Pre-Op Lifestyle Habits to Prepare for Bariatric Surgery

After Bariatric Surgery

two salad bowls with lettuce, onions, and seeds on wooden plank

The degree to which you must change your life after bariatric surgery can be daunting for even the most motivated patients. You have to change your life in many ways, from exercise to diet and everything in between. You also have a mental component of losing weight that can be similarly challenging. While starting all these new habits is necessary after surgery, waiting until after your procedure only delays your progress. Instead, changing some of your habits before surgery can jumpstart your weight loss and turbocharge your results.

Why We Often Fail With Lifestyle Change

Lifestyle change is difficult. If it weren’t, all of us would achieve everything we put our minds to. However, modern-day society has made us want and need to be good at everything. The same holds for weight loss, and we often believe that taking extreme measures will work. When we embark on improving our diets and exercise habits, it doesn’t just mean dropping calories and going to the gym. This way of thinking is too broad – we must be more specific. But there are dozens of possible improvements, and we will fail if we try to take them on all at once. So, let’s go through a few milestones on the diet and exercise front. Be mindful that habits take weeks to form, so ensure you have followed each new regimen for at least two to three weeks before moving on to the next.

Diet and Exercise Habits

You may be used to consuming decidedly unhealthy foods, whether because of convenience or wholesome foods being hard to come by. Importantly, though, highly processed foods usually contain lots of added sugar, sodium, or saturated fat, which can wreak havoc on your diet and force you to gain a significant amount of weight – or make weight loss efforts that much harder. It would be easy to say, stop eating it, but we know plenty of other factors make doing so difficult. Instead, let’s talk about how to get closer to our goals one step at a time.

Dietary Changes You Can Make Right Away

First and foremost, maintain proper nutrition. Many of us have nutritional deficiencies, including, most commonly, Vitamin D. Optimizing your nutrition levels before surgery can be a great way to improve how you feel so that you are in top shape after surgery. On that same note, vitamins will be some of your best friends after surgery and keep you healthy despite significantly reduced caloric intake. Visit your family doctor and get a blood test to check for any levels that may be off.
Hydration is also vital both before and after surgery. Hydrating correctly can improve your mood and optimize your physical health. In addition, having good hydration habits before surgery will help you do the same after. Dehydration is the primary reason for hospital readmission after bariatric surgery, so we want our patients to get used to drinking 64 to 80 ounces of water daily as soon as possible.
A great next option here is to incorporate more lean proteins. These can include pork, fish, chicken, or turkey. Before starting the carbs at any meal, try getting a few ounces of this lean meat with a protein-packed side like quinoa or soybeans. Now, you will have the appropriate amount of protein to fill your stomach with foods that reduce your hunger and minimize blood sugar spikes. For convenience, you can find and make a few lean meat recipes in advance.
Next, leave a portion of each meal for another day when you’re on a roll. Of course, we suggest doing so only after you’ve calculated your caloric and nutritional intake and are good to go. You may opt for a healthy snack if you are at a deficit.

Moving Onto Exercise

Combining strength training with cardio is critical to harnessing the goodness of both types of exercise. Doing only one or the other does not confer the full range of benefits. Let’s start with cardio, as this will be what you work on immediately after surgery. Just like in the recovery room after surgery, you can gently push yourself to start walking and take it further daily. Walking helps you burn extra calories and will improve your mood, helping you lose weight for surgery. Do this within the bounds of your abilities, of course, and if you feel any pain, pull back and take it easy.
With clearance from your medical team, now’s a great time to start strength training, using weights or your body weight to create resistance and build muscle. This is critically important to your long-term health, maintaining muscle mass as you lose weight and burning extra calories even at rest (both before and after surgery). It can be hard to get started, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you opt for the gym, a significant first step is to observe. Go to the gym every day, and if you don’t feel comfortable, sit on the sidelines and take it all in. Eventually, you will want to jump in and start your exercises.

A word of caution, however. You may want to push yourself harder as you get more comfortable with the gym. This is a good thing, up to a point. You don’t want to injure yourself by overdoing it. Make sure you give your muscles plenty of rest between visits and slowly increase the resistance.

The bottom line is no matter how you pursue your diet and exercise regimen, slowly, bringing in new habits is preferable to trying to fix everything simultaneously. Your changes will be more sustainable and fruitful over the long term. We look forward to walking the path to improved health through bariatric surgery and encourage you to use us as a resource now and in the future.