Bariatric Surgery: Weight-Loss Miracle or just a Hardcore Dietary “Enforcement Tool”?

Not to talk smack about anyone who has had baraitric surgery – if you did and it worked for you, great, that’s awesome. I would never fault anyone who is trying to improve themselves regardless of how they do it. I’m more speaking to the growing number of people who are being led to believe that its “the only way out”. Much to my agitation, I watch a lot of Discovery, TLC and Discovery Health shows – and I have a particular fascination with ones that deal with obesity (Brookhaven Obesity Clinic, Big Medicine, as well as those random specials ‘Half-Ton Dad’, ‘Born Without A Face’, etc).

You’ve seen these shows I’m sure. Some are inspirational and full of hope, and others are just downright depressing and borderline exploitative.

Well, lately even the uplifting ones have started to bother me. People who push bariatric surgery as a profession (like Big Medicine) seem to be playing a big role as enablers to their patients and on obese American viewers as a whole. I think that its launched a cavalcade of “Poor Me” thinking as opposed to more productive “I Have Adversity to Overcome” mentalities. I think it enforces this idea of obese people being “trapped”, because that’s exactly how they are referenced to. They are treated as innocent victims of a toxic world, unable to rise above their predicaments.

(which we all know is only HALF true – its IS a poisonous world, but the antidote is information)

Now, before I continue, I’m obviously making broad and sweeping generalizations, each case is different – but I think that in a large way people seeing these shows can’t help but identify with the problems they see, and then when the all-knowing reality TV doctors say things like, “We see surgery as the only way you can ever lose this weight”. What are they supposed to think? Now we’ve got more people walking around being obese and unhealthy thinking “Its genetic, there isn’t anything I can do about it, except surgery that I can’t afford. Oh well.”

Maybe its just classically “American” to blame everything else around us except that problem at hand.
Right? Spread the fault around and maybe none of it will touch us.

Well, “pardon my french”, but I think that’s just bullsh*t.

Why does weight loss have to be a “culture of blame, shame and circular reasoning”? People need to OWN their faults as well as their strengths.

Here is a radical idea that will hopefully get you thinking.

I recently watched one of Gary Taubes university lectures online where at the end he makes a brief reference to Bariatric Surgery possibly only being effective due to the diet restrictions and wished someone would do some comparative studies on it.

Well, it got me thinking about that very concept. What if a study WAS done in a “placebo” fashion. Obviously we can’t do double-blind here but still – let’s say we had the 2 groups where one group HAD the surgery and was put on the post-surgery diet (which is tiny portions, vitamin supplements, and quite low-carb to boot) like a normal post-op patient would be – and another group who DIDN’T have the surgery but was forced to eat the same diet. I say “forced” because obviously if the post-surgery group were to eat inappropriately they’d be in great discomfort – so we’d need to enforce the same on the “placebo” side.

What would the results be 6, 12 or 18 months later?

I’d be willing to bet that the weight loss numbers would be shockingly similar – without costly (and possibly dangerous,even fatal) surgery.

So, as my post title says – is bariatric surgery effective because of the bypass surgery itself – or because of the lifestyle changes that it FORCES its patients to follow?

Sometimes the “quick fix” isn’t what its cracked up to be.

What does everybody think?

(please don’t be offended if you disagree – in fact, I expect a number of people to disagree, if so – let me know in the comments, but please keep it civil – this is a family show!)

Related posts:

1. Basics 1: Easy, Quick, and Safe Weight Loss