New Identity

Getting Comfortable with the New You
With Amber Kay

In today’s video, Amber looks at how to create a new supportive identity for yourself after your surgery so that your mindset keeps you on track for success!

Weight loss surgery is stomach surgery not brain surgery and although your physical body changes, your mind may not keep up. This is a very common struggle that affects many people who have had weight loss surgery and yet being able to accept your new image is critical for long-term success after your surgery. If you don’t address this struggle then you're much more likely to self-sabotage your progress and return to destructive emotional eating patterns.

You can read the transcript for this video below:

Transcript: Post-Surgery Program - Week 7: Mindset (New Identity)

Do you sometimes feel that even though you’ve had your WLS, the identity that you have of yourself in your mind, your self-image,  is holding you back from getting the full results? 

And how would you like to change your self-image so that it supports you on this journey rather than limits you? 

Well that’s what today’s video is all about. 

It’s Amber here from the Fresh Start Program and first of all I’d like to thank you for taking the time to watch this video - I know you probably lead a busy life and you’ve put aside some time to do this and I want to make sure that you get great value out of this time. So thank you for joining me.

So today I’m going to take you through a number of simple yet powerful strategies that you can use to change your self-image so that it conspires for your success and helps you get the results that you want and deserve after WLS. 

When people sign up for weight loss surgery, they’re generally focused on how it’s going to change their weight or improve their health and they don’t always consider all the other ways that it’s going to impact their lives after their surgery. Many of the changes experienced are very positive, however one theme that we commonly come across when talking to patients is the unanticipated struggle that people have in relation to their new post-surgical identity. Although lots of patients experience improved self-esteem and self-confidence, for some there’s a definite “identity lag” when their physical body changes faster than their own self-image of themselves and this can make them feel very uncomfortable, even anxious. 

You may see yourself still as a “large person” even though your body is shrinking. You may have trouble dealing with comments or attention from others. You may also find that being overweight gave you a feeling of protection (and may have in fact been partly why you created that physical barrier for yourself on a conscious or unconscious level) and with the ever increasing removal of that physical barrier you are left feeling very vulnerable. 

For some the anticipated changes are too much and may lead to self-sabotage, such as emotional eating patterns creeping back into their life and a return to their pre-surgical weight over time.

It doesn’t have to be this way however and today I want to show you how to avoid this happening and how to start to get comfortable with the “new you” so that you can make the most out of your weight loss surgery. 

We’re going to explore how your identity is formed and how you can consciously help to define your new post-surgical identity – so that your new identity begins to match up with the life that you want. This will help you to get the best long-term results after your surgery and most importantly to feel better about the changes that are taking place. 

Understanding the Body Blueprint

Before we look at how to get comfortable with the new you and how to start to define your new post-surgical identity in a way that supports you, we need to have an understanding of where your body image comes from. 

Each of us has a body image or what we call a “body blueprint” that’s embedded in our unconscious mind and this is simply your preset program or way of being in relation to your body. It’s your mental image of who you think you are and how you feel, talk and act in relation to your physical body. It’s your sense of your body in physical space and your level of connectedness to your body. It’s also how you sense other people view your body. 

So where does this body blueprint come from? Well, it’s actually developed over many, many years. Your body blueprint is also changing – it can vary for example depending on what mood you’re in or on what you’re doing. 

You’ve created your own body blueprint primarily with the information or programming that you received in the past and especially as a child. You received this programming from people like your parents, your siblings, your friends, your teachers, the media and even your culture. 

We are literally taught how to act in relation to our health in many different ways and it often comes from a combination of modeling, verbal programming and specific defining moments.

Modeling:

Firstly, let’s look at modeling - Every specific family has their own habits when it comes to health – I was brought up in a family where we would only ever eat at the dinner table with the whole family and we would have long conversations and eat our food slowly. My husband on the other hand was brought up in a family where they all raced to eat their food as quickly as possible and they were often sat in front of a tv at dinner time so they weren’t focused on the process of eating at all.

Many children today are taught to link food to emotions such as comfort – when children are crying parents might give them a treat to calm them down. Those children then grow up with conditioning that when you feel upset you should have a treat to feel better – this is emotional eating and this is probably one of our biggest problems today. 

Likewise, if your parents turn to food when they’re stressed, chances are that you will too. If your parents go for a walk or play a musical instrument to relieve their stress then there are greater chances that you’ll do this or another non-food-related activity instead.

Verbal programming 

Next let’s look at verbal programming – so what did you hear about food, health and even your body growing up?

Perhaps it was “you must finish everything on your plate – do you realise that there are kids starving in Africa?”

Or maybe “If you eat all of your dinner then you’ll get an ice cream”

Perhaps it was something like “My daughter is just like me. She has a slow metabolism and is big boned – she will never be thin”

There are three main periods of mental development in humans, with the years 0-7 being the ‘blueprint period’ where we develop our way of seeing the world and ourselves. The messages you received, and chose on an unconscious level to accept as ‘true’, either consciously or unconsciously in this period will go a long way towards determining your attitudes and beliefs about health and your body – positive, empowered and self-loving, or negative, damaging and limited.

Defining Moments

Now let’s talk about the third main way that our body blueprint is formed – and that’s through defining moments.  A defining moment is a specific, important event that happened in your past, usually in your childhood. The only thing that makes the event 'important' is that it feels important to you. What other people think about its significance is not important. From this moment, you choose to create a specific life-long belief about your identity when it comes to your body. 

For example, a child may have dropped an important catch playing a game of cricket and their teammates or coach, or parent may have been critical towards them. From this moment that child may have chosen to believe that he or she was uncoordinated and this belief may have stayed with them into adulthood. The important thing to note is that the child may have chosen to interpret this incident very differently. The child for example may have chosen to ignore this comment and then it wouldn’t have been a defining moment at all. The child may also have used this incident to choose an entirely different belief - for example, the child may have chosen to practice catching in his or her spare time and then developed a belief that he or she was the best catcher around and very coordinated. 

Empowering or disempowering beliefs impact your results every day whether you know it or not.

The Need For a Supportive Body Blueprint 

Now weight loss surgery is a powerful tool that will really limit the amount of food that you can eat and it can also reduce your appetite. What it doesn’t do however is change your mindset – it doesn’t alter your body blueprint and it’s up to you to do that. 

So what’s your Body Blueprint set for? 

Are you still programmed for it to be a struggle to keep your weight down or is your mindset that it will be easy? Are you conditioned to love being active in enjoyable ways or do you still see physical activity as something that you’re not made for? 

And what is your identity? Anything that starts with “I am…” is an identity statement – I am kind, I am lazy, I am beautiful, I am a smoker, I am clever, I am fat, I am stupid, I am the biggest sister, I am the funny brother. All of these are identity statements. They’re examples of statements about who ‘I am’, not about things I do. And so I will fight to keep hold of them. Because without my identity, who am I? And without excess weight, who are you? 

Over the long-term, it’s your body blueprint that’s going to strongly influence the body that you end up with after your surgery. To get the best long term results after your surgery, you’re going to need to change your body blueprint – how you see yourself -  to support you because the chances are that yours is currently set up for being overweight. 

The only way to permanently change your results is to change the way you see yourself. Now this may happen naturally as a result of your surgery and as you adjust to your new shape, but you may need to give it a helping hand. Without this inner mind game any good results you get may only be temporary – that’s can be why some people who have had weight loss surgery end up putting some or all of their excess weight back on again. They haven’t addressed their inner mind. 

Awareness and Understanding

The first stage of this change is awareness and understanding about your blueprint – so that you realise what your habits and beliefs are and where they have come from. Once you’ve done this you can then move on to the second stage which is to disassociate from this old blueprint – to recognise that this way of thinking is no longer you and that you can choose to let it go if it no longer supports who you want to be and then to recondition yourself and to choose a new way of doing that. 

So the first step is to start being more aware of your beliefs, habits and behaviours and also to start understanding where they came from. Let’s do a simple exercise to help you with this. 


I’d like you to close your eyes for a minute and to take a deep breath. Now I’d like you to think about what is the most significant habit or belief that has stopped you from achieving the body and health that you want.  Perhaps its eating emotionally, to either make yourself feel better, or even make yourself feel worse and confirm your negative self-perception, perhaps its relying on alcohol to escape from stress, perhaps it’s a belief that you are big boned or have a slow metabolism, perhaps it goes deeper than that and it’s a belief that you don’t deserve to be at an ideal weight. Whatever it is, I want you to just become aware of that belief or habit.

Now keeping your eyes closed, I want you to think about this destructive habit or belief and I want you to consider what this has cost you in the past and right now? …..    What are you missing out on?....... How has this affected your health and energy levels?......How has this changed or damaged your body? How has this impacted on your self esteem and confidence? How has this impacted upon your relationships or on you socially? …..

Now, keeping your eyes closed, I want you to think about this habit or belief and to consider where it came from….. Do you unwind in the evening with alcohol because that’s what your parents did? Do you eat emotionally because that’s how your mum dealt with stress and you’ve copied her? Do you believe that you’re not meant to be at your ideal weight because someone told you that you just don’t have the genes for it? Start to understand where your habit or belief came from….. Remember, this isn’t about blame. The person who said those words or did those actions was doing the very best they could with the resources they had available at the time. As were you when you unconsciously accepted those behaviours as yours, or accepted those words as truth.

Now keeping your eyes closed, can you see that this way of being is only what you’ve learned growing up and that it isn’t you? Can you see that you have a choice in the present moment to be different? Can you see that what you modeled or learned about health was someone else’s way and that you can choose your own way. 

You can, can’t you?

Creating a New Body Blueprint

The great thing about the inner mind game is that you can change it at any time, if you’re willing to make the change. There are many ways to start to shift your inner blueprint but I want to share with you one of the easiest and most powerful ways to start or keep changing your body blueprint. That’s through the use of positive self-talk or what we call affirmations. This is where you state out loud what you want – this sends a strong message to your unconscious mind of your intention. Your subconscious mind then starts to act in accordance with where you want to go.  

So I want you to place your hand on your heart and say out loud “What I modeled around health was their way. I choose my way.”  So say it with me “what I modeled around health was their way. I choose my way”. 

And then I want you to come up with some more empowering ways to think about your health, your body and who you are. 

For example, you could say to yourself “I am getting healthier and healthier every day” 

or

“Every day, I am moving closer and closer towards my ideal health”

or 

 “I admire and model healthy people”

or

“I believe health is important and that it makes life richer and more enjoyable”

 As we discussed before, identity statements, statements that start with “I am” are particularly powerful. For example – you could say to yourself “I am strong, focused and calm” or “I am a healthy eater”.

So I want you to come up with 3 or 4 affirmations that you can say to yourself.

Write these down now. So write down 3 or 4 empowering ways to think about your health, your body and who you are. 

Now that you have your list, ideally you want to say these to yourself daily for a minute or two. It’s particularly effective if you say it just before going to sleep and your unconscious mind will be processing it while you sleep.

Another great way to support these affirmations is through the use of photos and to have a clear visual image of the way that you want to be. Again this will send a strong message to your unconscious mind about what you are creating. In practical terms, to do this you can place an image up of how you want to look and feel somewhere where you will see it every day. For example you could put a picture of you when you were at your ideal body weight up on the fridge door. Or a picture of someone from a magazine with the health and figure you want, doing an activity you want to do, or wearing something you’d like, with your head stuck on top. 

This will act as a reminder of what you are working towards when you are making decisions that impact your health and weight, especially if you have it in the kitchen! Another tool is to find a role model. Who would you like to be? Do you have a friend who is at their ideal weight and seems to have it sorted in terms of their health and body? Is there someone in the media who is of a similar age to you that you could see yourself being like? 

Now this is a good time to speak to you about the importance of having an empowering picture to move towards. What we are advocating is to create a healthy body image to aim for. We don’t want you to create unrealistic expectations. The media surrounds us with images of the so-called perfect body with flawless models. You may not have the genetics or the time to have a body like this. It’s also worth remembering that many of these photos are airbrushed and extremely posed. There are no perfect bodies. What we choose to embrace and see as beautiful or sexy or healthy is up to us. 

It's about being at a healthy ideal weight for you - where you eat because you are hungry, to provide nutrition for your body, not because you’re feeling a negative emotion, and where you do the appropriate amount of exercise for your health and circumstances. We want you to be comfortable with your body and who you are.  

 Finally I want to talk about what happens when you do reach your ideal weight. 

Many people make the understandable mistake of thinking that their happiness is connected to their weight, and that once their weight is reduced and their health is improved they will feel happy and life will be better in all areas. We’ve seen time and time again the positive impact that weight loss surgery has on confidence, self-esteem and happiness in clients, so it’s very likely that your surgery has had a very positive impact on some if not all aspects of your life in some way. 

Remember though at the same time that you don’t need to wait until you achieve your ideal weight in order to experience happiness, nor is happiness unavailable to you if you don’t achieve your ideal weight. Happiness is about working towards your ideal in all areas of your life – your relationships, your career, your home, your finances, your community, your hobbies etc.  Happiness is an emotion you can choose to feel in any moment you choose, simply by choosing to focus on happy memories, or on who you love and who loves you, or by simply smiling, as that sends signals to your brain that cause happiness endorphins! 

You are on a journey that is not linear, there are going to be obstacles, successes, challenges and triumphs. Yes, keep your focus on your desired outcome, and experience and acknowledge the journey also – how you’re growing, what you’re learning, what’s going well and what needs some work. Don’t put your opportunities for happiness on hold until you reach your goal, and don’t expect reaching your goal to transform everything in your life – that is up to you and what is within your control!

We’ve covered a lot today, and in many ways this is the tip of the mindset iceberg, so make sure you connect with us to get help to create and define your new life.