I should start here by letting you know that I have had gastric bypass surgery. I had a Roux-n-Y bypass. It was back on December 2001. December 14, 2001, to be exact and I will never forget that day because it changed my life. It is like a second birthday for me – only without the cake and ice cream for obvious reasons.
Now that you know that, there are a few things that I feel I should tell you about gastric bypass surgery:
1. It is not “The easy way out”. I was accused by more than one friend or family member of taking the easy way out when I opted for a gastric bypass. Let me tell you something: it was one of the biggest decisions I ever made in my life and it took me well over a year of research and soul searching to make it. The surgery was not easy. Yes, it was laproscopic but getting cut open is cut open. It was painful. Eating baby food for weeks afterwards and then learning how to eat solid food without vomiting wasn’t easy either.
2. It does not fix all your weight problems. Yes, it will help you to lose weight and quickly. (Try eating three jars of baby food every day for a couple weeks and tell me if you lose weight.) The thing is, it will only help you lose about 80% of the weight you are over your ideal weight. That other 20% is up to you.
3. It does not mean you can eat everything you want and still lose weight. Initially you’ll lose weight because your stomach is about the size of a shot glass and a potato chip will feel like a meal but a constant diet of potato chips will eventually put the pounds back on for you. You have to be ready to start eating a healthy diet and give up the foods that made you fat in the first place.
4. If you get pregnant, all bets are off! I was over two years post-op when I got pregnant with my first child. For many women, weight loss surgery is the answer to their fertility problems and this may very well have been the case for me. Regardless of fertility issues, once you get pregnant, your body releases hormones that make your digestive system amazingly efficient. A pregnant woman’s digestive system operates on the idea that every bit of nutrient must and will be absorbed by the body because she is supporting two human beings. Those hormones virtually negated my smaller stomach and shorter intestines and my body began acting like it did before my surgery. I didn’t know any of this at the time and ended up gaining 70 pounds with that pregnancy.
5. You have to do the hard work. As I said, weight loss surgery will only help you lose about 80% of your extra weight. You have to be ready, willing and able to get off your shrinking butt and do the exercise and correct eating that will get the last 20% off.
6. It doesn’t last forever. The human stomach is an amazing thing. You can cut off 90% of it in weight loss surgery so that you are left with a stomach the size of a shot glass but if you over feed it, it can stretch right back out into a quart or even half-gallon sized trough. If you have weight loss surgery, you have to be mindful of portion sizes or you’ll be right back where you started.
These are just some of the myths surrounding gastric bypass surgery. People have been having this surgery for years, but some people just still aren’t getting the whole picture.
If you have questions about gastric bypass or any weight loss surgery, I’d love to help you address them. Please feel free to email me at LisaP@Families.com or send me a private message.