Changing bodies, changing habits: women's experiences of interval training following gastric bypass surgery

Patients undergoing weight-loss surgery are increasingly encouraged to change their lifestyles. Dietary interventions combined with physical exercise interventions are regarded as the most effective way to ensure that they do not regain the weight they have lost. Little research however, has been done on how patients who have had the surgery actually experience the process of changing their exercise habits. To help fill this gap, we investigated the experiences of women participating in a group-based rehabilitation program designed to radically transform these habits. Based on participant observation, and our interviews with 11 women in the program, we were able to identify a variety of potential benefits and negative consequences in group training, organized according to the interval principle. We also found that the experiences of these women were closely related to their views on how significantly the surgery had changed their lifestyle. Based on the experiences related by these women, we believe that the "effectiveness" of standardized group-based interventions for patients undergoing weight-loss surgery should be reconsidered. Some of the women in our study viewed the group-based standardized training intervention positively; others resisted it. Our research leads us to conclude that this type of program could be more successful if the forms of activity and their intensity were customized to meet the needs and desires of each participant.