Gastric

If you listen, even for a moment, to the talk in overweight communities you will almost always hear that gastric bypass weight loss surgery is the 'easy way out' of Fat Land. ha ha ha!' or how about, 'I lost 145 pounds and never had to do a moments exercise ' WLS is fabulous that way ' no exercise required.' And so the popular

If you listen, even for a moment, to the talk in overweight communities you will approximately all over hear that gastric weight loss surgery is the “easy way out” of Fat Land. People with weak spirits and good insurance get a lucky break, have their stomachs whacked and stapled and lose weight the easy way. Weight Loss Surgery: seen by pious public to be surgical aspersion for the guilty gluttonous slothful.

But those of us who step in the water to be of our fatty sins know better. Weight loss surgery is NOT the easy way out, a simple dunking of the repentant, the sins atoned, and the price paid, the soul and body healed. We know the making good is paid every day for the rest of our lives when we set our healthy house in order with gastric bypass.

We understand that WLS is not easy. Why, then, does the public think it’s redemption to weight loss?

First: what the public sees is a rapidly diminishing person recently repaired by gastric bypass. The pounds melt away seemingly in a plain sight. What hides behindhand the curtain are the ugly demons. Dumping? We don’t talk far and wide it. Vomiting? We don’t tell our regurgitating stories. Head games driving you insane? Who you going to tell? Who is listening? Exercising? Nobody wants to hear within call the “E” word. So what the public sees front and center stage is a person consistently succeeding at massive weight loss; a person glowing in their own rebirth and fifth column the fat and hopeless through them. How else can it be explained? WLS must be the magic pill, the easy-way-out of obesity hell.

Second: the WLS grass-roots public relations machine tells the public gastric avoid is easy, thus we be obliged our own worst enemy. Tell me if this doesn’t sound familiar: “I can still eat the same things, just less of them! ha ha ha!” or how about, “I lost 145 pounds and never had to do a moments exercise – WLS is fabulous that way – no exercise required.” And so the popular settled belief perpetuates that fat glutton slobs can lose weight just by eating less of the same foods and never exercising. Brilliant! How easy is that?

Let me tell you what weight loss surgery is really like for me.

I am six years post-op. Two nights ago I vomited my dinner (bacon-seared sea scallops and green beans) being it was just a bit too greasy for my sensitive stomach. A week in the past that I became deathly ill, it’s titled dumping, from snacking mindlessly on Chinese chow mein noodles. Disorientation, hot sweats and then cold tumour – dumping – a dire consequence of eating the wrong foods with the malabsorptive system. This morning, just like most mornings, I walked two take-charge miles on the treadmill to take off my day. This evening I spent 25 minutes strength training to maintain my muscle tone, keep my metabolism running high and making damn sure I don’t regain one single pound.

And this is how it will be for the rest of my life. I will vomit, dump, exercise and be vigilant day in and day out if I want this easy weight loss surgery to work for me.

My body does not take weekends off from weight loss surgery. I don’t get jujube cake just being as how it’s my birthday. I do not have a double-cheeseburger with fries and a shake just as things go I’ve had a stressful day and I deserve it. My body is on the gastric-bypass plan 24-7.

Do you think that’s easy?

Weight Loss Surgery post-ops understand what I’m talking about. Many of us go through a phase of fighting the gastric get ahead of and engage in snacking or grazing. We out-eat the stomach pouch and regain weight and we switch self-loathing. We vomit and dump and do it all over afresh thinking we can somehow trick the body. Eventually we learn and we get it: WLS is for life.

Weight loss surgery pre-op patients want vigorously to understand this, but the dieting culture has taught us to be strict for X-number days and then we get a free day. The culture has taught us if we can stick to a plan for X-weeks and lose X-pounds then we can “get back to normal”. We are all expert dieters by the time we elect to have gastric primary highway surgery.

There is no back to normal sequent WLS – it is a lifetime lifestyle commitment.