How can we make the holidays merry and *bari* friendly? In this episode, Michaela Miller @losingtoblooming joins us recently to talk about some of her favorite strategies for navigating the holiday season and not abandoning her bariatric goals. It really all comes down to mindset; recognizing how the "all or nothing" mindset does not serve us- especially in high-stress times, the power and impact of doing imperfect things consistently, and how we can treat an indulgence as just that- something special to be enjoyed every now and then.

This episode will leave you ready to enjoy the holidays without guilt, shame, or fear. We did not have bariatric surgery to be scared to enjoy food. We know that getting to that place of confidence can be a long and windy journey. We hope this conversation offers you a path forward on your food joy and balance journey and set's you up for holiday success this year!

You've got this and we've got you!

Follow the BariNation crew on Instagram and join or join our membership community for that extra layer of support! We offer expert-led support sessions, live classes, peer-to-peer supports, an on-demand video library, printable support guides...so much support! JOIN US as we all all seek our happy, healthy weight!

Michaela offers some amazing one-on-one and group coaching opportunities! Check out her Instagram page @losingtoblooming for more information about the services she offers!

The holidays can invoke some heavy emotions and feelings. On top of the sense of loss and grief, we might be feeling after our bariatric surgery, we might also be feeling the missing presence of loved ones. And when you add on the additional layer of the pandemic and just life in general, this season can become overwhelming. And when things get overwhelming, we tend to fall back on old habits, actions, routines, and thoughts to help us find brief moments of comfort.

We must acknowledge that using food to help us through difficult moments is allowed. There is no shame in seeking comfort. But if we consistently rely on food, we will find ourselves facing regaining and batling additional pounds in the new year.

In this episode, Lora Grabow, LMSW guides April and Jason through some headwork skills that we can use this holiday that will allow us to acknowledge and move through these heavy emotions, thoughts, and feelings without the aid of food. Jason shares some powerful emotions and gives us all a master class in how we can face our emotions head-on and learn to live through them with grace and bravery.

Lora will be teaching TWO sessions of her Headwork for the Holidays class in December in the BariNation membership community! Visit www.barination.com to join for free for 14 days…just enough time to take a class or two and join a live support session!

Follow our journeys on Instagram! You can find BariNation @bari.nation, April @activley_april, Jason @the_smithsonian_, and Lora Grabow @loragrabow. You can also visit Lora online at www.loragrabow.com and learn more about her Headwork Masterclass!

Have you ever found that when one thing goes wrong, you want to discount the WHOLE DAY? Sometimes, we can use that one event to derail our week, month, or even our year. If we want to live differently after bariatric surgery, we need to respond differently when things do not go to plan.

Suzanne Razaq- bariatric coach and educator- joins us in this episode to teach us how we can reframe our mindset (and actions) when things do not go to plan. We wanted to know why our default mindset and actions skew towards the negative when something goes wrong and how we can change that thinking in the moment. She suggests we do three things to help us acknowledge our feelings, reframe our mindset, and then take actionable steps towards achieving the outcome we want. You will leave this powerful episode with new tools you can use every day when things do not go as planned!

Suzanne will be teaching a live class in the BariNation membership community in December that will teach us how to stay positive when the SCALE won’t move!  And if you cant make the live class, do not fear!I It also lives in our on-demand video “LiBari” so you can access the learning anytime. Visit www.barination.com to join for free for 14 days…just enough time to take a class or two and join a live support session!

Follow our journeys on Instagram! You can find BariNation @bari.nation, April @activley_april, Jason @the_smithsonian_, and Suzanne Razaq @1gastricgirl.

Finding moments of joy can be challenging any time of year, but during the holidays, it can be a monumental challenge. Even though we are in the season of joyful celebration, grief, loss, and sadness can make finding moments of joy difficult.

In this episode, April, Jason, and Natalie discuss the meaning of joy; what it is, what it can look like, how we can find it in our daily lives, and how we can use joy as a tool to help us through difficult and painful moments in life.

Joy can look and feel different almost every day and in this episode, we explore the impact joy has made on our lives and how we have used it when we needed to find relief from what pains us. We hope you leave this episode with a new understanding of joy and the power it can have in your own life.

You’ve got this and we’ve got you!

If you love this podcast, consider leaving us a rating and review on your podcast player app! You can even leave us a voice message that we can incorporate into the show! Just visit our podcast homepage at www.anchor.fm/barination. You can also watch this episode on our YouTube Channel by searching for BariNation on that platform!

Being faithful to a vitamin regimen after WLS is key to our long-term success. Not only will it help us reach our weight goals, but it will ensure we remain metabolically well. So many people in our community find themselves hospitalized or under a doctors care for nutritional and mineral deficiencies and we don’t want that to happen to anyone.

We sat down with Ben and Stephen, the founders of Paravita Vitamins to learn about their amazing bariatric vitamin! They shared with us why they started Paravita, what makes their vitamins a superior option for patients in our community, and why staying consistent with our vitamins is necessary for our post-op health.

You will ABSOLUTELY want to listen to this whole episode! There is an awesome surprise waiting at the end!

Episode Topics:

Follow Paravita on Instagram @paravita.co and visit them online at www.paravita.co

Listen to this episode on all major podcast players or on our Anchor homepage at www.anchor.fm/east2westwls or watch it on our YouTube channel! If you want to be first to know when new episodes drop, subscribe to the podcast on your player app and on our YouTube channel!

Traveling might not have been something we did a lot of before bariatric surgery. Our weight might have made getting from one destination to another difficult and once we were to our destination, our size might have prevented us from fully enjoying our adventure.

But with the Bariatric Retreat one day away, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on what travel has looked like in our lives and offer some tips and tricks for traveling in your pre and post-op life!

Episode Topics:

Visit our NEW website to learn more about BariNation and the community that has been created just for you! Find us at www.barination.com and on Instagram @bari.nation

As always, you’ve got this and we’ve got you!

Today, East2West_WLS becomes BariNation!

We have come a long way from our humble podcast beginnings. We realized we had the power and capacity to create something meaningful and valuable for our bariatric community and today, we are excited to share with you what we have spent the last year working on! None of our current supports are going away, we are just adding a new and dynamic support option that was created to support EVERY bariatric patient!

Today, we welcome to the world BariNation, an online digital support ecosystem where bariatric patients can connect, learn, and grow from one another and experts in our community!

Episode Topics:

Visit our NEW website to learn more about BariNation and the community that has been created just for you! Find us at www.barination.com and for the time being, you can still find us at @east2west_wls on Instagram!

As always, you’ve got this and we’ve got you!

In November, we will be focusing on discussing things that support our bariatric life. Things changed significantly before and after bariatric surgery. While many things remain the same, almost nothing remains the same. In this episode, April, Jason, and Natalie talk about how their lives have shifted after their procedures and what #barilife looks like for them.

Episode Topics:

You can watch this episode too on our YouTube channel! Like and subscribe where ever you watch or listen to always be the first to know when new support drops!

Regain is something every *human* will experience. Our weight is designed to fluctuate over our lifetimes, regardless of our bariatric status. Regain is not a bad or scary thing, it is simply data we can observe and collect along the way. Nothing scary there! We also know the stress that weight regain can play in our lives because we are on this bariatric rollercoaster with you and have experienced regain ourselves.

If we have regained an amount of weight that does not feel right on our frame, we have the ability to become our own scientists and explore that regain. Our goal is metabolic wellness, not size, shape, or weight. Sometimes regain is *necessary*. Regain is not a negative thing! It is simply one data point that we can use along our bariatric journey to find our happy, healthy weight!

We had the honor of sitting down with Jana Wolff, RD, and Lora Grabow, Bariatric Therapist to shine some light on regaining. We wanted to know what it is, why it happens, and how we can approach regain in a safe and loving way. We know regain can be caused by many things, but at its core, regain indicates a change. It means something has changed or shifted and if we want to explore that change, we can. Sometimes this change is out of our control. Other times, the change is within our control. Jana and Lora offer us their clinical expertise from their unique lens' and will leave you with tools to start to explore the change in ways that feel right for YOU. April and Jason will share how to regain impacted their lives and how they went about addressing it in their own, unique ways.

Episode Takeaways:

Follow our amazing experts on Instagram and reach out to them if you need individual support!

Jana Wolff @mybaribox or www.baribox.com

Lora Grabow @loragrabow or www.loragrabow.com

There is the plan…and then there is what happens. This episode is a *perfect* example of that because we started out talking about partying before and after WLS and we ended up making some DEEP connections about how we are using partying after WLS and what it is helping teach us. None of us thought we would go THIS DEEP but we are so thankful for the safe place to have meaningful conversations like this one. 

A HUGE thank you to Katie @katie.vsg for her openness and honesty. Her bravery shows us just how powerful conversations can be. 

Episode Topics: 

Listen to this episode on all major podcast players or on our Anchor homepage at www.anchor.fm/east2westwls or watch it on our YouTube channel! If you want to be the first to know when new episodes drop, subscribe to our email list and YouTube channel.

You've got this and we've got you!