Weight Loss Surgery in General

In 2003 my aunt had a surgery to help her lose weight. I had only heard about it a few times before that – Gastric Bypass. What a strange name. Even stranger was that I didn’t even view my Aunt as being all that big. Did she really need a surgery to help her lose weight? It seemed so odd. Her procedure was rough, from what I remember. It was do as a fully open and invasive surgery, and it took her quite a while to recover. In fact, she was pretty sick for a while afterward. Once she healed, though, and the weight started coming off. I was amazed first by how quickly it came off and then by the fact that she was becoming a totally different person.

Of course, being very large myself, and having spent most of my life convincing myself that “big is who I am,” I think I felt a little resentment to how easily her weight came off (though I now understand that what she went through was not easy at all). I began to take on the attitude towards weight loss surgery as it being the “easy’ way out. ‘I could just lose it all naturally if I wanted to,’ I would think. The problem was that I had never really tried to lose it all. I had not one single clue about how incredibly difficult ‘losing it all’ would be.

Unfortunately, I kept that attitude – the idea that weight loss surgery was a cop-out – until just the last six months or so. I resented the fact that when I went into the doctor’s office in 2005, after not having been for years, and discovering that I had ballooned up to a whopping 488lbs, that my doctor’s first reaction was, “weight loss surgery.” This resentment led to the discovery of the Medifast program and the consequential five months of liquid dieting. Oh, it worked while I did it, but it didn’t help me keep the weight off – but I digress, that is a story all of it’s own that I will surely get to.

Two years ago I started seeing a new doctor. And again, the first words out of his mouth regarding my weight were, “weight loss surgery.” I was honestly pissed off. Why didn’t anyone think that I could do this on my own? I felt like I was being slapped in the face. “Hey fatty – no one likes you – here’s how you fix it.” Honestly though, after five years of ups and downs with my weight, the mental stress started to take it’s toll and started actually listening to my doctor more. He explained how being as big as I was my whole life has completely changed the way my body processes foods and the ingredients therein. He was able to describe the cycles of weight-loss, weight-gain, and the ways that my mind deals with this – especially the gains.

You see, I am very hard on myself. This is something that applies not only to my weight, but in many aspects of my life. The most prominent is probably my art. I am easily my biggest critic and hate most of the work I do – all of it eventually. And now, the new front-runner in self-punishment for me is my weight. And I say new because, as I have mentioned, I have not really dealt with this issue until the last five years. I take my failures out on myself pretty hard – mentally bashing myself. I put weight back on – I beat myself up. I eat food I know I shouldn’t or more than I know I should – I beat myself up. My pants become tighter, my t-shirts shorter – I beat myself up. And then what do I want to do? Well… frankly I want to give up.

And what if I was to make the decision to get weight loss surgery? What would be thought of me by my peers? What would I think of myself? Would I be the fat guy who gave up the battle? Well, I’m starting to learn, in opening up to people, that is most certainly not the outside view. Those closest to me have seen my struggles with my weight first-hand. They know that I have not given up, though I certainly have fallen. So, the support of my friends and loved ones certainly helps me to start to come to terms with myself – Jim, if you get this procedure done you are not giving up. In fact, you are just continuing to make forward moves in your battle to realize a healthier life.

I’ve done a lot of research about Bariatric Surgery in the last few months. I have talked to people and asked a lot of questions of those who have had it done and of those who actually perform the procedures (and will continue to do so). I have learned much about why these kinds of surgeries happen and what kinds of people should take advantage of them. I have become more comfortable with the through of surgery for weight reduction, and most importantly finally realized that it is not, indeed, the easy way out. In fact, it is not the ultimate answer to weight loss. I will still have a lot of work ahead of me. It is going to take great responsibility on my end to make sure that I can change my life enough to keep the weight off. I also know that by having this procedure performed on me I am not giving up. And that is reason enough to move forward…