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Whatever else you have on your mind,  
Wherever else you think you're going, Stop for a moment and
 look where you are:
 

You Have
Arrived!

 

"In every queen there's a touch of floozie."
~ E.B. White

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Chocolate Dipped Strawberries  tips
Stay on Track Tips
Enjoy the Holidays without the Guilt!

I am pleased to tell you that the mainstream media is wrong when they say every one of us will gain five to seven pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It simply doesn't have to be that way. Over the years I've learned a few things about working the WLS tool in harmony with the act and pleasure of celebrating the season with food, family and friends. Take a look and see if you can work these tips into your holidays and prove the weight gain wardens wrong.

Share you tips HERE in the Neighborhood

Protein First is our WLS Rule #1 and our best friend during the holiday season. When we keep our protein intake above 80grams a day, spread throughout the day, we fuel our metabolism into high burn; we have increased energy and fewer cravings. Gastric bypass patients avoid dumping.

Protein First: Why it works and how to get enough

Get your protein from real food as much as possible in order to experience the process of eating and digestion. Protein shakes and protein bars are fine in a pinch, but they should be no more than 1/3 of your daily protein intake.

For a quick protein fix try tuna with hard cooked eggs; chopped lean chicken or meat tossed with a small amount of salad greens and dressed in low-fat yogurt or cottage cheese, chilled ready-to-eat shrimp, vegetables with humus dip, or a measured portion of dry roasted nuts.

Enjoy your favorite holiday classic appetizer, starchy side dish or dessert only after eating three to four bites of lean clean protein. In so doing we decrease the amount of treat we are able to consume thus maximizing our pouch space. The few bites we are able to comfortably eat are that much more delicious. We avoid glycemic overload and in the long run the dreaded holiday weight gain. This is a powerful way to work the bariatric pouch so that it works for us.

Coping:
When guilt gets us down

Have dessert within 15 minutes of your meal. Waiting any longer results in a larger serving and the satiation factor of your healthy high-protein meal is lost. Do you remember back in our morbidly obese days when we enjoyed our hearty meal, took a nap and enjoyed a second hearty meal starring dessert(s)? That's a tradition we don't need to bring back because we all know what comes with it.

Be mindful of your liquid restricitons. While it is often necessary to sip during meals where conversation is enjoyed pay attention to avoid turning sips into gulps. Gulps with food will wash the food through your pouch before any of the nutrients are absorbed. You will be able to eat more and will not reach that comfortable satisfied feeling that comes with a properly fed pouch. Learn more: Liquid Restrictions

Chose your indulgences carefully and proceed to enjoy them wisely. Give yourself a pat on the back when you do well. Be rational about events when you stray from your eating plan. Forgive yourself, learn from the event, and consider your next meal an Opportunity for Improvement.

Remember, nobody ever gained 5-7 pounds in 6 weeks from enjoying a few wisely selected holiday traditions.


Share you tips HERE in the Neighborhood



"How can I control my life when I cannot control my hair?" 
 --Author unknown but I bet it was a woman with WLS!
Beautiful Hair Bundle
"You've heard the stories about hair loss associated with weight loss surgery. Maybe dramatic hair loss is your story. It was mine. Six months out of surgery I was several dress sizes smaller and going bald. You too? That was 12 years ago and I was on my own to figure out how to fix it. Now I'm pleased to say I have healthy lustrous hair and these are the products that are working for me. I offer them to you with confidence, and the assurance you do not need to spend 12 years trying to get your hair back. Please take a look."

--Kaye Bailey, founder LivingAfterWLS & 12 years post RNY Gastric Bypass.

 

The health content in the LivingAfterWLS website is intended to inform, not prescribe, and is not meant to be a substitute for the advice and care of a qualified health-care professional.

 

Holiday Traditions: 
Are you a Flattery-Floozie or a

Yeah-But-Betty?    

December 1,  2011

LivingAfterWLS, LLC - All Rights Reserved 

Greetings! 

Hello and Welcome!

 

Thank you for joining me as we turn the page on a new month and begin the Feasting Season in celebration of the Holidays. Of course, the holidays are about more than feasting (and perhaps over-feasting), but for us traveling the weight loss surgery path the feasting can seem like a cruel punishment. In today's LivingAfterWLS Weekly Digest we offer some outstanding tips (beyond the mundane "park far away from the mall to get extra walking accomplished)to empower you to work that surgery tool like never before.  

We also take a look at some party personalities, I call them Flattery-Floozie and Yeah-But-Betty. Maybe you will identify with one or the other. It's all in fun but I think there are some interesting insights into those of us who tend to treat ourselves a bit unkindly. This is the season of good will and gratitude. In our ongoing recovery and management of obesity maybe it's time we direct some of that good will and gratitude to within. I will work on this if you will. 

I hope you enjoy this digest. We have lots of great content prepared for your inbox this month and exciting new things to come in 2012. Thanks for joining us!  Let the Holidays begin!

CHEERS!
Kaye

PS - be sure to stop in at the Neighborhood, our online community we call the Safe Haven Circle of Friends. We have a whole new look, but the same great support you have come to count on in this WLS experience. See you there!

 

   

Newsletters If you enjoyed this newsletter you may be interested in previous issues. Visit our online archive for a large selection of our previously published You Have Arrived newsletters, including Cooking with Kaye.
Newsletter Archive  
 
 
personalityAre you a Flattery-Floozie or a Yeah-But-Betty?
Holiday Barbie Partyby Kaye Bailey (c) 2011
Please join the conversation in the Neighborhood.

After attending several WLS events recently I started noticing a trend among our weight loss surgery sisters that may seem at first superficial but once examined reveals much about the emotional journey from obesity to healthy weight. Unlike other diseases, obesity can be observed and diagnosed by the lay person: men, women, and children alike. Who among us doesn't cringe at the memory of an innocent child drawing attention to the "Fat Lady"? While this lay-diagnosis is most often uncomfortable and probably unwanted, wearing our disease in our plus-size britches also provides opportunity for positive feedback when we are losing weight and becoming healthier. Feedback can be complimentary, "You look wonderful" or incredible, "You have lost a TON of weight" or nosey, "Did you get the surgery?" or underhanded "Too bad you lost all that weight only to lose your hair and find all those wrinkles!" It's no wonder we evolve coping personalities to emotionally manage this feedback. As obese people we had coping strategies as well. Think of the forever funny fat lady who is really crying on the inside while laughing on the outside. She makes herself the target of her own fat jokes just to beat others to the punch and avoid the hurt.

I ask you to please forgive the gender bias in this article: I am I'm addressing the female persuasion.  Guys are different about man-to-man compliments. As my own big brother Jeff who is also weight loss surgery patient told me, "It goes like this: "Dude! You've lost weight." "Yeah." "Cool!" And there it ends. Check out this thread in the Neighborhood:  Fun Friday September 30, 2011 

With the ladies I find that two typical personalities emerge, see if you recognize them.

  

Retro Icon OvalFlattery-Floozie cannot get enough of the compliments. In fact, she darn well deserves an Academy Award for her weight loss "After" performance. It matters not the sincerity or authenticity of the compliments tossed her way. After years of watching life from Wallflower Alley she is blooming and she is not going to miss a moment of it. Who can blame her? I recall feeling starved for compliments and attention after suffering the invisibility that comes with being overweight.  I wanted to hear anything different from the feedback I'd heard all my life,"You have such a pretty face, if only you could lose the weight...." Flattery-Floozie loves sharing her weight loss surgery success story and loves the attention. She nurtures a sense of entitlement: it is her due after suffering from years of living in the shadows hidden by her own body.

Flattery-Floozie is likely to suffer a loss of pre-surgery friends who may feel betrayed by her weight loss, or they may accuse her of changing. She simply may not fit in with the group any more. This does not make her a bad person, though her friends and peers may judge her harshly. It is simply the evolution of living, of change, and of growth. Almost every WLS pre-op patient I speak with says, "I won't let the surgery (and weight loss) change me." But find that person a year or two down the road and they have changed significantly. So have their relationships. We are sometimes critical of this change. But I defend it saying perhaps this is the person we always were and now we have the confidence to bloom and thrive without the burden of disease. And speaking of disease, we are not critical of people who change as they travel the journey of other diseases. We empathize and accept them: after all, they are seriously sick and working very hard to recover. Perhaps we can extend that same empathy and kindness to ourselves and others suffering and recovering from obesity.

Retro Icon OvalNext we have Yeah-But-Betty. She is the opposite of Flattery-Floozie. Perhaps the years of feeling unworthy of attention or love or compliments have taken a toll. She feels undeserving and almost embarrassed to be noticed, as if she were granted weight loss by magic without investing her own blood, sweat, and tears. In response to a compliment you will almost always hear Yeah-But-Betty reply, "Yeah, but look at how much weight I'm still carrying on my belly" or "Yeah, but I don't think I can keep it off," or "Yeah, but I had the surgery to lose the weight." You will often find Yeah-But-Betty in an imaginary race with other weight loss surgery patients on the same time table. Like the stat-riddled sports commentator she is ready with numbers, "Yeah, but at 6 months out Better-than-Me-Bonnie was down 100 pounds and here I've only lost 60 pounds."  Yeah-But-Betty is never first to cross the finish line in this race.

Newsletter Archive: Stop the Comparison!
Weight Loss is Not a Competition - Even with Surgical Help

We sense that Yeah-But-Betty feels she will never be good enough or deserving enough or accomplish enough to merit compliments and attention from others. She is loathe to treat herself to a few inwardly uttered positive words of self-praise. While Flattery-Floozie is likely to reinvent herself with a whole new look including wardrobe and hair style, Yeah-But-Betty continues to hide in camouflage clothes too big for her ever shrinking body. In fact, I've met a few Yeah-But-Betty's still wearing their over-sized sweatshirts even after losing the weight of a super model. Nobody will take her to task for letting the weight loss change her. And she will probably keep her pre-surgery circle of friends. Hopefully they are supportive and complimentary of her new-found health by way of bariatric surgery.

I have not observed that one or the other personality is happier than the other. But what I know from my own experience and my work with so many of you is that both Flattery-Floozie and Yeah-But-Betty are terribly insecure. And this insecurity is not resolved with a flashy new outfit or by hiding in that comfy old familiar Winne the Pooh XXXL sweatshirt. I don't necessarily believe that either personality needs to be corrected because this is part of the journey. But what I have learned is that the insecurity and self-doubt should be nurtured with self-kindness and compassion.  One way to do this is invite Appreciation-Annie along for the journey.

"A little Consideration,
a little Thought for Others,
makes all the difference."
~  Winnie the Pooh


Appreciation-Annie reminds us to stop for a moment, look where we are, and take in the moment: take in the experience. She understands that the journey, the experience is what life is all about and goal weight and all those surface milestones really are much adieu about nothing. She is your best friend who never speaks ill of others and always has a kind word to share.

Appreciation-Annie is gracious in accepting compliments. Unlike Flattery-Floozie who flaunts her entitlement or Yeah-But-Betty who minimizes her accomplishments, Appreciation Annie considers a compliment a gift. You can hear her say, "Thank you for saying such a nice thing to me, it means so much to me to hear it coming from you." Like Annie, you would never dismiss a gift offered you by saying, "Yes, I deserve this!" or "Yeah, but, it is not good enough." We know that is bad form and insulting to the presenter of the gift. Accepting compliments is as much about respecting and appreciating the giver as it is about being a deserving and gracious receiver.

This single thing, the mindful act of appreciation, is a powerful builder in mending the frays of insecurity. In appreciating compliments and good health and little moments we begin to realize we are deserving. This is the season of good will and giving. And the greatest kindness we can accomplish begins from within.

Please share your personality observations with us in the Neighborhood; we are in this together and we learn so much from one another. I've posted this article there and look forward to hearing from you.

Link: Flattery-Floozie or Yeah-But-Betty    

 

 
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Sincerely,

Kaye Bailey

LivingAfterWLS, LLC