I have noticed some saying weight loss surgery is a tool.

WLS is a tool, but it's not an easy one. Post-surgery, patients must still maintain a very careful diet and exercise program. Depending on the type of surgery, eating too much can be very dangerous for them. It's also a very invasive and risky surgery. It can have health consequences down the line. Reputable doctors who do the surgery require extensive counseling and consults with dietitians before they will do the surgery (there are some who just do it without fully vetting the patient first to make sure they'll follow the proper protocol--not good). I think WLS should only be used as a last resort for someone who has tried the old-fashioned way with no success (and I mean, REALLY tried, not just half an effort). To each his own, I guess, but I'm not willing to put my health at risk like that.

I started at about 500 pounds, and am still going. I didn't exercise at all until I'd dropped about 75 pounds. I just stopped putting so much food in my piehole.

Good for you and good for everyone else that can... I'm not saying it isn't possible... but sometimes the weight causes a mental block for some (not all. not most. just some) people to get into the mindset to do what they need to do to be healthier. It certianly is not an easy way out though. No matter how much people want to judge it as such.

If its a mindblock fix your mind not staple your stomach

Yeah, because it's all that easy... and you got your Psychology degree from where?

I also consider it the easy way out. The lazy way to lose weight.

I would not want surgery. There is nothing easy or simple about that process, and if someone is at that point, they obviously have a reason for it.

I get what you are saying. I sometimes think it is the easy way out also. Yes, they have to be brave in a different type of way - getting cut, and the recovery of it all...but I sometimes think people think it will get them immediate results. I've thought about surgery, a few times actually, and "my" reason alone was two things...In my head, it is going to take a lonnnnnnnng time and a lot of work to get the body that I want, and sometimes I doubt that I can get the body that I want on my own power. Sometimes I don't trust myself to follow through with it and losing weight. But that is the part of me that is scared. When I control what I eat, work out, and make healthy decisions about my lifestyle. I am in control and taking stock of my life! I think people need to know that there is hope at the end of the tunnel and that there is help out there...and that they can get themselves educated, and train their mind and body to work in sync and get themselves out of this situation and live better, longer, healthier lives without surgery...

1 in 200 surgeries result in DEATH..........do you really think they are taking the easy way out

I lost it, I WAS TO DAM SCARED to go under the Knife, and Im terrified of hospitals

Ive got about 30 more to go, but again, you do what you have to do to save your life

I dont think people who are having the surgery are taking the EASY way out.....

^^exactly so! Very well put!

I can appreciate the sentiment. Having gone under the knife, myself, I'm still leery of it.

But bear this in mind: most surgeries occur because there is something seriously wrong with the patient's health, to begin with. It can be hard to separate where the surgery, itself, is what did someone in, versus where it may have not helped the original problem or where it may have exacerbated one.

I guess I don't understand that logic. I find MFP and exercise programs to be tools. I find surgery as a last ditch effort for someone who cannot get their mind and body in sync. I have nothing against it if its your choice, but for all the people that have busted their butts doing it the healthy lifestyle way I consider surgery an easy out. You thoughts?

I don't really think you have any place to judge. Neither do I. I don't have an opinion on the matter because I've never been in the position to need to decide "Do I need to have this surgery to loose weight?" I don't know what it's like to be 300 or 400 or 500 pounds overweight. I think if your doctor is advising you to have weight loss surgery, than that's a discussion to be had between you and your doctor and I don't see it as anything different.

I feel extremely sad for people who are judged for choosing to have the surgery. That surgery is not without risk. You're under general anaesthetic and you're extremely overweight. That's not easy for an anasthesiologist. I think people who choose that route are desperate, and extremely brave.

It's not a choice I would choose to make... unless I found myself weighing 500 pounds and would likely die in a few years anyway. I'm extremely grateful that I am not that excessively overweight and that isn't a choice I will ever be faced with.

TL:DR? Don't judge someone whose shoes you couldn't possibly correctly imagine being in.

Each time this thread comes up I have the same knee jerk reaction to tell everyone to GFY, and I get angry. Then I remember that not one of you -- not even those of you that have undergone WLS -- know what my life was like, why I chose Gastric Bypass, and what I've done to save my own life since having the surgery that I chose for ME.

There is no need for anger. And, quite frankly, I don't have time to be angry at strangers. People can believe what you will. Some people have personal experiences, some listen to gossip about someone's neighbor's boyfriend's girlfriend who had "it", and some just think they know everything.

There's not a moment that passes that I don't remember exactly why I chose Gastric Bypass. After 5 years, 210# lost, and amazing changes in my life, I still marvel at the wonders that I can accomplish. Not one person on this Earth needs to care about what choices I made for myself. The only one who did have a right to care is dead -- weight related respiratory and cardiac failure at 700+ pounds and only 41 years old. He had the right to care as he was my life partner, and I felt he was entitled to weigh in on my decision. He's dead now. So, I am free to be the one and only person affected by my decision.

First off, let me start by saying it is none of my business whether someone has the lap band, sleeve or bypass. It's also none of my business if someone wants to get lipo. That's their choice.

However, there are two different sets of people many people are arguing about here. There is a big difference between those people who qualify by fibbing a little bit about whether diets worked for them, and the other subset of people who literally will die before they are able to naturally lose the weight. Just saying.

They ALLLLLl lie by saying "they have tried diets and they dont work" is my point, i said it and so did and does everyone else.........

Diets dont fail, we do.

So you're saying that someone who is 500-600 lbs with major, major co-morbidities who literally won't live long enough to lose enough weight to get away from the co-morbidities should just die rather than taking the so-called "easy way out"?

Okay. You go ahead and think that.

Easy enough I care because I know state insurances that are funded by tax payers that pay for theses surgeries. I have seen 3 people in my area have them and fail at keeping the weight off. How much did that cost us?

food stamps, welfare, WIC, medicare, medicaid, all state funded, where do you stop?

All these government funded things benefit the economy by returning people to a work-ready condition and by providing those unable to work with a subsistence existence in which money they receive is immediately returned to the economy in the form of purchases necessary for life, yielding a ROI of about $1.70 in economic growth for every $1 spent on these programs.

Wow a lot of responses. I am glad to see there are a lot of people who do not think WLS is "the easy way out." WLS IS a tool and I think the original poster actually accidentally made that point in some of the posts. If WLS was not a tool and was the easy way out then any person who had WLS would magically lose all of the weight and keep it off with no work. The fact that people do often regain weight only proves that it IS a tool...one that was not utilized properly. Just like eating less, exercising, or any other method a person may use if you can choose to use it or not use it then it's a tool! I had WLS almost 9yrs ago and I can assure you it is not the easy way out. Undergoing a major surgery knowing that something tragic could happen and leave your child motherless is not "easy" and the post op lifestyle (which literally changes over night) is anything but easy. You are correct in one thing, it does take a change of mindset to lose weight AND keep it off regardless of how you do it. I can assure you that prior to my WLS I had tried every method under the sun to lose weight and had very little success. WLS forced me to eat less because I physically was not capable of holding large amounts of food and I actually felt full for once, something that I never felt prior to surgery. At any rate it is a personal decision and I don't think any person is in a position to judge what medical procedures another person does or does not need. There are cases of people who get WLS such as lap band to lose "vanity pounds" but I can tell you that undergoing RNY as I did that my life is forever changed...whether I had stayed 125lbs or regained part or all of the weight my insides are forever rerouted and altered and that is not a decision I made lightly. I would also echo what one of the first replies said...why do you care?

Consider this...I've been eating a 1500cal a day diet for over year (less than that a lot of day but that's a nice average) basically eat veggies and fish. I've chronic pain and it's hard to exercise (a failing I'm trying to overcome at the moment) but yet even eating extremely healthy I've put on 15lbs in the last year.

I'm not saying everyone who has WLS has a medical condition. But how can you judge someone if you don't know their circumstances?

I'm in the process of taking charge of my health, of trying to identify what's going on because for me A+B doesn't equal C.

Be kind to people you don't know their path or their journey.

You ALL are mean in here...ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ARGUMENT. Bottom line, it's just our opinion....smh

Consider this...I've been eating a 1500cal a day diet for over year (less than that a lot of day but that's a nice average) basically eat veggies and fish. I've chronic pain and it's hard to exercise (a failing I'm trying to overcome at the moment) but yet even eating extremely healthy I've put on 15lbs in the last year.

I'm not saying everyone who has WLS has a medical condition. But how can you judge someone if you don't know their circumstances?

I'm in the process of taking charge of my health, of trying to identify what's going on because for me A+B doesn't equal C.

Be kind to people you don't know their path or their journey.

I dont like to judge something but I will not fool you and tell you I am not judgemental about WLS cuz I am.

Keep trying, you will figure it out, just PUHLEEEEZ dont cut yourself open as a solution!!!

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I will never coddle or find common ground for WLS or porn (another forum post I ranted about yesterday)

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Anyway, back to the WLS subject, which I agree with her totally about.