How to focus on long-term weight loss and stop stressing about your scale.
After undergoing duodenal switch in Salt Lake City, your weight loss may be rapid and dramatic. In the first three months after surgery, duodenal switch patients can expect to lose between 40 and 90 pounds. This may lead some people to develop an unhealthy obsession with their scales after DS surgery. Though it is important to keep track of your progress, it’s more important to lose weight in the long-term, and the daily ups and downs of your scale can be a huge mental drain that will have you nervous over nothing (especially when weight loss slows at 6 to 9 months post-op). Here are some tips that can help you minimize your stress and put everything into perspective.
Ditch the Scale
Sure, it’s great to see daily improvements when you step on the scale each morning, but what about when that arrow ticks up a pound or two? It’s easy to freak out and think your treatment isn’t working, but a slight increase in your weight one day doesn’t always indicate a problem. Your weight will fluctuate day by day while steadily decreasing over time. Many factors can cause a slight upswing in daily weight without negatively impacting your weight loss overall.
So why put yourself through the anxiety of looking at how much you weigh each day? Stick to weighing yourself just once per week or try to get rid of the scale altogether. You’ll need to check up with your doctor regularly following surgery to monitor your progress anyway, so content yourself to just getting monthly weight updates from your doctor visits. Seeing how much weight you’ve lost month to month will give you a much better idea of how your weight loss is proceeding and help you put your progress in perspective.
Don’t worry about pounds—worry about percentage lost
Following duodenal switch, you may be part of a weight loss support group in which you will inevitably be comparing your levels of weight loss to that of others. Take care—this can be a very discouraging practice. Your body will lose weight at a rate that is appropriate to its own needs and capabilities. Though someone else may be dropping pounds more quickly than you are, pay more attention to what percentage of overall excess weight those pounds amount to.
If you’ve lost 50 pounds after 6 months while a woman at your support group has lost 100, you seem to be doing worse by comparison. But what if you only have 100 pounds of excess weight to lose while she needs to drop 250? After 6 months, you’re 50 percent of the way to your weight loss goal, but she’s only 40 percent of the way there.
Even with a proven weight loss procedure like duodenal switch, individual results will always vary. Your weight loss surgeon is best equipped to put your whole weight loss journey in perspective, so ask what reasonable weight loss goals you can set for each period of your progress. If you stop worrying about how much weight you’re losing every day, every hour, every minute, you’ll avoid stressing yourself out over nothing. It won’t happen overnight, but if you relax and set logical goals, you’ll see that weight drop off in no time.