After Gastric Bypass: Some Tough Love on Grieving Food

New gastric bypass patients say they miss food, they grieve the loss of food, they yearn for their old foods. Some describe it like the death of a beloved friend. The foods patients grieve for are sweets and baked goods, pasta with heavy sauces, and salty snacks.

Mourning for lost foods is a natural step in the re-birth process after weight loss surgery (WLS).

However, I submit this phase can pass quickly if we consciously remind ourselves that these very foods we have loved and lost were not our friends. These foods were killing us. These foods caused us to be morbidly obese. Prior to surgery a morbidly obese person is dying a slow death by over consumption and malnutrition. Poor nutrition and excess weight taxed the cellular structure of the body causing illness, pain and suffering. Weight loss surgery was a last-ditch effort to save a life and restore quality to living.

Say goodbye and good riddance to those poisonous foods. They are not part of your life any more and isn’t that a blessing? Isn’t that exactly what you wanted when you elected to save your life with weight loss surgery?

Losing these foods is not deprivation – it is liberation from the damage, pain and suffering they were causing your body. Celebrate their loss, don’t mourn it. I guarantee when you start looking at it this way the phase of grief and mourning will be brief because your mind will not allow you to simultaneously grieve and celebrate.

Kaye Bailey © 2005 – All Rights Reserved

An award winning journalist and former newspaper editor Kaye Bailey brings expertise in writing and personal experience with gastric bypass surgery to EzineArticles.com. Having spent most of her life overweight Ms. Bailey is strongly empathetic toward the obese, particularly overweight children. This compassion compelled her to found the website http://www.livingafterwls.com, a fast-growing resource of information, understanding and support for the weight loss surgery community.

The LivingAfterWLS.com site is complimented with daily blog. The blog, http://livingafterwls.blogspot.com offers readers the chance to comment or leave feedback about fresh content added daily. This site contains success stories and recipes, general information and WLS inspired topics. Complementing the site is a monthly newsletter titled “You Have Arrived” available exclusively to people who subscribe through the website or the blog.

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