Remember This If You Feel That You're 'Failing' After WLS

We’re guessing that if you’re reading this it’s because you’ve had weight loss surgery and maybe have plateaued or started to struggle with your weight again.

Maybe you vowed that you’d never ever go back to where you were ever again – but now you’re finding that your weight loss has slowed right down, or that you’re even starting to go back up on the scales again. Perhaps you’re seeing old habits such as emotional eating creep back in and the surgery isn’t quite stopping you as it first did. If this is happening, then you’re probably feeling frustrated, or worried, or even downright scared that you’re heading back to where you were before your surgery. Perhaps you’re feeling like a failure or that you’ve let everyone down – your surgeon, your family, your friends, others who have supported you, yourself...

So today we want to share one very, very important principle with you, a principle that, when you truly take it on board, will help to take away that worry or fear or those feelings of failure. This principle is one that you must constantly remind yourself of, and it’s this: 

The past does not equal the future.

Even though you might have experienced a struggle with your weight for a number of years, or even your entire life, and you now feel that you’re struggling again, even after your surgery, that doesn’t mean that your future has to look like your past – unless you allow it to. 

To use a simple analogy, if your past equalled the future, then when you’re driving your car, your front windscreen would be of no use to you at all - you would simply drive your car with your eyes glued to the rearview mirrors. But driving this way, looking only behind you, is a guaranteed way to crash your car.

When you drive your car, you might check your rearview mirror from time to time, but in order to get to your desired destination or your goal, you stay focused on the road in front of you, don’t you? That’s the best way to live your life too... It’s healthy and important to occasionally acknowledge your past – i.e. to check your rearview mirrors from time to time and take account of what you learned and what's useful information to assist you – and you must stay focused on the road in front of you, to get to the destination you want. 

There are so many great examples of how the past doesn't have to equal the future, and one of our favourites is Oprah Winfrey's. If Oprah had focused purely on how she was a poverty-stricken, abused girl and she had let that define her life and who she believed she was, then she never would have become who she is today, and had the impact that she has had on countless lives.

So, remember, the past does not equal the future – unless we allow it to. 

We’ve all faced difficult circumstances, made mistakes, bad decisions and poor choices in the past. We’re all human, and that generally how humans learn, and how we get better at something (remember we all learned to talk when we were young by talking gobbledygook, trying sounds out and getting things mixed up!).

The most important thing to remember though is that we don’t have to be defined by our past. We can choose to take the lessons from those circumstances, mistakes, challenges and bad decisions... and create a new future, starting with this moment, right now. 

In fact, whether you are doing it consciously or not, everything you're doing, right now, is creating your future anyway! The most accurate snapshot of your potential future is not your past but the present moment. 

So, with every new moment comes a new present, a Fresh Start. It's so important therefore to take advantage of this moment. Your future depends on it.

Your body and health right now largely reflects the decisions that you've made in the past. So the body and health you'll have in the future will be largely determined by the decisions that you make RIGHT NOW in the present moment... and who makes those decisions? You.

With that in mind, here's something you can do right now to take advantage of this moment in an empowering way:

Think about one or two simple things that you can do right now to start you heading back towards the results that you want. Perhaps it's as simple as going for that walk that you've been meaning to do, or clearing the temptations out of your cupboards, or having a drink of water, or planning to head to bed early tonight, or booking yourself in for some coaching, counselling or support.

Anything and everything you do, in every moment of now, that supports and nurtures you is something that your future self will thank you for!