Welcome Program - Day 5

With Amber Kay

Set Yourself Up For Success

Yesterday we talked all about how to make physical activity work for you. In today’s video Amber is going to look at the most overlooked part of every program – how to succeed. Although everyone loses weight initially after weight loss surgery, it’s not uncommon to plateau at around the 2-year mark, or re-gain weight. Achieving great results after surgery is not always easy to do but many do succeed – thousands of patients have lost weight, got into great physical health and are maintaining their fantastic results over time.

In today’s lesson, we’ll share with you the difference between those who make it, and those who don’t. 

What’s your strategy for success?

The journey after weight loss surgery is certainly not always easy – sometimes it can be really tough. We’ve included an exercise that will help you get clear on the support and strategies that are around you that you can tap into when times are challenging. 

You can download the resource here.

Coaching and Support

One thing that we really want to stress is that it’s essential not to do this alone. Having someone you can turn to — someone who understands what you are going through and who can help simplify and strategise — is perhaps the most important thing you can do for yourself. 

We're here to help you and we’d love to help you; that’s what our coaching and support program is here for. When you are cleared to participate on our post-surgery program (usually around 2-3 months after your surgery), you will also gain access to our private online forum where you can connect with other people who have had weight loss surgery. This is a wonderful source of support.

But who you get the help from is less important than simply getting some help in the first place. It could be a friend, a co-worker, a trainer at the gym — they can help you.

What’s the most important thing? Your willingness to put your ego aside, make things simple and ask for help. That, in our experience, is what separates those who make it from those who don’t. 

We'd like to wish you a smooth recovery from your surgery and enjoy the next chapter of your life as you move towards great health!

 

You can read the transcript for this video below:

Welcome Program Day 5 - Transcript

Hi and welcome to the 5th and final day of our welcome program! Well done for making it this far - it shows how committed you are to creating real change in your life and that’s really going to help you in the long-run! You can be really proud of yourself!

Now obviously no-one makes the decision to have WLS without wanting to reduce their weight and improve their health, wellbeing, confidence and other areas of their life. 

Despite these good intentions however some people can get in their own way and I’ve spoken about some of the ways that some can sabotage their progress in the previous videos.

It isn’t always easy to achieve great results after weight loss surgery but many do succeed - many of our clients have significantly reduced their weight, achieved great physical health and are keeping their results going over the long term. 

So what do those who succeed after WLS do that those who struggle don’t? 

Well, here at Fresh Start we centre our program around the 3 strategies that will truly make the difference and turn those good intentions into reality. They’re easy to remember – you simply have to ACT. This stands for Action, Community and Toolbox.

So A is for ACTION

Results are all about supporting your surgery with action.

Your surgery alone is not going to be enough to get you to your ideal weight and health – it’s the starting point, the launch pad, it’s a tool that you can choose to work with… or against. 

You must back it up however with action that targets your nutrition and eating habits, with your movement and physical activity, with your rest and stress management and most importantly with shifting your mindset to be more supportive of the results that you want. 

When it comes to taking action,  there’s a key principle I want to really emphasise here - it’s about progress not perfection. I’ll say that again - it’s about progress not perfection. 

A lot of people mistakenly expect  their weight to reduce every day or week, by similar amounts until they get to their goal weight and then it’s about keeping it there. Even when people aren’t aware that they expect this, on some level they become frustrated or stressed or scared when they aren’t getting those consistent and constant drops on the scale. Then, when their weight loss slows down or goes up a bit, maybe even just day to day fluctuations - they start to really panic. It’s the same with their habits - they think that they need to be perfect with their habits and then when they go back to an old unresourceful habit for a day or a week they suddenly feel that they’re completely off track and they’ve sabotaged everything.

I want to really stress that progress is never a perfectly straight line from where you start to your goal. It’s completely normal for weight loss, and change to happen at varying  speeds, for there to be plateaus at various points and for your weight to  go up sometimes, whether that’s due to your lifestyle, your hormones, your food and drink intake or simply because that’s what scale weight does over hours and days and weeks. 

It’s also completely normal to mess up and make choices you later regret sometimes. What matters is that you just keep taking action and focus on progress rather than perfection. Overall, what is your trajectory over time? Overall, are you going in the direction you want? Overall, are you making positive changes? 

And if not, well that brings me to another aspect of this piece, because another key principle about taking action is that it’s really important to notice what’s working and what isn’t working - and to look for the lessons. We believe that there is no failure, there is only feedback. What do I mean by this? Well,  if something isn’t working or if you ‘messup’ or ‘fall off the wagon’ of creating the lifestyle you want, or have one or more set-backs - rather than seeing this as some kind of ‘failure’  or even worse that you are a ‘failure’, 

I want you to just to see this simply as ‘feedback’. If you ate the ‘wrong food’ then rather than being a sign that you have ‘no willpower and are going to fail’, it simply means that you need to change something - perhaps you need to clear away temptations from your cupboards, or set aside some more time for food prep, or practice a more resourceful way to reduce or address stress that doesn’t involve food. You can do this and I want you to start being kinder to yourself. If you constantly take action, look for the lesson when it doesn't quite go to plan and continue taking action - rather than expecting perfection - then you will be really setting yourself up with mindset strategies that work to support you and keep you taking those key steps towards the weight loss and wellbeing goals that you’re aiming for!

C is for COMMUNITY

As well as taking action, it’s so, so important to get support on this journey.

Research shows that people who have WLS and who have access to and who use support networks get better results over the long term than those who don’t and it also helps with their mental adjustment 

It’s critical to have people on your team who support you, who will encourage you to start new healthy habits and maintain them, who believe in you even on those days when perhaps you don’t believe in yourself, and maybe also understand what you’re going through because they’ve been through it too. 

You don’t need to do this alone and we’re here to support you. We’re on your team.

At Fresh Start we’re very proud of our growing private support community where we want you to feel safe in a judgment-free environment, where everyone wants everyone else to succeed. We consistently get feedback that our community  far exceeds other WLS support forums in terms of its levels of professionalism, support, and access to useful resources.

So please ask us and the Fresh Start community for help and support when you need it. That’s what we’re here for and we’d be honoured to help when you’re facing challenges, need a lift in motivation or simply some advice on what to do next. 

You’ve also got access to the Fresh Start team when you need us, whether it’s to ask a question, access a resource, have some 1:1 coaching or something else. We’re only a text, email, message or phone call away.

Lastly, T is for TOOLBOX

It’s so important that you have the right ‘tools’ in your toolbox to create the results that you want. In the past, you maybe didn’t have the tools, or you didn’t know which ones to use and when, or perhaps you didn’t want to use the tools you knew existed because it all seemed too hard or too overwhelming.

These tools can be physical like equipment such as good training shoes, or snack boxes that help you keep track of your calories, or mental like knowing how to stay focused or how to boost your self-esteem, they may be nutritional, like the principle I shared with you in video 3, or related to physical activity like the concepts I talked about in video 4. 

One of the most important tools is coaching. The people that are most likely to succeed are the ones who have asked for and found help to make sure that their mindset is working for them, and towards their weight and health goals. 

Coaching is really important because it will help you to get clear on your goals, build momentum and motivation, overcome hurdles, stay on track, or get back on track if necessary, and get past any unhealthy mental or physical habits and challenges. 

A great coach will establish what you need to know and do, and filter out all of the other additional information that isn’t going to be useful for you, so you can start to add in the necessary changes and actions into your life step-by-step, rather than feeling like you have to do it all at once! Which of course only leads to overwhelm and poor results. A great coach can also assist you to make rapid mindset changes for yourself, in a safe and supportive way, so that you can get on with creating the life and health you truly desire and deserve much more quickly.

At Fresh Start we know that those patients who get coaching support, and have the necessary tools in their toolbox are more likely to succeed. It’s as simple as that, which is why we have a number of coaching options available for you, whether you want health coaching to help you stay on track, online programs to help you address emotional eating, transformational coaching to help you to reset and reprogram your inner beliefs, and more! You can find out all about these via the ‘Coaching’ tab on the freshstart webpage.

So, remembering to ACT is all you need to do after your surgery. And you don’t need to wait to get that ball rolling, which is why for your final resource today, I’ve put together a really simple exercise to get you thinking about the support and strategies that can help you on this journey.

On behalf of the Fresh Start Team, I’d like to wish you all the best with the next chapter of your life as you move towards great post-surgery health! At around 2-3 months post-surgery we’ll be back in contact to start you on our post-surgery program. 

Until then - stay focused on taking action, to focus on feedback not failure and ask for help when you need it! That’s what we’re here for!