“Why have your digestive tract mutilated and risk long-term complications from the surgery, including nutritional deficiencies, when you can just follow the Pritikin Program, lose weight without hunger, and still reverse insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes?”
To be sure, a commitment to lifestyle changes like the Pritikin Program is no small task. But surgery is no easy solution either. After surgery, doctors routinely advise patients to make a complete change in lifestyle. Foods to be avoided include sugary foods, red meat, high-fat foods, high-fiber foods, and milk because they commonly provoke nausea, cramping, diarrhea, overall weakness and other nasty side effects.
And because most forms of weight-loss surgery leave patients with a stomach the size of an egg, post-surgery life means very small meals, eaten very slowly and chewed thoroughly, for the rest of one’s life. Overeating may cause vomiting, expansion of the stomach pouch, weight gain, or even rupture of the stomach.
The fact is, the lifestyle changes required after weight-loss surgery are far more rigorous than Pritikin Program recommendations, observes Dr. Kenney. “A healthy diet like Pritikin allows you to enjoy a wide variety of foods like fruits, vegetables, beans, potatoes, corn, and whole grains like brown rice and whole-wheat pasta, and you can eat them in large satisfying portions.”
And the only side effect of Pritikin living is better health, better blood pressure, better cholesterol, freedom from angina pain and heart surgeries, and certainly, better diabetes control. Yes, it’s all good news.
Dr. Kenney recommends that gastric bypass surgery for diabetes control should be “a last resort after all other options have been tried, and there are other – and much better – options. In my 25 years at Pritikin, I’ve seen hundreds of men and women lose 50 to 100 pounds and more just by exercising and following the Pritikin Eating Plan.”
Even if you’ve tried Pritikin and struggled with it, try again. Come back for a refresher.
There’s a wonderful Japanese proverb that says, “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.”
Everyone struggles. But struggles do not mean failure. The only time you fail is when you stop trying. The eighth or ninth time you pull yourself up may be the time that you stay up.

Health Resort
Take life to the next level, and be all that you can be. That’s what a vacation at Pritikin is all about. Live better. Look better. Best of all, feel better.
All-Inclusive Program
Since 1975, 100,000+ people have come to Pritikin. We are the longest-running, most scientifically documented health resort in America.