[Article] 10 years after obesity surgery : how did life turn out?

I saw this article/study in my social media today, and found the title interesting so I went to have a look, and thought it might be worth a share here! Full disclaimer, I haven't personally had bariatric surgery - but the article still resonated with me.

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For those who don't care to read the entire thing, a sort of TL;DR:

Researches from Lund and Uppsala universities (Sweden) followed up on 18 people who had had bariatric surgery 10 years ago to find out how their lives were after. The main findings revealed two main themes:

• sustained effects after surgery, incorporating subthemes of better health, brighter futures, and better eating and weight regulation,
• continuing struggles, including difficulties with physical activity, finding support, helping their children with overweight, and self-criticism. Many positive changes were sustained, but continuing personal struggles were similar to those presurgery. "

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“Follow-up of these patients is often insufficient and must improve”, says Kajsa Järvholm, researcher in psychology at Lund University.

“The patients should be called back to their primary healthcare centre once a year but this is seldom the case. The patients are instead expected to remember to contact their healthcare provider themselves. When they did get in touch, they often found that knowledge about the surgery was poor.”

Link to Lund University's website, which includes both a summary of the findings as well as the link to the proper article: https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/10-years-after-obesity-surgery-how-did-life-turn-out

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I personally found it interesting that the patients' views reflect my own although I never had the surgery done - I lost majority of the weight I've lost so far (around 20kg/44lbs) mainly through CICO, which did help me with better eating, but after a slide back to old habits over the winter I've had to face the fact that my other issues, especially regarding the mental block with physical activity and my self-criticism were still there.

So for me this read as a validation that I need to pay attention to also the mental side of weight-loss to really make a difference. Sure I can lose the weight without that, but the other issues will persist.

The article also provided nice reference point (and some more validation, although I already got all that from your lovely comments) for the other post I've made here regarding the fact that I cannot really see the change in myself although objectively I know I've lost weight. In the words of one of the participants quoted in the study, "mentally I’m still a hundred kilos, I’m still like a hundred and forty kilos all over again" - and it's something I need to work on.

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For any further discussion, I would maybe like to know how you guys have addressed these issues - how did you keep up the motivation to exercise, how did you get out of the all-or-nothing thinking patterns, or any other "side" issues affecting your weight loss journey?

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