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Discover a wealth of weight loss surgery-specific hints and tips over on our blog, providing valuable insights and practical advice to support your journey towards a healthier and happier you.
Weight gain after a gastric sleeve or gastric bypass surgery can feel both frightening and frustrating, especially when you have worked so hard to make changes which has resulted in successful weight loss after surgery. Whether it’s just a few kilos or more significant weight regain, it can be hard to make sense of what’s happening, and even harder to know what to do about it.
For many bariatric surgery patients, weight regain isn’t about going back to old habits or doing something ‘wrong’ – and it doesn't automatically mean you have stretched your sleeve or pouch. In fact, to quote Associate Professor Michael Talbot, “If you measure the size of the stomach five years after surgery, it’s the same in those who keep weight off and those who don’t.”
WHAT DOES LEAD TO WEIGHT REGAIN?
It’s often a mix of small habits in your day-to-day eating patterns and routines that allow you to ‘out-eat’ your surgery that gradually add up. But there are simple, realistic changes you can make to halt the upward trend and get back on track, no crash diets, pouch resets or expensive obesity treatment options required.
IS SOME WEIGHT REGAIN NORMAL?
Yes, some degree of weight regain following bariatric surgery is normal and expected, particularly in the years after surgery. It’s part of your body adjusting. It doesn’t mean you have failed or that your surgery hasn’t worked. It’s very normal to see a slight weight ‘correction’ up from your lowest body weight following surgery.
But when weight regain feels like more than a slight correction, or it’s starting to spiral, the most helpful thing you can do is take a step back and look at what may have shifted in your routine since the weight loss phase of your journey.
A FEW THINGS TO CHECK ON
We cover this in more depth in our FREE online workshop, Halt the Weight Regain Train, but here are three of the ‘Common Culprits’ that often show up in the months and years following bariatric surgery that can lead to weight regain:
❶ GRAZING
Listening to patient stories, one of the most common causes of regain following a sleeve gastrectomy or gastric bypass is grazing.
Grazing is different to planned snacking. Grazing is where you stretch your meals or snacks out over longer periods of time, essentially treating your pouch or sleeve like a leaking bucket. This allows you to eat far more than you otherwise would. It can look like:
• nibbling at a bowl of nuts at your computer
• grazing on a bag of crisps in front of the TV
• sipping on a large, full-fat flavoured coffee or smoothie over the morning
• or even stretching your dinner out over an hour
These grazing habits can make it harder to notice true hunger and satiety cues, and they are a slippery slope to regain.
❷ OVER-RESTRICTING
It sounds counterintuitive, but bariatric surgery patients who try to eat as little as possible often end up stuck in a cycle of hunger, fatigue, and rebound eating. When your body isn’t getting enough energy or protein, it will eventually push back, often through cravings, increased hunger, or episodes of binge eating or rebound eating.
Sustainable, long term weight loss needs enough food, not just less of it, to prevent weight regain.
❸ EATING AND DRINKING TOO CLOSE TOGETHER
This one flies under the radar, but it is something we often see contributing to weight regain, or even suboptimal weight loss. Drinking with or within 30 minutes of meals can cause food to move through your pouch or sleeve too quickly. This leaves you hungry again soon after, not allowing your sleeve or pouch to do its job of reducing your hunger and allowing you to feel satisfied on smaller amounts of food. This usually leads to more frequent eating, larger portions, or both, all of which can contribute to gaining weight.
Leaving a 30-minute gap between eating and drinking can make a real difference, so if you are not doing this, it’s a simple change you can start today.
It’s not about doing everything perfectly.
There are many other Common Culprits involved in weight regain, for example, changes in physical activity, emotional eating, unbalanced carbohydrate and protein intakes, or simply being further out from surgery and needing a new structure or an adjustment in portion size and meal balance. The key isn’t to overhaul everything at once, it is to gently shift back toward the habits that support your health and long-term goals, one step at a time.
NOT SURE WHERE TO START
Weight gain after a gastric sleeve or gastric bypass doesn’t mean you have failed, it just means something has shifted and it’s time to refocus. Getting back on track doesn’t need to be extreme or punishing. You just need the right tools, the right support, and a clear place to begin.
And if you are not sure where that place is, we strongly recommend starting with our FREE online workshop, Halt the Weight Regain Train.
In it, we cover:
• The most Common Culprits behind regain following bariatric procedures like gastric sleeve or gastric bypass surgery
• What to focus on first, and how to avoid the extremes
• Practical, realistic strategies that support sustained weight loss following weight loss surgery.
It runs for around an hour, is completely free, and is designed to give you clear actionable steps to get back on track.
PAM | WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY PATIENT
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