Weight Loss Surgeon Against Size Acceptance!

The disturbing trend of fat acceptance, one doctor speaks out against it


What would he think of this blog? Since I question aspects of size acceptance and also that barbarity and sanctioned torture known as weight loss surgery? They couldn't have thought of something more painful if they tried to do to fat people to get them to lose weight.

The other day, I went to a book club, it was warm enough to be out, and I saw this one member there, who weighed around 250lbs, and who was actively employed and active, even two years ago the other time I ran into her, and she announced to us, she recently had weight loss surgery. It didn't escape my attention that to even drink a coffee, she had to mix it with a powder to get it down. I forgot the name of the powder but it was one when I did short term assisted nursing care in my 20s, one had to mix with food to thicken it, to get it down the gullets of those with digestive and swallowing problems. Life is hard enough. I found myself worrying about her right then and there.

Anyhow I tire of these weight loss surgeons who have no reality about what makes people obese and who profit off the lies and still play blame the victim and act as if the same amount of control is there for everyone. Yeah, the whole "control" thing as if people chose this. Their ignorance regarding metabolism and such is extreme and continues to worsen.

I know I made the choice never to have weight loss surgery, even having it pushed by various doctors. In my case, I do not think it would work and believe because of the breathing problems, I'd die on the table. I have digestive problems now that range from intermittent anemia, to shortage of various B vitamins and D though I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. There is a time in life, where you say well "I have suffered enough", and all the digestive stuff, where I can so easily end up in pain that leads one on the floor and puking my guts out if I mistakenly ingest any MSG, dairy or eggs or have stress, brought me enough trouble in life, just the thought of weight loss surgery to me sounds like a PTSD nightmare on the roller coaster to hell.

With this guy, I wish he'd find this blog, and come and read and learn. But so few seem to ever have independent thoughts. I guess that tens of thousands of dollars they make for each surgery speaks for itself. Ah so many who are profiting off the obesity epidemic, the mind boggles.

As I have said multiple times, the lies on both sides enable each other.

Bariatric Surgery Doesn't Help Obese Live Longer--CNN

Bariatric Surgery Doesn't Help Obese Live Longer--CNN

Wow, they are finally admitting it. Here is what I have seen, because of my time in size acceptance and befriending folks with like problems online, I know MANY people who have had weight loss surgery. I believe one friend of mine is dead today as a direct result of that surgery, but I knew 5 personally who died, either on the table, or from the side affects that came later. At least two had to be put on respirators, to make it out of the woods right after the surgery. A 500lb man I met in NAAFA had it done and was dead a year later. I believe the nutritional problems is what kills you in the long term--some even do well a few years down the road, to get more autoimmune and other problems, while the surgery is far more dangerous in the short term for what comes.

That said, I understand why some take this spin of the roulette wheel. Dieting fails. I have had to depart from dieting many times to even control the resultant depression and self-hatred that comes from seeing no results, that includes a college try with Weight Watchers a couple years ago. Now I try to eat only when physically hungry, stay busy and try to take one walk a day--even if its short and barely would be considered a walk by thin people. Fat people get tired of being put down and want to be like everyone else. Some may see me as having "given up" but I am tired. Unless you can come up with something that kills all hunger pain, or allows me to go over 8 hours without passing out from not eating, I want to be left in peace.

The whole WLS thing makes me angry, because I find myself thinking that the money, research and effort could be put forth something that actually works, and does not entail having people have their guts rearranged and has so much pain and torture attached. The worse thing too, and I saw this with friends, is if your weight loss surgery fails, YOU ARE BLAMED, they tell you that you are out eating the surgery, that you are not doing everything "RIGHT". So it doesn't change those problems.

One thing that keeps me from weight loss surgery, is I know the torture of digestive problems that impact ones life. I have finally just come out of severe bowel problems where I wondered if I was at that end of my life, and "cured" things by removing all fat, chlorine sprayed lettuce and MSG from the diet. The severe IBS can still be triggered though on far rarer occasions via anxiety. One cannot function while in pain, and or barfing, even reading a book, or taking a nap, is beyond one's function. All of life is surrounded by pain. So having already suffered this, I'm not ready to sign up for more.

Here's the deal, while this surgery for SOME, offers maybe a few years, of thinner life, and better mobility and function, down the long haul road it fails. I saw a diabetic become a far worse diabetic then ever before even at a thinner weight, I saw a friend die of heart disease, she had lost only 20% of her weight that had been previously far more controlled. I do not buy it as the magic panacea.

Getting bariatric surgery will not decrease mortality several years after the surgery, according to a study published in JAMA.

Although the weight-loss surgery has been shown to decrease weight and diminish diabetes, the older, severely obese male patients in the study were not living longer because of the procedure.

The study was to be presented Sunday at the Academy Health Annual Research Meeting.

For the severely obese, bariatric surgery is one of the most effective ways to reduce weight. The most common bariatric surgery is gastric bypass, which creates a small stomach pouch that restricts food intake.

The study conducted at Veteran Affairs medical centers followed 850 veterans who had bariatric surgery from January 2000 to December 2006.

When study authors compared the raw rates, patients who had surgery had lower mortality rates with 6.8 percent versus 15.2 percent after six years.

But when researchers compared the 850 veterans to 1,694 similar patients who did not have bariatric surgery, they found that surgery was not significantly associated with reducing mortality.

Matthew Maciejewski, of Durham VA Medical Center and colleagues concluded that “bariatric surgery does not appear to be associated with survival during a mean of 6.7 years of follow-up.”

Fat people deserve better.

Please Leave Our Stomachs Alone

Obesity isn't just a process of the stomach.

"Stomach Pacemaker May Curb Obesity"

Letter to Obesity Researchers

Dear Obesity Researchers:

I will begin this letter with the caveat and admission, I do not know of all the research being done, but there are problems I am seriously concerned about. I also am not a scientist but I know when something seems to be missing and when the concentration seems to be all in the wrong places.

Years and years ago, when I was looking into why I gained so much weight, I wrote letters to obesity researchers. [wish I kept some of the names], please help! I did find a medical reporter who did help me, found out about PCOS, so all my efforts did have a good outcome. Finding out about PCOS and other endocrine problems definitely bought me more years of life. During this time, I used to scour Pub med. Personal research saved my life as I have earlier detailed on this blog.

When I looked into this stuff, this was the late 90s, I couldn't find ONE study that had taken the severely obese over 400-500lbs and actually seriously studied them. Ok, there may be some limits, they are immobile, often ill with co-morbs galore, but every other condition is studied in it's most extreme forms why not obesity? Could some of you please study us with the motive to help the severely obese?

Sometimes I want to ask, do obesity researchers really want to help people or is all the research now financed to feed the belly of the diet-industry complex? Am I going into conspiracy land to ask this? It kind of bugs me when I see so much of the research for a new product or related to weight loss surgery. I know one has to get funding for research but could someone please think outside the box for once. Is the future of treatment for obesity restricted to risky weight loss surgery?

More and more I think fat people [especially super obese] are physiologically different but this is horribly denied. Diet, exercise and lose weight and supposely the formula applies to EVERYONE. Sorry guys, but it is failing. This tells me more research needs done. Back in the 1800s, they used to admit that people had different metabolisms, some even far lower then others, what happened to that? Can any of you admit these physiological differences? Maybe some of you already have, but it's not affecting society much. They still expect all bodies to function the exact same.

I remember satiety issues even used to be mentioned far more, where has that research gone? Looks like some studies are being done, but you never see satiety mentioned in the regular medical news anymore except in terms of a new product. [That sounds all well and good, but probably all they will do is add some bulking fiber to the food--remember brown rice fills you up faster then white]

When I go to Pubmed and do a search of "severe obesity" [so much is bariactric surgery related]. It looks like the horses are getting more real research then humans. There's plenty of studies detailing the health outcomes of obesity or seeing if obesity is correlated with certain conditions such as in this one. We already know obesity in severe forms rips the body apart, now please find something that will help solve the problem.

Weirdly it seems its mainly to be the Chinese and others dealing with issues of metabolism. Well Western researchers need to step up.

Now this really bothered me...

I searched for studies citing "super-obesity" and got 293 hits on Pubmed. Over 200 [I counted 203] are weight loss surgery related! There are some mice studies on metabolism thrown in, sociological studies regarding fast food poor people and children, affect of conditions and medical procedures on the superobese--the ill effects from all the weight loss surgery--the cart these researchers seem to have put all their eggs in are scary enough, but really few studies on how they came to be that way in the first place!

Sorry guys, I see a total bias in that!

I have to admit these folks are on to something:[quote taken from here]

Gard and Jan Wright argue in a review of obesity research that “obesity research itself has become so entangled with moral discourses and aesthetic values that the ‘science of obesity’ can no longer speak for itself.”

Why isn't anyone caring to find out, how fat bodies [especially super-sized ones]really function?

I suppose this really doesn't surprise me:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Researchers at the University of Alabama (UAB) at Birmingham School of Public Health say a “white-hat bias” abounds in obesity research, and may skew reported results. White-hat bias is described as the “tendency to distort information about products regardless of the facts, when the distortions are perceived to serve good ends.”
In the case of obesity research, results may be misrepresented by scientists operating with particular biases on topics related to weight, nutrition and the food industry, as well as biases toward products like sugar-sweetened beverages, and practices like breastfeeding, according to the UAB study

There are a few of you thinking outside the box, not letting lies about obesity blind you, but there needs to more in that category.

Some questions to ask yourselves as you go forth with more research:

If we do not know these things, then how can anyone help fat people?

1. Why are fat people hungrier?

2. Why do some people stop at a certain weight and some keep gaining?

3. Why with even the pressure of immobility, severe health problems and worse etc, do so many people fail in losing weight?

4. What is the actual human range in metabolism?

5. Why is so much of the research focused on weight loss surgery? Surely other options should be explored?

6. Why can't more people admit that fat bodies operate differently then thin ones?

It's time to really study the severely obese, this country is getting fatter, and more needs done. Some out there need to do a LOT BETTER.

Update: I would be diagnosed with stage 4 Lipedema in 2014.  

Heightened Suicide Risk After Weight Loss Surgery

Here is a report out about the heightened suicide risk after weight loss surgery.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Severely obese people who undergo weight-loss surgery may have a higher-than-average risk of suicide in the years following the procedure, a new study finds.

The report, in The American Journal of Medicine, adds to evidence that patients who have bariatric surgery to lose weight have an increased risk of suicide compared with the general population.

But the reasons for the pattern, researchers say, remain unknown.

Some researchers! It isn't that hard to figure out. This is sad to read, but I've see the bad affects of weight loss surgery in people I've known ranging from death to a diabetic becoming even sicker. When you watch one friend thinking WLS will deliver from the hell-bound life of congestive heart failure, and everything you share, and watch her die only 18 months after the procedure it makes you think. The "rocket scientists" of the industrial diet cartel,are missing the basic facts as usual.

People do well in the first 6 months to two years, if they survive the table and immediate recovery but I have not met one person where the weight loss surgery is long lasting after the 5 year mark. Then add to that severe health problems some more overt and some subtle. Imagine the depression and despair of someone going through the gauntlet of risking their life, and dangerous, painful surgery, thinking it will end their life of fatness and what level of depression results, when the surgery does not live up to expecations. PTSD, scars that serve as an endless reminder of your "failure", time on a ventilator [in two friends cases, where your breathing itself is negotiable] and then realizing it's all for naught, when you lose maybe 80lbs at the front end, and regain it back as time goes by on less food?

Then add to it, that one's digestive system usually is under duress even in the best cases, [trust me on this one when one's bowels and stomach have checked out, life can become hell on earth]. Depression also has many facets related to nutrition, something that many do not know about, lacking vital minerals, and vitamins, the brain is going to be affected, that cannnot be escaped!

Remember writing the above, I am not discounting that some may win the spin of the WLS roulette wheel and buy themselves some time, and mobility, but I can't deny the scary stuff I have seen.

Why Don't You Get Weight Loss Surgery?

No Thanks given this latest article, which only backs up what I've seen for myself.

Yes I know there are some people who spin this roulette wheel and win, but having known 5 people personally who have gotten very sick and/or died of weight loss surgery, I'm not going to line up too soon. This has ranged from people who died right on the table, some with the need for respirators to keep them breathing, and death coming after a year with several complications for a few. When it comes to weight loss surgery, why can't they come up with something better that actually works where dieting [which already failed before isn't required to keep it going?] As the website for Lapband states " You are prepared to make major changes in your eating habits and lifestyle", this begs the question, well if that didn't work before why now?

Big fat blog talks about weight loss surgery as "the new lobotomy", they are correct it's like medical treatment with a chain saw. The same affects could be had, saving $40,000 by locking a fat person in a room [no I'm not supporting this] and only sending in some jello and broth in the early stages, and little quarter cups of food in the later stages and seeing what happens, at least the person would be spared the horror, pain, and dare I say torture? [of having their innards rearranged.]

Sadists couldn't have come up with a worse solution for fat people. Take it from me the digestive system when it doesn't work right, is not pretty, and even sicker that is among all the false expectations, their trying to turn fat people into thin ones via induced illness just makes me sick. From what I can tell, those who survive the surgery itself, and live, manage one or two years, lose about a third of the weight, and then regain it all back or nearly all of it, 5 years down the road. Of course when these people go back to the doctors to say "my surgery failed", they will be blamed and told they "out-ate" their surgery.