Intragastric balloon: 5 tips to lose weight

The treatment for weight loss with the aid of the intragastric balloon is still little known by the Brazilian. It is controversial among patients and medical society, although it has existed for almost 30 years, to be done in most countries registered by the World Health Organization (WHO) and approved as a safe method by regulatory agencies such as ANVISA (Sanitary Surveillance Agency) The intragastric balloon has many advantages, such as an endoscopic, ambulatory, high-dose, fast-acting, reversible, safe, temporary, non-mutilating method that can be repeated or aborted at any time.

Treatment has a goal of losing about 20% of the person's body weight, as this has been the average Brazilian loss with this device. Patients often exceed 30% of the loss. That said, I now bring to you what should be done to increase the chances of success and substantial weight loss using the balloon.

1. Find a specialized team to help you

Implant placement and balloon explant are relatively simple endoscopic procedures. If it is an endoscopic method, it should then be done by an endoscopist physician, with titration in this area. Although the doctor is endoscopist, it is important to find out if it has an action in the treatment of obesity and has a multidisciplinary team (other professionals, such as nutritionist and psychologist) to support you in this treatment. Just putting a balloon in the stomach is not enough to treat a disease as serious as obesity. This professional should leave at your disposal your personal contact for free access whenever you need it, since it is an extended treatment from 6 months to 1 year.

2. Follow up with a nutritionist who has experience with the

balloon. Perhaps, after implanting the balloon, this is your most important decision. What will interfere with the increase in satiety and the effect of the obstruction caused by the balloon is the appropriate diet. Unfortunately it is not any nutritionist who has this experience. Yes, any dietitian understands prescribing diets that help to lose weight, but in the case of the balloon there are other variables that need to be controlled, such as:

Food re-education, which must be caused by the presence of the balloon

• for the presence of the balloon, either in the quantity or in the quality of what you will eat being with an obstruction of more than 90% of the light of the stomach. For example, eating lettuce to lose weight is good, but not when you put the balloon
• Prescription of a diet that respects the previous items, but that also maintains an adequate nutritional balance, without loss of vitamins or trace elements important for our health. Weight loss can not bring any malnutrition
• Diet that promotes weight loss by respecting all previous items. Only a nutritionist with this practice can help you get a more potent, calmer treatment without too many symptoms.
• Being with the balloon and not eating according to what this technique asks can be a disaster. Sometimes this may condemn the whole treatment, not only the weight loss but also the permanence of the balloon in the stomach.

3. Count on the help of a psychologist

The behavioral factor is extremely underestimated in obesity. It is very common that an emotional or behavioral factor is very related to weight gain. Diseases such as anxiety, depression, nocturnal eating, compulsive pinching, chemical dependence on sugars or carbohydrates, binge eating, among others, may be related to the cause of your obesity. If uncorrected, it will be scoring factors after you have slimmed down with the balloon. The psychologist has special techniques to break the triggers of compulsion, to correct eating disorders, to help with anxiety, to eat without hunger. They help to organize time, provoke motivation, change habits, replace behavioral patterns, among others. We have already heard the expression "fat head", because then, who corrects this is him. This professional can be very important for a definitive change in your life.

4. Do regular and moderate physical activity

Activities are not so much an issue in loss, but especially in maintaining loss. You may not want to do them when you remove the balloon. The correct thing is to replace the fat mass lost by a lean mass (muscle), which is a highly consumer tissue, increasing your metabolism, increasing your basal caloric expenditure (the one your body spends to function, even when it is still or sleeping), and making it much harder for you to regain weight after you have lost weight.

It is obvious that the activities also increase the caloric expenditure, helping to lose weight, as well as giving a much better esthetic appearance for those who lose weight by doing them. However, their intent in treatment is especially to keep what is lost. This activity should be done regularly and with moderate intensity. It does not count that walk you do to work every day. You have to wear sneakers, shorts and a T-shirt and go on the attack.

My suggestion is always to do this in a supervised way, with a personal trainer, to avoid activities that cause even more injuries, which is common when overweight. At first, for a sedentary and overweight person, it can be very uncomfortable to do them, but with time and progressive weight loss, you will gain a taste for the thing and soon you will be adept at this practice. Believe that. I do not recommend doing them in the first month of ballooning because the diet is very restricted and does not give caloric input to your practice, but from the second month you should start them.

5. Avoid balloon saboteurs

There are two things that greatly sabotage balloon treatment. Not giving them up can be a cause of failure. If you are not willing to change them, we suggest you rethink the decision to deploy the balloon. They are:

Ingestion of sugars or anything that turns blood sugar: Sugars do not respect the balloon, nor bariatric, gastroplasty or any other method. They carry the caloric intake you are needing and balance the deficit that the smaller intake the balloon is causing. So you balance the account and stop losing weight. Even in small amounts, they begin to sabotage the treatment. If it were just that ... Sugars also have the power to accelerate the aging of the balloon, favoring premature rupture of it, although this is very rare

• Ingestion of certain types of liquids: We are not just talking about sparkling water, here are the soft drinks and beers, these are still sweet. Gaseous liquids promote very rapid adaptation of the balloon in the stomach by decreasing its effect prematurely. This will cause you to quickly lose the highest satiety, main and best balloon effect. In addition, the gases will not allow food stasis to occur on the balloon because of its obstructive effect, making it difficult to perceive its effect.
• Well, several studies show, and our experience also, that if the balloon treatment candidate obeys these five requirements exposed, have more than 80% chance of losing at least 20% of the initial weight. See that it is a very proactive treatment, that is, it depends a lot on the balloon holder. If he is interested and willing to perform these items exposed, not only will he lose weight but will make a total transformation in his lifestyle. There will be a time when this tool, called a balloon, will become a nuisance to you, because you have already changed in such a way that it is no longer necessary.

Finally, the candidate for any weight loss treatment should be have notion that you are struggling against an incurable disease, such as obesity, which has only control. It is a chronic, progressive and fatal disease. High relapse power, that is, weight regain. It is multifactorial, that is, several factors add up to its appearance and progression. Correcting one or only a part of them will certainly not keep the person lean for long. We have to be aware that it is not the weight we lose in treatment, but the life we ​​gain.

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