Reaching and maintaining a satisfactory weight depends on a continuing lifelong effort to use the gastric bypass experience properly and to maintain a completely revised and healthy lifestyle with respect to food and exercise. Conscious and deliberate revised and reduced food intake is aided by a decreased desire for food and a heightened feeling of satiety. It will be easier to eat no more than three meals a day and no snacks or high calorie drinks between meals. A new exercise program will require structured aerobic activity daily for 45 minutes to an hour.

All of the changes in eating and exercise reflect your healthy new lifestyle. While the surgery builds a new, smaller stomach, it is really your lifelong effort that makes the stomach (and weight loss) really work. The surgical team participates in preoperative, intra-operative and post-operative care. We are here to support you. The ultimate success of the operation depends on you.

The IU Surgical Weight Management Center at Wishard wants each person to be absolutely convinced that lifelong changes in lifestyle, eating and exercise habits are necessary and realistic. Realizing commitment to follow-up is imperative. We are asking for a commitment to never return to unhealthy eating patterns or a sedentary lifestyle. In asking you to make your health paramount from now on, we are asking you to make a commitment to yourself.

Having your surgery is just the beginning of the process of becoming your new self. As you heal, it is very important that you establish a different pattern of living in freedom from the tyranny of dieting and the constant nagging of hunger. Recognize that you have made a decision to change your life, and plan to use the new tool that your gastric bypass provides to control your weight and become the slender, healthier person you have wished to be. You must always be careful of your weight and continually observe your behavior and choices. As you approach your weight goals, it is important to weigh yourself often and to be continually conscious of your weight fluctuations in relationship to your eating. You must choose to eat healthily and to avoid irregular eating patterns, especially snacking between meals and eating sweets.