What You Should Know about Gastric Sleeve Surgery

dreamstime_xxl_20012081Losing weight is hard! You try to do everything you can to lose weight, and yet those pounds don’t want to be shed. You wonder what to do now; will you ever lose the weight, or will you be doomed to live this unhappily forever? Weight Zen, a weight loss clinic in New York, wants to empower you. We want to tell you about gastric sleeve surgery, so you know your options when it comes to weight loss surgery. If you’re unhappy, we can help you do something about it. If you haven’t considered gastric sleeve surgery, then perhaps you should. We want you to find your inner peace and happiness. To do that, check out the following information on gastric sleeve surgery and see if it’s right for you.

What is A Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

The gastric sleeve surgery, also known as the vertical sleeve gastrectomy, is a weight loss surgery that removes a large portion of your stomach. This surgery may also be the first stop before you get a gastric bypass surgery, or it may be the only surgery you get for weight loss. The gastric sleeve surgeon makes a small stomach “sleeve” (hence the name) using a stapling instrument, and then they remove the rest of your stomach. The point of this procedure is to regulate your food intake to help you lose weight with the decreased size of your new stomach. A VSG surgery, which is what it’s also known as, may take 60 to 90 minutes.

Is A Gastric Sleeve Surgery Right For You?

These surgeries help people who are suffering from obesity and diabetes lose weight. Are you unhappy with your weight? If you are seriously considering this surgery, think about all of the key factors before you contact us for a consultation. Your new stomach will be the size of a banana, so it severely limits the amount of food you are able to eat. Keep in mind that your portions must be smaller, and the various types of food you eat will be different and more healthy as well. This is something you’ll work on with our nutritionist Megan Wolf.  After the surgery when you eat, your small stomach will become full much quicker than before, and you’ll feel full after a small amount of food.

If you want more information and are interested in getting the procedure done, please contact us to see if gastric sleeve surgery is right for you.

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Ask A Gastric Sleeve Surgeon: How Much Weight Will You Lose?

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There was a time, not so long ago, when the weight and shape of your body wasn’t something that could easily be changed. If you had a genetic, hormonal, or addiction-related problem with excessive weight gain 50 or 60 years ago, there was little your doctor could do for you besides advising (and in some cases, forcing) you to go on a calorie restricted diet.

Thankfully, times have changed.

Advances in medical technology have made dealing with obesity something that you and your doctor can tackle together. Procedures like gastric sleeve surgery allow you to skip much of the waiting and wishing for your body to naturally lose weight.

Still, gastric sleeve surgery is still a fairly new procedure. Many of our potential patients want to know how much they can potentially lose before committing to gastric sleeve surgery, so we asked our surgeon to provide his professional opinion. Here’s what he had to say:

“Gastric sleeve surgery is an aggressive solution for obesity that’s growing in popularity. The amount of weight each patient loses after gastric sleeve surgery varies greatly, depending on a number of factors like diet, exercise lifestyle, and willingness to leave old habits behind. Your total weight loss also depends on the size that your gastric sleeve surgeon makes the new sleeve.

In the most ideal circumstances, I’ve seen patients lose an average of 60 percent* of their excess weight.”

We hoped that this has given you some insight into what’s possible with gastric sleeve surgery. Contact Weight Zen in New York City for a consultation today.

*Individual results may vary.

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What You Need To Know About Lap Band

lap-bad-bg-imgYou want to change; that’s what has brought you to us.  Whatever the case may be, you aren’t happy, and you want to get back to that happy version of yourself who looks great, feels great, and is on top of the world. Lucky for you, Weight Zen, a weight loss surgery clinic in New York, wants to help you find peace and happiness inside and out. We specialize in weight loss surgery, one of them being lap band surgery. We want to ensure your happiness and allow you to unleash your true self, so you’re able to reclaim your life. Read about lap band surgery to see if it’s right for you.

What is Lap Band Surgery?

Lap band surgery is a surgery to make your stomach smaller to help you lose weight. Having a gastric band around your stomach helps to limit the amount of food the stomach can hold, which makes you eat less and feel full quicker. The lap band is a silicone adjustable band that is put on the upper part of the stomach during a laparoscopic surgery. This surgery is designed to restrict food intake and to help you get the body you want.weightzen1

Is Lap Band Surgery Right For You?

The most important thing to consider when you want to get weight loss surgery is whether it’s right for you. Are you ready for a lap band surgery? Is there no other way to get the body you want? What you need to consider about this surgery is that the procedure is reversible, and the gastric band can be removed. Most health insurance programs will cover the procedure, but if not Weight Zen has financing options to help you. If you are obese and unhappy, then we recommend a lap band surgery. Talk to our lap band surgeon, Dr. Daniel J. Rosen, and our Nutritionist Megan Wolf to make sure this surgery is right for you.

Contact us to get the body you want.

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Understanding High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol

dreamstime_4464698Weight reduction surgery helps to put you on your path to a healthier lifestyle, but you can still tip into the realm of unhealthy if you don’t follow your doctor’s or nutritionist’s orders. Watching what you put into your body is very important because your blood pressure and cholesterol can dip toward unhealthy. Especially after weight reduction surgery, you should still be watching what you eat. By stepping up and undergoing bariatric surgery, you were ready to change your life around. Don’t take a step backward by letting yourself go again. Understand your body and how eating fatty foods and practicing unhealthy habits can contribute to poor overall health, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Understanding Your Body

Why do you need to think about high blood pressure or cholesterol if you’ve gone through bariatric surgery? No matter what stage of health you are in, you should consider the negative effect of what practicing unhealthy habits can have on your body.

Your Blood Pressure

What does it mean when you have high blood pressure? It means that your heart is working at an above normal level, and due to working harder it leaves your heart and arteries open to injury.

What does your blood pressure do? By keeping your blood pressure normal, you are able to reduce your chances of heart attack and stroke or developing heart and kidney failure. Having normal blood pressure will also provide your body with blood tissue rich in oxygen.

Your Cholesterol

There are two different types of cholesterol. The first kind, the so called “bad” kind, is called LDL and is the kind that leads to heart disease, stroke, and heart attacks. The second kind is HDL, and that’s the so called “good” cholesterol. HDL lowers your chances of heart disease, stroke, and heart attack. So, how are these differentiated? Making healthy decisions toward eating and drinking is what differentiates good from bad cholesterol. For instance, if you have a diet filled with red meat, sugars, and white flour, you’re likely to have higher cholesterol. If you have a diet filled with leafy greens, salmon, and you moderate your drinking, you’re likely to have a healthy cholesterol.

If you have high blood pressure or cholesterol, see a doctor to see how to fix it. If you are interested in bariatric surgery and want to learn more about controlling your weight, contact Weight Zen.

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Three Weight Loss Diets To Try

dreamstime_xxl_7134854To continue the theme of our last few posts, we’ll continue exploring different diets. Previously in our last few posts, we discussed The Mediterranean Diet, Three Diets You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, and Meal Plans For Changing Your Diet After Surgery. Luckily, there is no shortage of diets in our society, so if you didn’t find one for your there are always more to try. The diets discussed in this post are geared specifically toward losing weight, weight control, and are also helpful even after you’ve had bariatric surgery. Weight Zen is a facility for bariatric surgery and weight loss surgery located in New York; if you have any questions, please, don’t hesitate to reach out. After going through weight loss surgery, your bariatric surgeon gave you a list of do’s and don’ts, but what about for the rest of your life? Now, that you’ve changed your life, keep it that way. Take advantage of having your weight under control, and make sure you can continue on this new path of life. Read about three great weight loss diets below.

Three Weight Loss Diets To Try

HMR Program

The HMR program stands for health management resources. The main goal of this diet is to keep off the weight or lose weight by reducing your caloric intake. You reduce your caloric intake by replacing what you would generally eat with more fruits and vegetables. This diet encourages healthy lifestyle changes and physical activity. One of the things that you should take into consideration is that everything you put into your body and the physical activity you do is all on you; it’s personal accountability for how much weight you want to lose. The HMR program encourages meal replacement with lower calorie items. For instance, instead of pancakes and french toast for breakfast, you could try eating low-calorie shakes, nutrition bars, or oatmeal that are HMR approved. By eating healthier and adding more fruits and vegetables, your caloric intake is lower. Combining eating healthy with physical activity means you are going to be able to control and lose weight. Even the smallest physical activity will help you to achieve your weight loss goal.

Volumetrics Diet

Similarly to the HMR program, this diet is also not as well known. The focus for this diet is specifically losing weight, unlike the HMR program that focuses on a better, healthier lifestyle. What you should know about food is that some food has less energy dense than other types of food. By directing your palette toward eating food with less energy, you’re eating less calories without actually eating less. Let’s break it down: by eating low-density food you will lose more weight. Low-density food has less calories but is higher in volume, so you don’t have that never-ending hunger while dieting. Focus your food intake on vegetables and fruits to fill you up and understand this diet is about getting more volume out of what you eat instead of eating more.

dreamstime_xxl_27254680Raw Food Diet

The raw food diet is pretty much what it sounds like. This diet doesn’t just focus on controlling your weight, it also focuses on improving your health and making the environment better. If you want to help the world and your body, this diet is for you. Here’s a tidbit about raw food: it is filled with nutrients and natural enzymes to help your body and assist it in losing weight. This diet has been around for several hundred years, stemming from when a doctor was able to cure jaundice by eating raw apples. Raw food is not cooked, microwaved, genetically engineered, processed, irradiated, or exposed to chemicals. The food you would focus on are fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and herbs all in their natural state. When you follow this diet, you are able to cut down on half of your caloric intake, in comparison to when you follow a cooked diet. However, it’s important to note that this diet is not usually rich in the all-important protein!

If you are looking to get weight loss surgery or want to talk to a bariatric surgeon, contact us today.

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Two Fun Exercise Hacks That Don’t Cost A Penny

dreamstime_xxl_57748543You are going to need to start exercising if you are going to undergo bariatric surgery or if you have already completed it. When you start on your road to weight reduction surgery you need to lose some weight before you can be accepted for the surgery. On the other hand, you also need to start exercising once you have completed your surgery. Going through bariatric surgery is a long process, one that might seem daunting, but you can do it. At Weight Zen, located in New York, we can provide more information about weight control and bariatric surgery. Come check us out and see if bariatric surgery is for you.

Fun Tip One: Competition

A little competition never hurt anyone. In fact, it helps people more than you think. A great way to begin losing weight for your surgery or after your surgery, is by competition with your friends. Go exercise with your friends and see how much better you become day after day. Start off slow with walking around the block with a friend or a group of friends and slowly work up to harder and harder activities. See how you and your friends last against each other and feel great doing it. You don’t have to be alone in your weight loss journey, encourage your friends to get healthy with you. As you become better in shape, you can also begin competing in different challenges such as how many miles you can do in a week or how many pushups you can do at once.

Fun Tip Two: Explore

Wherever you live I’m sure it’s gorgeous and fun. If you live in the country, go out and explore, if you live in the city, go check out a new part of it. No matter where you live, there’s some areas to explore. Check out a historic part of your city or go into the woods and try an easy nature trail. Wherever you go make sure you continuously move and remember to take in the people, view, or the beauty of being in nature. Walking is easy on your body and you can burn a few calories as you experience new things.

Set a goal to start exercising three times a week and see the changes in you. Combined with weight control you’ll feel like a new person.

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Health Problems You Face If You Are Overweight Or Obese

dreamstime_xxl_9388348It’s easy to gain weight. There are so many delicious foods that contribute to weight gain, such as sweets, sugary drinks, and complex carbohydrates. When you only have so much time in a day, it can be difficult to fit in exercise. Losing weight can be very difficult when you don’t have the time to eat correctly or exercise.

Weight Zen is a comprehensive weight loss facility located in New York that offers bariatric surgery and nutritional counseling to help you control your weight. There are many surgeries that will help you get back on track to being healthy again. With our help, you can start taking better care of yourself. You may wish to look into our weight loss surgeries to help you control your weight. Below are a few health issues complicated by being overweight.

Circulatory

Your circulatory system is how your blood and lymph travel through your body. This system includes the heart, lymph, blood, blood vessels, and lymphatic vessels and glands. If you don’t lose weight, you can suffer from blood clots, poor circulation, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart attack. When you gain weight, you put more pressure on your legs and knees as well, so there is swelling in those limbs. You are also more prone to lymph node cancers and peripheral artery disease. Peripheral artery disease is a condition that causes blood vessel reduction to move through the limbs. This means that poor circulation may cause pain in your limbs, specifically your legs. By not taking care of yourself, you may be facing poor circulation and pain in your limbs as well as possible heart problems.

Respiratory

The respiratory system consists of the organs that help your breath. The organs that are involved in the respiratory system are responsible for taking in the oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide. When you are overweight, your respiratory system won’t work as well. You could develop asthma, sleep apnea, pulmonary hypertension, and pulmonary embolism. Sleep apnea is when your breathing stops and starts while you sleep. It’s very dangerous because you stop breathing. Pulmonary hypertension is when you have high blood pressure that affects the arteries in the lungs and the heart. Lastly, pulmonary embolism is when your lungs become blocked due to a blood clot. When you are overweight or obese, your respiratory system doesn’t work as well, and you may face breathing problems.

Psychological

This one might be surprising; what does weight control have to do with psychological issues? If you are overweight or obese, you may be facing many psychological issues, such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Our culture plays a part in triggering low self-esteem and depression for people who are overweight or obese. When you live in a culture that tells you what beautiful is, it’s very hard to ignore it. Unfortunately, there’s a very low emphasis on being healthy in our society. Many people have eating disorders because they want to be beautiful and skinny, so they don’t think of the health repercussions. If you are at an unhealthy weight and think you are depressed or you suffer from anxiety, reach out to someone who can help. Developing eating habits that could be considered a disorder will not fix the problem. Get healthy the right way, by exercising and dieting or by talking to a doctor about weight loss surgery.

dreamstime_xxl_47131645Reproductive

This also might be a surprising health problem you might not think about. For women, being overweight can lead to polycystic ovarian syndrome, infertility, and irregular menstruation. It can also lead to ovarian, endometrial, cervical, and breast cancer. For men, being overweight can lead to prostate cancer, infertility, and erectile dysfunction. You may have read our article on PCOS earlier.  To refresh: Polycystic ovarian cancer or PCOS can cause the hormones to become out of balance and for the body to produce more testosterone than it should. If you are overweight and are trying to conceive, it can be hard to do so if you have PCOS.

If you’re overweight and any of these conditions sound familiar, talk to a doctor or nutritionist about weight loss and weight reduction surgery. Call us today to begin changing your life.

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3 Ways To Increase Your Protein After Gastric Surgery

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Gastric bypass surgery is an effective weight management tool that has helped many people in New York and around the world find a path away from obesity.

It seems like every day there’s a new study that shows just how detrimental excessive weight gain can be for health. For those looking to make a change their lives, people come to Weight Zen for help.

While gastric bypass surgery can go a long way toward helping you to avoid the health risks of excessive weight gain, it’s by no means a silver bullet. The way you take care of yourself after gastric bypass surgery, and how closely you adhere to your follow up plan, will ultimately determine if the procedure was successful or not.

One of the things that many gastric bypass surgery patients worry about the most is how their diet will change after the procedure. It’s essential that you eat a high protein, moderate carbohydrate diet that is rich in fish, lean meat, and fruit and vegetables, but what does this really look like? After all, you can only eat so much grilled chicken breast.

Here are some additional sources of protein that will prevent you from getting bored after gastric bypass surgery!

  1. Lean beef (approximately 21 grams of protein in a three ounce serving)
  2. Greek yogurt (approximately 20 grams of protein in a one cup serving)
  3. Supplements (bars, shakes, powders and other supplemental products can contain up to 20 grams of protein per serving! Just watch out for excessive sugar.  We have a few favorites in our office, stop by to learn more!)
  4. Legumes (approximately 16 grams of protein in an eight ounce serving)

Happy and healthy eating!

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What You Should Know About Sex After Weight Loss Surgery

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Not only can you have sex after bariatric surgery, many patients report an increased sex drive!

How Soon After Bariatric Surgery Can You Have Sex?

However, few of our patients are as excited about the short-term limitations bariatric surgery may place on their lives. One question many weight loss surgery candidates ask is: How soon after bariatric surgery can I have sex?

At Weight Zen, we advise our patients to wait at least 10-14 days, and up to a full month, before they engage in sexual intercourse. This is simply to allow your body the time it needs to heal. After most surgeries, bariatric or otherwise, patients are typically supposed to wait a similar amount of time before having intercourse. The exact number of days that you should wait is a decision made between you and Dr. Rosen.

Weight Zen Is New York’s Trusted Source For Bariatric Surgery

After bariatric surgery, your libido will likely increase dramatically, and as you start to experience weight loss in the days following your procedure, you’ll feel more confident with your partner as well.

Interested in making a change? Contact the bariatric surgery experts at Weight Zen in New York today using the below form:

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Dark Green Vegetables And Your Weight Loss Band Go Hand-In-Hand

No matter how long you prepared for lap band surgery, the weeks and months that follow can be a time of adjustment.

For most of the weight loss LapBand patients we serve here at Weight Zen in New York City, the diet that will be part of follow-up strategy and can be new and different. Diets can make or break the results that you see after LapBand surgery.

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Here at Weight Zen, we don’t want you to be afraid. Rather, be excited about all of the healthy foods that can actually help to cement your weight loss! Dark green vegetables are leaders at the head of the pack of healthy foods and here’s why:

Dark Green Vegetables Are Often Superfoods

While superfoods aren’t “magic” they do tend to contain a higher-than-usual concentration of nutrients, fiber, and yes, sometimes even protein.  This means that they fit into your post LapBand surgery eating plan quite perfectly!

Which Dark Green Vegetables Are Best After Lap-Band Surgery?

  • Red Leaf Lettuce
  • Mesclun
  • Spinach
  • Swiss Chard
  • Kale – all kinds!
  • Bok Choy
  • Collard Greens
  • Mustard Greens
  • Beet Greens
  • Broccoli

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that adults consume at least three cups of dark green vegetables each week for optimal weight loss results.  If you’re looking for delicious recipes to try, check out our nutritionist Megan Wolf’s new cookbook Great Meals with Greens and Grains!

Contact Weight Zen in New York City today to learn more about how great life after lap band surgery can be.

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