Gastric bypass patients' goal-strategy-monitoring networks for long-term dietary management

Following gastric bypass surgery, patients must make dramatic dietary changes, but little is known about patients' perspectives on long-term dietary management after this surgery. This grounded theory, qualitative study sought to advance conceptual understanding of food choice by examining how gastric bypass patients constructed personal food systems to guide food and eating behaviors 12 months post-surgery. Two in-depth interviews were conducted with each of 16 adults, purposively sampled from bariatric support groups. Using constant comparative analysis of verbatim interview transcripts, researchers identified participants' goal-strategy-monitoring networks representing how participants used specific food and eating behaviors towards their main goals of: Weight Management, Overall Health, Avoiding Negative Reactions to Eating, and Integrating Dietary Changes with Daily Life. Linked to each main goal was a hierarchy of intermediary goals, strategies, and tactics. Participants used monitoring behaviors to assess strategy effectiveness towards goal achievement. Individuals' Weight Management networks were compared to uncover similarities and differences among strategy use and monitoring methods among those who maintained weight loss and those who regained weight. The complex, multilevel goal-strategy-monitoring networks identified illustrate the “work” involved in constructing new personal food systems after surgery, as well as advance understanding of strategies as a component of people's personal food systems. These findings provide researchers and practitioners with insight into the long-term dietary issues that gastric bypass patients face and a potential method for representing how people relate deliberate dietary behaviors to their goals.