New Life After The Weight-Loss Surgery
KFYR-TV, ND, 5th November 2008
People all over the world tend to get fatter. On the other hand however, there is a strong social need for a healthy lifestyle in order to look good.
More and more people turn to weight-loss surgery. Researches show that ten times more people go under the knife now than ten years ago.
Mike Klostreich works in a barber shop. Greeting clients and cutting hair are possible for Mike and do not hurt now. In the past, however, when he weighted 443 pounds, even very simple every day things caused many problems.
“Literally, take 200-pound sacks of potatoes, put them on your shoulders. That`s what I was carrying.” Mike says.
Mike underwent gastric bypass surgery and got his life back. He can go out, garden, even ride a bike for the first time in 15 years. Now he’s determined not to gain unnecessary weight again. After the surgery, he started exercising and changed his diet.
Mike realizes that his stomach is much smaller after the surgery and he can’t eat that much as he used to. As he says, he used to eat constantly. “You can constantly what they call graze and that`s eat all day long,” he says. “You get done eating, eat some more, about an hour later, eat some more, so you can consume the two to three thousand calories a day or three to four without thinking about it, just by constantly eating.”
A weight-loss surgeon, Michael Schmit, warns about this eating pattern. “People really need to change essentially their whole lifestyle because if you don`t what will happen, what we`ve found over and over again is that you end up gaining the weight back,” he says.
Mike Klostreich considers his present life as a second chance. He attends a monthly support group for gastric bypass patients. It helps him and the other patients to understand why food becomes emotionally important, how to keep trim and how to adapt to a new lifestyle with exercising and healthy diet.
