I just saw online "Star Jones", a 'celebrity' here in the USA recently admitted she had weight loss surgery. Anyone who knew of Ms. Jones 'before' could see she was a larger size lady who suddenly became very svelte. She dramatically lost the weight and there was a lot of speculation about it prior to her 'revealing the truth.'

She was afraid of the stigma if she told the truth.

What do you guys think of weight loss surgeries? Do you believe they are a good option for a person who is overweight and 'tried everything else' or some cop out that skips over diet/exercise/eating moderation?

Please keep it 'nice.' :naughty:

If it's to the extreme and they have tried everthing.then yes I think it's a good option for people. Some people try diets and don't lose anything.Also, being overweight to the point where you start having major health issues can make it real hard to exercise and diet too. I do think at times some people don't try other things first cause they think "oh I'll just have surgery" which is a bad thing to think.

What irritates me is she's spent ages saying 'I didn't have surgery! I did it on my own!' Of course, I dislike her anyway... so that might be it...

But I don't think it's a cop out. Some people just cannot lose the weight, no matter how hard they try. And you still have to moderate what you eat and exercise after surgery, so that's not usually why people do it. My mom considered it because she has trouble losing weight and keeping it off, and her health is at risk. This, unlike breast implants and nose jobs, is not purely cosmetic. It's a way of eliminating some of the health issues of being overweight. Look at Al Roker, for example. For those of you that aren't from the US, Al Roker is a television anchor (weather man, to be exact) on the popular US morning show 'Today'. He was VERY overweight, and underwent gastric bypass surgery about ... 5 years ago, I think? And he's still heavy, but not as heavy. That's normal. Whatever Star Jones did was not normal. You don't go from well over 200 pounds to 100 pounds from normal surgery. (I don't know the exact numbers - I'm using those for the sake of arguement! ^^)

In other words, I don't see it as a cop out. I think it's a legitimate way to lose weight when you cannot do so any other way, and your health is in serious jeopardy as a result of that.

Actually Chelleypie.. My aunt did just that.. She lost like 140 (at least!) and now is extremely skinny.. However, it took her FOREVER to get her access skin removed because insurance didn't want to pay for it (she wasn;t getting new boobs or anything, just taking off access skin so it wouldn't be in her way), so..
Anyway, i think its ok, as long as its the last option. My aunt was pretty sick, and it was one of the only options left to her, so...

If an overweight/obese person wants the surgery, is healthy enough to undergo it, and can afford it - my opinion is that they should go for it. Whether they choose it as a last resort or bypass diet and exercise for surgery is up to them. Even though Star denied the surgery initially, I think it was pretty obvious to everyone else that she was lying. However, I don't think she was a coward for doing so. Your average person can't take much criticisim, especially when it's about something in their personal life. That gets magnified when you're a celeb, so I can see how she was easily afraid of what people's reaction would be if she told the truth. And I do believe it's pretty common for patients to lose over approx. 100 pounds or more from gastric bypass.

The thing is when you loose weight normally, through dieting and sport, you loose inches from all over, not just the tummy, or the legs, as it happens with surgeries. And you will keep on adding weight if the problem that caused the person to be overweight is not corrected.

Very true. And if the person is willing to deal with that consequence, so be it. I prefer diet and exercise. But I think adults should have the option of whether they want to diet and exercise or receive surgery.

I stand corrected. -stands corrected- It is probably normal for people to go from very large to very small after surgery.

I'm rather agaisnt the idea of gastric bypass surgery. It's true that some people have a lot of trouble losing weight because of genetic issues, and for them I think it should be allowed, but thier primary care physician should have to recommend it. Because really, in today's society, how many people getting gastric bypass are doing it primarily to look good as opposed to doing it for thier health?

As for the people who have no severe genetic leanings toward obesity; they can go for diet and exercise like the rest of us. Often severely overweight people have an addiction-esque thing to food as a comfort or they have an actual physical addiction. With gastric bypass you are incapable of eating that much food and so if you have an addiction to food with a psychological root, then the habit'll be displaced to a more destructive habit, like drinking and gambling. Admittedly this is not the largest (no pun inteneded) segment of the overweight population, but i'm against anything that encourages habits that cause pain and annoyance to others. Obesity, in my opinion, is not one of these habits.

Also surgeries in general are dangerous! There are risks from anasthesia. If someone doesn't follow thier diet afterward they have to get their stomach pumped. If somehthing goes wrong with the tie on the stomach wall then there can be ruptures to the stomach, causing very painful internal injuries and death. All of this for what is, to a large extent (NB: largely I say, not solely), a cosmetic surgery? That just doesn't sound practical to me.

Well, I think if they DO allow these surgeries, they also should (maybe they do?) require counseling and nutritional education. Maybe people have gotten very large for reasons other than just being very hungry--maybe it is out of ignorance and lack of understand of portion control or due to abuse or as a form of self abuse?

I have heard these surgeries could backfire and if you don't learn how to eat in a healthy manner you could gain it back or hurt your body.

I believe losing weight is a lot more than altering the body--you need to have a certain mindset.

I'm not an expert on gastric bypass, but I do know that it sometimes doesn't totally work out. Still, healthy adults who can pay for the surgery - go for it! It's your life and your body, not mine.

FurryPanda, maybe it's largely cosmetic for some people, but others have actual physical disorders that cause them to gain weight, and other people have circumstances that keep them from losing weight without gastric bypass. Also, I'm pretty sure that there is a lot of work involved after the surgery. You don't just drop 100 pounds overnight.

ETA: RabidAngel just said it way better than I did... :p

If someone who is overweight wants to have the procedure whether they've tried everything else or not, I say it's all the more power to them and that they should go for it. I think there's a common misconception that surgery is the easy way out, when it's really not. Diet and excercise can be difficult, but the physical effects are typically beneficial and do not have any dangerous side effects that could harm you. As for surgery, you could get an infection, you could get sick from the anesthesia (this happened to my sister), and you'll have to go through stages of recovery and lots of pain. There's always the chance that the surgery could go wrong and you wouldn't come out alive, too, whereas I don't think diet and excercise ever killed anyone.

With diet and excercise, the weight comes off naturally and not just from one area, but with surgery, morbidly obese people are often found to have large folds of skin left over that used to cover their fat. So surgery is definitely a gutsier choice and a much riskier road, but not necessarily the easier one. Surgery may be faster, but it's not necessarily easier to get through- it depends on the complications, the patient's pain tolerance, and the patient itself. I find diet and excercise preferable to invasive surgery, but having gastric bypass and liposuction and whatnot is definitely not taking the easy way out.

I agree with Rabid - the surgery is no picnic either. I know a girl - a friend, but not a really close friend - who when through the surgery. She claimed nothing else worked and her boyfriend always would say, "She really doesn't eat that much." When she got it done she was very excited, but also talked about how hard it was to eat. She had to really watch her food intake or she would get very sick. And we are talking not a lot of food. She said her doctor told her it was like the stomach going from the size of a small melon to the size of an egg -- so I guess you can imagine how little food it would take to fill an egg.

I just wanted to add.. you really can't do this surgery to make yourself 'look good'.. My aunt had to fight her insurance to take off the access skin over a year after surgery. It was giving her problems with clothing ,exercising, etc. they don't tighten your muscles or give you a boob job.. Jest take off the access skin on your stomach so its not all over the place, and let the rest chill. I think its good they cover that though.. Your still carrying around weight as skin otherwise.. but like i said, i don't think i'll see her in a bikini or anything...

It's not the fact that someone had surgery that causes there to be folds of skin leftover once the fat is gone. The simple fact of there being that much excess fat means that the skin has stretched to the point where it won't shrink back and look all nice and flat. At least one of the people (and I do believe more than one, but one I know of for sure) who was on "The Biggest Loser" and lost a good deal of weight through diet and exercise had to have that excess skin removed. It's going to be there regardless of how the weight was lost.

And of course the surgery is going to shrink the belly fat- a good majority of people have that in excess when looking to do this. However, to say that it is the only place where someone loses that weight is um.. wrong? Star Jones (as an example) doesn't have the same face she did when she was heavy- she lost weight there. You can see her collar bones where you once could not. Even her arms are thinner. So the weight does come off from other areas.

Just wanted to throw that in here. I think ultimately it's up to the person who feels they need it to decide if the risks are worth it to them. Until someone has walked in the shoes of someone who has real trouble losing weight, for whatever the reasons, I think it's selling those people short by saying they are doing it simply for cosmetic reasons.

Moonbloom, i'm sorry if your not talking to me, but if you were, i thought i would reply..

I did not mean that she just had it in her belly.. i meant thats all her insurance would pay for (with her paying additional)... the doctor told her 'next we'll have to do your boobs and butt!' and my aunt replied 'nope, i'm not going to pay for that!' I was just putting out there with all the access skin left over, its still not that pretty, lol..

These surgeries, from what I've heard, are pretty risky. One wrong move by the doctors, and the patient could very well die on the operating table. But for the people whose weight is a result of genes and not diet, the surgeries may be their best option for success. For those who are just simply lazy and want the easy way out (they believe), this is definitely an example of copping out. With all the risks involved, this is definitely (in the words of my former roommate) "counterproductive laziness".

The safest way to lose weight for the rest of us who do overeat or eat junk food, no matter how many times people repeat it, is still to eat healthy and exercise. It's the only method that the vast majority, if not all, experts agree on . Though I can understand the "too lazy to exercise" feeling .

Nekochan, no I wasn't referring to what you had posted, I understood what you were talking about, and yay for your aunt at finally getting the insurance folks to pay for that. I was referring to a couple of folks' posts that stated the weight wasn't lost everywhere and/or that implied that it was weight loss from surgery that left the excess skin.

Unfortunately, that's the case with any surgery. Not to mention the people who've died from simple anesthesia (sp?).

Given the social stigma that obesity has, I say go for it. Now, if they could only figure out a pill to make me grow a couple more inches till I hit 6'...

Also, there is the issue when people who don't die but wake up during the surgery and can't talk to tell the doctor they are awake. That would be horrible!

Several articles stated that the risk of death within 30 days post-surgery is actually 1 in 50 for gastric bypass, mostly due to surgeons' inexperience because this procedure is so popular that hospitals are rushing to train doctors to perform it. For the best doctors, it's about 1.5%.

So it wasn't really accurate when I said that one wrong move by the doctors would cause a patient to die during the operation, but mistakes from doctors' inexperience due to the surge in popularity of drastic weight-loss surgeries can cause death soon after the surgery.

This surgery does drastically improve the health of the morbidly obese people and reduces the risk of death from diseases associated with obesity, though, so as I said before, it is the best option for the extremely obese. It's definitely not for anyone who's looking for a little weight loss.

Here's one of these articles:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005...ain668323.shtml

It's not a recent article, but it was the most recent one I could find :shrug:.

I work in an Operating Room at a hospital that does these Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass surgeries. It is both life saving and could quite possibly be life ending. People who want to have this surgery should do thorough research and seek out a surgeon who is not only experienced but seek out a hospital that does a lot of these types of procedures. It is going to be the nurses taking care of you on the surgical ward that you want to have tons of experience. They are going to be the ones who are going to be able to assess the post operative problems that can occur, like embolisms and leaking of gastric fluid at the staple line around the stomach and intestines. I personally feel that the majority of the patients that come through truly have tried everything to lose the weight on their own. You get to a certain point that diet and exercise just don't work and that is when you need surgical intervention.

Most insurance companies now will not pay for these surgeries unless the patient has shown a failed diet program over the last 6 months to even 1 year. They are also required by a lot of hospitals to undergo psychiatric evaluation before they can have he surgery. If you have an eating disorder before surgery, it won't go away because of the surgery.

those patients that have had the surgery have to be very serious about life style changes. Because of the part of the intestines that it bypasses, those patients that eat greasy food, that eat lactose products, that eat sugar, will have horrible pains, horrible gas and horrible diarhhea. Some tolerate different foods differently so you may see them eat what they ate before, and those are the ones that won't do well.

You do realize that everyone on this thread left the site OVER SEVEN YEARS ago?

I didn't even know the site was this old.