Post-operative health behaviours
overweight, weight loss, abdominal pain
DUMPING
Regarding health behaviours, patients in the current sample reported adherence to dietary recommendations two years after the surgery, which was on the upper half of the scale range. Meanwhile, the amount of time spent exercising was low. Patients are forced to eat small portions, and reduced fat and carbohydrate intake by the anatomic changes after surgery and have a higher chance of dumping or abdominal pain in case of non-adherence. Another explanation may be that patients focus more on changing their eating behaviours after bariatric surgery as poor eating behaviours are commonly blamed for being overweight (both subconsciously and societally), reflected by the vast number of various dieting programs, books and articles promising easy weight loss with the newest diets. Therefore, this diet-trance may overshadow the importance and benefit of regular physical activity for weight loss. Based on our finding of limited frequency of physical activity, patients should be encouraged to exercise more regularly and given advice on appropriate physical activity during the surgical screening. It must be noted that part of the follow-up data was collected during the Covid-19 pandemic, during which access to sport facilities was largely limited. Therefore, these findings must be interpreted cautiously and repeated with other samples and longer follow-up data.