My Decision To Go For Bariatric Surgery

By no means am I suggesting that surgery is for everyone. However, if you, like myself, have struggled with your weight for a long time and are tired of weight yo-yo-ing, I recommend looking into it. My post-surgery journey has just started (2 months post-op); the journey to get there was long, but I can already say it has been life-changing.

I also want to accentuate that having a bigger body is absolutely nothing wrong. If you are happy, healthy and comfortable in your skin (and body), I want you to know that you are valuable, beautiful and deserving of all that life has to offer just the way you are. Don’t let that mean, self-doubting inner critic or society tell you anything different. Love yourself, and do you.

My decision to go for bariatric surgery came after years of lugging around a vast amount of extra weight, and I’d reached a point where I felt ‘enough is enough’. The Covid-19 pandemic was the nail in the coffin. I’d already gained more weight leading up to the pandemic due to a knee injury that had seen my activity levels plummet. So I decided to bury the coffin filled with past feelings of failures, shame and inadequacy, doubts and fears and let it go. In my head, I heard Marianne Williamson’s voice “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”. 

For years I had been resistant to even considering bariatric surgery because I found it difficult to accept that I needed help beyond the changes that I knew I had the power to implement for myself. I can do meal plans and exercise programmes; I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Nutrition and Exercise Science and a Master of Science degree in Public Health Nutrition. On top of that, I am an experienced behaviour change specialist. My inner voice was constantly telling me, ‘You should do better. You know better.’ Which was often backed up by a meaner version saying, ‘you don’t deserve better’. 

In 2004, or possibly 2005, I attended an obesity action conference in London where a consultant did a presentation on weight loss surgery. Although I always had that internal battle that I should be able to do it myself, I also knew that weight loss surgery was not the solution for me then. Bariatric surgery is not a quick fix. Like many people who have been overweight or obese for a long time, I had a dysfunctional relationship with food. Which, at the core of things, had nothing to do with food. I knew I had to heal that relationship to successfully shed the weight for good. It took years of working on myself to understand the emotional wound I had, do the work, and start healing it. Eventually, I reached a crossroads where I had to either keep carrying on my life feeling rubbish about my body and allowing the weight to get in the way of living the life I wanted for myself OR ask for help.

The trigger to make that first doctor’s appointment to discuss bariatric surgery was following a telephone conversation I had at the end of May 2021 with a family member that was two weeks post-op gastric sleeve surgery. They were open to personal questions, and the conversation unveiled common (misguided) feelings of shame and failure to ‘resort to’ bariatric surgery. However, we had witnessed the tremendous transformation in both the physical and mental well-being of another family member who’d had a gastric sleeve surgery a couple of years earlier. We both agreed it had inspired us and wavered our resistance to considering surgery as a solution. So as soon as I put the phone down, I called my GP (General Practitioner) surgery to make an appointment.

I felt incredibly empowered by my decision to move forward; I embraced the fact that I could not do it alone. There was no reason for me to deny an opportunity to change my life. There is no badge of honour for not asking for help when you need it. ♥ M