How Colleen Cook Pays It Forward

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"My story up to this point is a dime a dozen," she says. "And like almost everybody, I find keeping the weight off is still a challenge. I've hovered around 15 or 20 pounds above my lowest weight. I still enjoy eating, particularly sweets and bread. But by keeping constant focus on what I eat and getting enough exercise, I am able to manage."

          The experience taught Cook something important about the gifts she had always enjoyed as an effective communicator and motivational speaker, especially among groups of women. ("Colleen Cook," the former mayor of West Jordan, Utah, once noted, "is a perfect example of those highly energetic, strongly motivated people we call 'movers and shakers.'") In this instance she trained her energy and motivation on a problem she had been unaware of until many months into her post-bypass life, when keeping her weight down became difficult once again.
          "I saw how those in the medical community did a lot to help people like me for the first year or so after surgery," she remembers, "but beyond that there was virtually nothing. Yet there was a great need for ongoing weight maintenance and 'get back on track' programs. Yes, there were support groups, but there was no coordination among them."
          In her own words, Cook "helped pull it all together." In 1997, she accepted a contract with a Salt Lake City hospital to help develop the facility's bariatric program and streamline its support group effort. Through her contacts with similar operations around the country, Cook organized leadership training and post-op education for support groups. It became clear that, without guidance and outreach, many weight-loss patients were floundering. Yet others were doing fine. Curious about the latter group, Cook conducted a survey of hundreds of long-term post-ops who had lost weight, kept it off, and developed lifestyles that supported positive eating and exercise habits. The results were presented in a 1998 report to the American Society for Bariatric Surgery. Six habits or behavior patterns appeared to be common to those faring best, while those having trouble were absent one or more of these characteristics.
          "These key findings were not especially new," Cook notes, "but they were good, well-founded principles." They are referred to today worldwide as "The Success Habits of Weight Loss Surgery Patients."
          From this basic understanding, nearly a decade of independent long-term services for weight-loss surgery patients has flowed through Bariatric Support Centers International since its founding on January 1, 2000. From modest beginnings, Cook's facility has expanded to provide a wide range of services that include support group coordination, leadership training, multimedia education, counseling, and the direct sale of related materials. Cook herself has authored a bestselling book "The Success Habits™ of Weight Loss Surgery Patients", conducted scores of seminars, delivered hundreds of talks, and helped train coaches and facilitators. BSCI has expanded in recent times to include interactive on-line education, including an affiliation with Duke University and eMindful, as well as telephonic conferencing and instruction. Cook's daily schedule might exhaust many of us, but she finds it both inspiring and invigorating.
          "We've developed teaching materials around the Success Habits™ we identified in our research," says Cook. "I think that's one of our greatest contributions to the bariatric community. Instead of determining what some patients did wrong, (we are) finding out what others are doing right."
          While BCSI's Success Habits™ are shared only through Cook's book and other Center-related offerings, they resonate with the eminently practical advice she provides in her talks and writings. This includes setting weight-range goals, checking weight at least weekly, developing a food and exercise plan that maintains a desired weight, having blood work done annually, charting weight-loss progress over time, and monitoring blood pressure regularly. In essence, what Cook advocates is being "mindful," and applying that mindfulness to the difficult day-to-day task of "staying on - or getting back on - track following surgery." A single-minded attentiveness and the ability to observe one's true nature are helpful in redirecting life-long behaviors. For many, she notes, the biggest challenges don't come until several years after an operation, which may at first lead the recipient to feel like he or she can eat just about anything. In time, this becomes obviously untrue, setting off a sequence of emotions that discourage many and often turn them inward.
          "That population needs to be served and understood," says Cook. "And the last person they want to tell [about weight gain] is their surgeon." She particularly encourages post-op patients to stay engaged long-term in the bariatric community by donating some of their time and energy into helping others. This may take the form of leading or participating in a support group, mentoring someone going through and recovering from surgery, creating clubs around an activity such as golf or bowling, and organizing or volunteering at a fundraising or celebratory event. By staying connected in this way, the struggle to maintain a desired weight is not nearly so challenging - and lonely.
          While the situation in the bariatric arena is improving among hospitals and physicians, Cook believes, such busy institutions and overcommitted professionals can only go so far in providing the ongoing services weight-loss surgery patients need after going home. "We all know how to lose weight," she notes. "That's what we did before surgery, and always gained it back. However, the skills to maintain weight loss two or three years post-op are completely different. For instance, we need to gain a better understanding of our own personal metabolisms and of our own particular eating patterns. Those of us who aren't doing well are often lost to follow-up [by hospitals and surgeons]. We need a different approach in order to be effective."
          Cook is fond of quoting Nido Qubein, the author and motivational speaker, who once observed: "We have all warmed ourselves by fires we did not build, and drunk from wells we did not dig. We must now dig more wells and build more fires." In her bid to help others live long, healthy lives, Colleen Cook is a living example of this advice taken fully to heart - and realized through direct and creative action.

For more information about Colleen Cook or Bariatric Support Centers International, see
www.bariatricsupportcenter.com

Mahler Richard

Richard Mahler is a free-lance writer and editor based in Silver City, New Mexico. In 2000 he received professional training as a facilitator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and since then he has taught MBSR in California and New Mexico. The author of "Stillness: Daily Gifts of Solitude" and 10 other books, Richard's by-line has appeared in Yoga Journal, Body + Soul, Alternative Medicine, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. Learn more at www.RichardMahler.com