“The Meals That Still Matter” is a well written article I have recently enjoyed reading in the Wall Street Journal. Bee Wilson, a British food writer and journalist, is the author. She reports that “Holidays are now the only time of the year when we really focus on what and how we eat”. Wilson further adds: “In our daily meals, we have become starved for ritual, which can make it feel as if life has lost its rhythms… In years gone by, the holiday meals of winter were just one feast among many. The whole year was punctuated with moments of wetness and celebration. There were harvest feasts and midsummer feasts, pig-killing feasts and saint’s days”. She then talks about Christmas, Diwali and Passover feasts and shows how food items and certain dishes were woven into the fabric of society in the Catholic world. Wilson explains that we deprive ourselves of half the value of food when eat alone. Indeed, a study showed that fewer than one third of families in Britain manage to eat dinner together on most weekdays. The article ends with a melancholic note: “For a few days, we gather and treat food like it actually matters. And then we go back to normal life, where the question of what to cook for dinner falls lower on our list of priorities than what case to buy for our new iPhone”.

At Houston Weight Loss Surgery Center, our most important message to our patients desiring to lose weight is to treat food like it really matters. If you do not invest in your food and give it a priority in your life you cannot lose weight. You are what you eat and what you eat has a huge impact on your health and well being. Our most successful weight loss surgery patients understand this concept and apply it on a daily basis. Sleeve and gastric bypass surgery patients who take food seriously manage to maintain weight loss for years to come. On the other hand, bariatric patients who don’t have time for grocery shopping, home cooking and meal prepping fail to maintain durable weight loss. Our hectic modern lifestyle has hijacked our eating rituals and replaced them with fast food on the go and frozen meals in the microwave. Consuming a home cooked meal with family and friends rejuvenates our bodies. Let food be thy medicine. For this holiday season, invest in your food for your health is your best wealth.