People who undergo weight-loss surgery can double the amount of weight they lose by taking one very simple step. No, they don’t have to jump through any hoops or spend a lot of money. All they need to do is to keep their appointments for their postoperative checkups, a recent study revealed.

Before we explain the research and what it means if you are considering or have had weight-loss surgery, here’s a bit of background info…

There are several different types of weight-loss surgery. The one most frequently performed in the US is gastric bypass. First the surgeon staples off the lower portion of the patient’s stomach and turns the upper portion into a small pouch that can hold only about one ounce of food at a time…then the surgeon connects this pouch to the middle part of the patient’s small intestine. As a result, the patient feels full after eating only a small amount of food (though it’s enough to prevent malnutrition)…and he or she also absorbs fewer calories from the food that is eaten. With this type of surgery, postoperative success generally is defined as losing 50% or more of one’s excess body weight within two years.

Now, about that new study: Participants included 60 obese men and women who had gastric bypass performed by the same surgeon. Researchers recorded each patient’s body mass index (BMI)—an indicator of body fat based on a calculation involving height and weight—before surgery and at regular intervals for two years afterward. They also tracked how many of the recommended postsurgical follow-up visits patients made to their surgeon.

Findings: Patients who attended two follow-up visits with their surgeon in the two years after their operations lost 58 pounds, on average. That sounds pretty good—until you consider that the patients who attended five surgeon-recommended follow-up visits lost an average of 114 pounds, or almost twice as much.

Now, these results do not prove a cause-and-effect relationship—in other words, we can’t say that the super-successful patients lost twice as much weight only because they went to all their follow-up appointments. It could be that the patients who were most motivated to lose weight and/or whose personalities predisposed them to follow instructions (for instance, for proper postoperative diet, exercise, etc.) would naturally be the most motivated and/or predisposed to follow recommendations for follow-up visits as well.

Still, for anyone who is considering or has already gone to the trouble and expense of having weight-loss surgery, the study results certainly should provide extra encouragement to keep all of those scheduled post-op appointments to maximize the chances of having the surgery be a resounding success. How often your doctor asks to see you after surgery depends on many factors, including how well you’re healing and adapting to your new diet, but expect to see him or her about a half dozen times during the first year or two.

Further research is needed to determine whether patients who have other types of weight-loss surgery (such as gastric banding or sleeve gastrectomy) would have similar experiences with regard to post-op follow-up appointments—but it makes sense that they might.

Weight-loss surgery generally is considered an option for people with a BMI of 40 or more…or for those with a BMI of 35 or more who also have type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, gallstone disease, obesity hypoventilation syndrome (a condition in obese people in which poor breathing leads to lower oxygen and higher carbon dioxide levels in the blood) or certain other conditions.

Click here for another Daily Health News article on bariatric surgery options, including gastric banding and sleeve gastrectomy. Then talk with your doctor about whether weight-loss surgery is right for you.