Getting Back on Track - ThinnerTimes

Suzanne-photog4fun · 10-17-2004, 04:03 PM

Copied from the BSCI Newsletter:

Do You Long for Those WLS "Honeymoon" Days? - by Ken Miller

http://www.bariatricsupportcenter.com

This article is especially for all of you WLS patients who never quite reached your desired weight-loss goal, or maybe you’ve regained some excess weight after reaching your initial goal. At BSCI we refer to people in your situation as “Back-On-Trackers.”

Back-On-Trackers have a very different set of needs compared to first year patients. First year patients are excited and on top of the world because they’ve just been through the “honeymoon phase” of their weight-loss and new worlds of opportunity have been opened up to them. They’re almost giddy when talking about the comparisons of what they can do now with all the things they couldn’t do prior to surgery.

If you’re a Back-On-Tracker, it’s very likely that you long for those “honeymoon” days and you wonder if there is any hope for you to ever be able to reach your goal weight after you’ve left the “honeymoon phase” far behind. Yes, you can do it. Absolutely! But it’s more difficult to accomplish when you’re not recovering from the effects of the trauma your body was put through when a WLS procedure was done to it.

I believe that most of the weight-loss miracles that WLS patients enjoy during their "honeymoon phase" are directly caused by the trauma their intestinal tract suffers during their WLS operation and these effects typically last a little bit longer than the amount of time it takes for those injuries to heal.

You may clearly remember how you felt when you reached the end of your honeymoon phase: As your pouch healed it relaxed and allowed you to eat a larger volume of food. And the desire to eat returned and was much stronger than it was while your system was healing. Since that point in time, you’ve had at least three things going against you that make it more difficult for you to lose weight than it was for you right after surgery:

Your enjoyment of eating and your appetite has returned; this typically occurs at about 6-8 months post-op.
After the first year post-op, you can eat much more volume at a single sitting (and therefore many more calories) than a new patient can eat.
As you lose weight, it takes progressively less energy to accomplish your daily tasks so you don’t burn as many calories doing them. You’ve lost a lot of weight so your body doesn’t have to expend as much energy just to keep your cells alive and you don’t have to do as much work to move yourself around as you did when you were fresh out of surgery.

After your WL surgery, your body naturally went into a metabolic state that’s commonly referred to as “ketosis” and as long as it remained in that metabolic state the pounds just fell off and it seemed like very little effort was required on your part to lose that weight. Ketosis is a chemical condition where your body produces excess ketones through the process of burning its fat stores. While you were in ketosis, your body burned stored fat to obtain its immediate energy needs rather than constantly demanding that you eat more carbohydrates. When you were in ketosis, many of your body’s physical cravings were less demanding than they were when you were in a "normal" metabolic state.

You may remember that strange metallic taste in your mouth that affected how foods tasted to you. Some foods that you liked before surgery didn’t taste good to you after surgery, and vise versa. That metallic taste is one of the main indicators that you’re in a state of ketosis. The taste isn’t pleasant, but the weight-loss effects certainly are!

Several months after surgery, your new gastric system healed and your desire to eat returned. Shortly thereafter, your memories and desires for sweets and other refined carbohydrates returned with a vengeance . . . and you thought, “Just this once won’t hurt,” so you tasted that “forbidden food” . . . just once . . . and the refined carb cravings became stronger . . . and stronger . . . and you found that you couldn’t eat them “just once”, but you ate them more and more often, and then . . . you fell out of that blessed state of ketosis. Your honeymoon was over and those relatively easy days of weight-loss never returned . . . and now you long for them and wish they could be yours “just once more,” because you know you’d use them more wisely if you could have them back again.

Well, there’s good news and bad news . . . first, the good news . . .

It IS possible to put your body back into a state of ketosis, similar to the state it was in after you first had surgery, and you can do it without having to go through surgery again, but it requires strict adherence to a very low carbohydrate diet to get it kick-started into that state. Then, it requires constant diligence to keep your body in the state of ketosis. It only takes one or two minor instances of "cheating" to drop out of ketosis and back into a "normal" metabolic state where it‘s much harder to lose weight.

. . . and the bad news is . . . it will never be as easy to shed those pounds as it was when your gastric system was healing after surgery. BUT, you can choose whether you want to give up, do it the hard way, or you can do it the easier way. That is the point of this discussion . . . achieving a state of ketosis, and maintaining it is definitely the easiest way to lose weight.

So, how do you do it? We’ll get to that in a minute, but first, there are a couple of principles you need to understand before you jump right in and get started.

There is a fine balance between providing your body with enough food and water so that it doesn’t go into starvation mode (where it will protect its fat stores rather than burning them) and providing it with so many calories that it doesn't need to burn fat stores to accomplish the tasks you require of it each day. You must feed your body enough water, protein, and complex carbohydrates (like non-starchy vegetables) so it senses there is an abundant volume of food available. Then it will realize that it doesn't have to squirrel away every last little calorie you eat and it will feel free to burn your fat stores to obtain its daily energy requirements. It will feel safe to burn fat because it doesn’t have to worry about endangering your long-term survival.

Your body must receive enough protein to maintain good health and enough low calorie vegetables to provide it with the bulk it needs to feel full when you eat. The combination of feeling full (satiety), with plenty of protein and water, and no simple carbohydrates or sugars will produce a state of ketosis, where your body is using up your fat stores and yet it isn't in starvation mode because it’s satisfied with the volume of food it receives each day.

That's why it’s vitally important that you eat at least 3 meals per day and that you eat enough to feel full at each of those meals. Also, it’s very important that you consume fewer calories each day than you burn THAT day. When you achieve this balanced state, you’ll lose weight, feel comfortably full, and have all the energy you need to accomplish your daily tasks.

OK, those are the general principles you need to understand before you attempt to kick-start your body into ketosis. It’s very important that you understand these principles or you are likely to find yourself yo-yoing in and out of ketosis and finally giving up because you don’t understand all of the factors that must be in place so you can stay in ketosis.

Janean G. Hall, BSCI Support Group Lesson Development Director has researched and prepared an Online Learning Lesson that describes “How to Kick-Start Your Weight Loss – A five day program to shift your body to a ketosis based metabolism”. Her lesson contains all of the principles you can use to get yourself into ketosis and recipes you can use to get there if you don’t want to create your own menu. Following this new program will assure that your body will quickly switch from a carbohydrate based metabolism to a fat-based (ketosis) metabolism.

Click here to go to the Online Learning lesson: How to Kick Start Your Weight-Loss - A five day program to shift your body to a ketosis based metabolism.

If you want to share your thoughts or read comments by others you can do it in the 5 Day Kick Start Program thread in the WLS Events, Programs, and Lessons Forum at www.bariatricsupportcenter.com.

watergirl · 10-17-2004, 04:42 PM

Thank you so much for this post! I've copied it and put into my blue binder for future reference. I really appreciate that you've taken the time to pass this along.

Butterfly · 10-21-2004, 01:59 AM

Thank you Suzanne! It's very informative and something that everyone should know...especially the more recent post-ops. Thanks again.

Sandie O · 06-13-2005, 01:19 PM

Hi,

I'm having trouble accessing this site. It's for members only. Is there another location I can view this article.

Thanks.

LizardQueen · 06-13-2005, 05:57 PM

Thanks for the info! I wrote it down for future reference. Now I know why my taste has changed. I still don't really taste a metallic taste but I have been using a ton of salt and splenda and hot sauce. It is more like I don't have as much taste as I did before. Anyway, great info!

Amber

sryamy · 06-14-2005, 07:36 AM

Thank you for sharing, thats great info.

sryamy · 06-15-2005, 10:13 AM

Any way you could go and copy and paste the "Five day program to shift your body to a ketoisi based metabolism" article? I am not a full paying member so I can't view it.

Thanks