Failed Weight Loss Measures And The Super Obese
What are some excellent weight loss options? I’m a true believer in diet and exercise. When you burn more calories than you consume on a daily basis, the laws of chemistry, physics, and all other natural sciences say that you will lose weight.
There’s also the option for gastric bypass, which is really nothing more than a really expensive way to make you stop eating so much. If you don’t exercise while you diet, or don’t continue to exercise after you stop dieting, your body will eventually slow down its metabolism and weight loss will become harder and harder. You will gain your weight back. Some people have literally eaten their way through a gastric bypass procedure and find themselves right back at square one.
Weight loss is never easy. You don’t get fat overnight. It takes years of hard work to become a member of the small but growing group of Americans known as the super obese. Those folks who are so over weight that they literally cannot walk. These folks can’t function. These folks can’t do their activities of daily living. These folks have life threatening cardiac and respiratory complications of their eating disorder. These folks often require an intensive inpatient multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and psychologists to save their life.
So it didn’t surprise me when 32 year old Mrs Smith returned a year later and one hundred pounds heavier on the doorstep of death. Her 600 pounds was literally crushing her from the outside in. What was this weight loss option that failed her so? In the words of her surgeon:
I offered to refer her to a surgeon who specializes in gastric bypass. She declined. I offered to arrange for evaluation of her heart failure and breathing problems. She declined. So I gave her a copy of the book “Finding a Thin Person Hiding Inside of You”.
It didn’t work. Which makes this the greatest fail of weight loss options ever.
*This blog post was originally published at Happy Hospitalist*
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