's motd Tue 9/9/2008 - WLS

[Guest guest]

WEIGHT-LOSS SURGERY?

Tuesday, 09 September 2008

Over the weekend, I must have read a few hundred E-mails, many of them asking that same question, contained in the title of today's message. I'm sure we can all agree that our country has gone a little "weight-loss surgery crazy."

Years ago, there were few of these surgeries, still relatively new at the time. Back then, they were performed only on the morbidly obese to help save the lives of those patients. But today, a lot of people are opting for weight-loss surgery just to have thinner thighs!Over the course of my career, I have worked with very obese people who were all able to get down to healthier weights by changing over to healthier lifestyles. I know people who've lost 200, 300 pounds, and more...on their own! And they all started out feeling like they just couldn't do it. But you know what? With a lot of hard work, they did!In the E-mails I receive lately, lots of men and women facing big weight loss challenges say things to me like, ", I have tried to lose weight for so many years with so many different diets and always with little success. Do you think I should have a weight-loss surgery?"

I have to tell you that I tried all kinds of diets myself, in fact, hundreds of them over the years. And the truth is that I was not very successful with any of them.In other E-mails, the person writing might tell me, "I can't go on looking like this. I need to lose this weight now...and I mean fast!"Here we go again...I always wanted to lose weight fast, too. But it didn't work out for me. Every time, as fast as I lost the weight, I would gain it all back...just as fast!Other people write to say, "Everyone around me tells me that I should go ahead and have the weight-loss surgery, but I am so scared of it, !"Guess what? I'm scared of surgery, too and I mean any surgery! To me, any surgery is "major surgery" and never a "walk-in-the-park." But the big question from all of these writers breaks down to the same one: Does believe in weight-loss surgery?

Okay, I have to tell you what's in my heart. I believe a lot of people who opt for weight-loss surgery could have lost the weight with-out resorting to the surgery. But I also know of people who weighed anywhere from 500 to 700 pounds who had the surgery and lived to tell about it. So what I tell people in the responses I send back to their E-mails is that their decision to have weight-loss surgery is one between them, their doctors and God. Not your family members, not your friends...no one, but you the doctor and the good Lord. No one else. But if I were you, before making the decision, I would think long and hard and ask myself if I could lose the weight on my own, without the surgery. Just like so many people before you have done who, I know, had just as much weight to lose as you.And for those of you who are morbidly obese or nearly housebound, you have to think about what you can do to save your own life. That's the most important decision of all for you to make. Love,