend some - the place I'm having my WLS only has one once per month and I'd like to attend something more often I think. Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks

Originally Posted by Suzanne-photog4fun

From BSC International newsletter:

Success Habit™ #4 - Fluid Intake

Lesson #2 - The Dangers of Carbonation

This is the Success Habit™ that seems to stir people’s deepest emotions. Many weight loss surgery patients see a Diet Coke™, or Diet Pepsi ™, or a Diet {insert your favorite flavor here] as their last and only “acceptable sweet” that’s generally considered to be calorically and socially acceptable. Try to take away this last right and privilege from them and you’ve got a fight on your hands! We’re not interested in fighting, or even arguing, so let’s be completely clear about this; we can’t offer you a hard scientific explanation, or scientific proof that drinking carbonated beverages will hurt your weight loss or weight maintenance efforts. But, if you are really interested in doing your best to be absolutely sure you can successfully lose your excess weight and then keep it off, you’ll carefully consider the evidence.

Our Success Habits™ study showed that the most successful patients who reach and maintain their goal weight do not drink carbonated beverages. Additionally, our continuing experience has been that most former patients who have re-gained significant weight, and have returned to the support center to take our Back On Track class, have been drinking carbonated beverages. These two long-term observations tell us that choosing to drink carbonated beverages can be detrimental to your long-term success.

Three reasons to avoid carbonated beverages:

1. Distention of the stomach pouch and anastamosis

When a cold, carbonated beverage is consumed, it warms and releases carbon dioxide gas that was dissolved in the liquid. This gas can be trapped in your stomach pouch, causing it to distend and needlessly stretch your pouch. While it’s true these gasses are not permanently trapped in your stomach (since they can be released through burping) any unnecessary, uncontrolled, distension of your stomach pouch places you at greater level of risk that you’ll stretch your pouch to the point where you will compromise the effectiveness of the “tool” you’ve worked so hard to obtain.

If stretching your stomach pouch is not enough to concern you, consider what happens to your anastamosis (the new stomach outlet) when entrapped gas stretches your pouch. This undue pressure also causes stretching of the anastamosis. It is believed that an enlarged anastamosis is a greater problem than an enlarged stomach is for weight loss surgery patients. The size of the pouch outlet is more critical to the patient’s ability to achieve satiety than the actual size of the stomach pouch. If the anastamosis is too large, food passes through the pouch too easily and will begin to fill and stretch the small intestine, in effect creating a larger holding chamber in the small intestine thereby allowing you to eat a much higher quantity of food before you feel full and your brain receives the signal to stop eating. The combination of a stretched pouch and an enlarged anastamosis are disastrous to your weight loss and/or weight maintenance efforts. Is the momentary pleasure derived from a diet drink worth the risk? Only you can decide.

2. Caloric Intake

Many carbonated beverages are high in calories, low in nutritional value and contain simple sugars. Not only do they add additional calories with low nutritional value and little benefit in achieving satiety, but they are absorbed quickly into the blood stream, causing a rapid rise in blood sugar, elevated insulin levels, and increased hunger.

3. Caffeine

Many carbonated beverages contain caffeine, an appetite stimulant, which is detrimental to initial weight loss and long-term weight control.