The dietitian role is an important part of our multidisciplinary approach to weight loss surgery. Here one of our dietitians, Russell Phillips, talks about how preparing your diet both pre and post surgery is vital to the success of maintaining your weight loss.
The Dietitian Role
Video Transcription
At Mercy Bariatrics, I work as a dietitian. I see patients before and after surgery. When I see them before, we talk about what to expect with surgery, what changes are going to happen, how to manage the changes that aren’t unexpected, and then we set them up post-surgery to discuss how things are going, check their bloods, check the volume of their stomach and make sure that they develop healthy eating habits so that long term they can maintain that weight loss.
When I see a patient after surgery, we would discuss with them what they’ve been doing since their last consult, how their weight’s been traveling whether it has kept going down, whether it has plateaued, and sometimes if it’s going up, we figure out why that has happened. We troubleshoot any problems they are having whether it’s with the weight loss or if they’ve been having any problems related to the surgery that they’re not able to manage by themselves.
We have a checklist of things we go through to make sure that they’re keeping up with healthy practices. We really want them to maintain that weight loss long term. So having on-going consultations and follow-up really helps to make sure they maintain the weight loss.
Post-surgery, different patients will have different needs. That can depend on their health status beforehand and also how they responded to the surgery. So some patients would just have to be given a diet to follow, high in protein and healthy foods.
Everyone needs to go on a multivitamins. So we discuss with them what their options are as far as multivitamins are concerned. Some patients do find it hard to get in their protein requirements, and so we recommend protein supplements. And then some patients have specific nutrient needs. And so, we prescribe multivitamins or other vitamins that go along with that.
The difference between what they would have already contributed towards their health and the changes that they’ve made. The costs of the extra supplements really isn’t that significant and the benefits that you can attain from having the multivitamins and having the protein supplements really outweigh the costs that are involved.
And other than a multivitamin, a lot of them are only temporary anyway. All the dietary changes that are made post-surgery are on-going. And you can’t make a change in your health and expect that whatever you do for three months is going to last you and your health long term. Any changes you make have to be sustained for the long term.
So the diets that we advise people follow really are for on-going healthy eating. There are certain changes that have to be made temporarily such as the texture modifications you have to make post-surgery. Patients have to follow a liquid nourishing fluid diet and grade up to textures to normal textures every couple of weeks.
So after surgery, patients aren’t able to tolerate full textured foods immediately. But after a couple of weeks, a couple of months, patients can tolerate any sort of food substance. Sometimes patients might not be able to tolerate all foods. There might a particular food that they have a problem with. Sometimes if it’s a spicy food or certain meat or a bread, but for the most part, patients can tolerate all the foods they ate prior to surgery, just in smaller portions and a better relation to a healthy diet.
So long term, there are no foods that you can’t eat. It’s more about using the surgery as a tool to allow you to make better choices as to what you should eat. There are still always the opportunity to choose foods that are your favorites, that are indulgent foods, that are part of your life and that you enjoy. It’s about fitting the foods that you enjoy, the indulgent choices, in with the big picture of what your diet should look like.
I really enjoy working here at Mercy Bariatrics. We have a really good team that work with follow-up with the patients with other dieticians like myself, an exercise physiologist, other people who work in the gym, we have a team of people working with the support group and the success habits program.
And they are such nice group here, very lovely, and we all care about the patient’s welfare and their success long term. It really does make a big difference to how much weight a person loses and how easy that progression is to that sustained weight loss having that follow-up. And it’s really about working with people who care about the same thing.
What patients tend to find really important with their bariatric surgery is the follow-up they receive. Each time they come in, they might find there are certain troubles that they’re having that they have been concerned about and it’s quite easy for us to address and be on top of it quickly because of such good communication between all of us here. And we’re all experts in each of our fields.
Mercy Bariatrics Perth
For enquiries or to make an appointment, please contact us.
Watch Video 8: The Exercise Physiologist Role
See the full video series.