Bariatric surgery is controversial with many people believing that it's the easy route 'out' for people in very large bodies. But what exactly do they know about the people who opt for the surgery? Nothing. It's so easy to judge a person on their appearance, believing we know how healthy or fit a person is based on their body size or shape, but what if the information we've taken in over the years is outdated and shrouded in prejudice due to lack of understanding of weight regulation. Would that make you reassess your beliefs?
People who opt for surgery feel stigmatised by society for years which plays havoc with their mental health and only exacerbates the situation they find themselves in. Despite what people think, those in larger bodies don't eat their way to a larger body, in fact the opposite is more likely to be true. Weight-cycling for years (yo-yo dieting) will actually increase the body's set point weight (a weight where your body naturally wants to settle).
The larger a person becomes, the more difficulty the brain has registering leptin (a hormone made by fat cells which gauges fullness and tells us to stop eating) which makes it harder to feel satiated. Metabolism and hormone production are also affected by weight increase which means people often feel out of control; this is very real because their body has spent years preparing them for the next 'famine' which is a natural physiological reaction to restrictive diets. It's basically a losing battle.
After delivering training recently on working with the Bariatric Client to which some of you attended, I have become committed to supporting this huge army of folks further, and I have now attended twice, the huge Facebook group (2500 members) which sprung up overnight after Kim the brilliant trainer who delivered our training set it up.
To say I was shocked was an understatement when asked who believed they binge ate or emotionally ate the whole room put up their hands, some attendees ate throughout the meeting and what was astonishingly clear was that each person who spoke clearly had a significant eating disorder, many suffering with BED, others with Atypical Anorexia and ALL with huge anxiety. As the majority of these desperate people had fled aboard, they had little or no screening and not one of them screened for neurodivergence, even the amazing trainer an ex bariatric patient did not realise she was ADHD until she attended my training on the Neurodivergent client (she is now going through the process).
The dreadful sadness being is that those who had an eating disorder untreated, as we know are set up to fail, society sets them up to fail and without a doubt if they are ADHD, AUHD or Autistic they will unravel without coaching, as was so clear that so many of them had done so last night.
Par for the course, I have been harassed on Social Media for putting on such a training, mostly by therapists who really should know better, and yet I now truly do no longer care about the abuse I receive it is like water off a duck's back, what I do care about is the judgement that professionals place on these individuals often suffering in secret, tormented and ashamed. As we all know surgery is not the holy grail and it is certainly not the easy way out and my dream is that these people will all have access way, way back in their life, to trained therapists like us all, as working as we do with this huge client group, could/would change the direction or their future, one perhaps without the final life changing surgery IF they had received earlier interventions.
Finally, the group are extremely grateful that someone as amazing as Kim is supporting them, they were emotional and tearful at times as they currently strongly believe that therapists/society judge them and disapprove of them, and they are so often not wrong judging by my Social Media responses.
Bariatric surgery is effective for weight loss but there is a need to pay special attention to oneself post surgery.
