I am so sick of hearing the lies of our media selling Gastric Bypass Surgery like Christians sell Jesus ...the answer to all your problems! You are fat because you eat like crap and don't exercise and when you try a diet you cheat- and don't say you don't cause you're only lying to yourself. You give up easy and when you get frustrated you run for the Border...ahem, Taco Bell and stuff your face until the pain goes away. SO now everyone is finding salvation in GB. Haleleuja! Praise the Lord! I understand when morbidly obese people need to get the surgery to save their immediate lives or so they can walk again or leave their house on a regular basis, but a lot of just plain fat people are getting on the wagon to overweight salvation. The end result???? The immediately lose the weight and then slowly put it ALL BACK ON! Carnie Wilson got the surgery done at the very end of the 90s and she got fat again. One of my mom's good friends got it in 1999 and she gained it back and then some. The truth is, it is a short term answer. You continue to eat like crap and you WILL stretch your stomach back out and be in the same situation if not a worse situation then before. That is a lot of stress on your body to yo-yo at such extremes.

Plus, because of people (who don't really need it) getting the surgery on their work insurance, corporations are now profiling fat people. Some organizations are threatening to drop health benefits or even terminate workers for being over weight. My friend's dad is a Proffesor at the University of Indiana and he is a BIG guy but he always has been and he is perfectly happy being a big jolly fella. Now he is nervous because the school is talking about enacting a health requirement for all its employees meaning he would have to drop the weight to recieve certain health benefits or he could even possibly lose his job if he appeared to be an "Insurance Risk." Of course this is unfair. They did it to smokers so now they think they can do it to fat people. But how should we treat obesity. You can't fire someone for having Aids, so is Obesity a desease that should be treated in the same respects or is it a habit of eating like smoking is a habit and workers should have to break it or go someplace else? Either way this idea of requiring employees to be ina healhty weight range is being embraced by the corporate world and could be coming to a job place near you.

So in short - cut out the sodas, cut down the fast food, go walking 30 minutes a day, take the stairs instead of the elevator, park far away from your destination to walk more, bring a lunch so you don't eat out, throw all that unhealthy snack junk out of your desk, drink water water water, replace fries and mac and cheese with steamed veggies and fruit, don't grill things with butter, and get a medium instead of a large - hell get a small if its available and you will eventually lose all that weight, won'thave to worry about job security, and you will be looking fabulous by the time your friend who got GB has gained it all back! HA HA HA - plus you won't have all the saggy skin. When you lose weight at a rate of 2 lbs a week or slower it gives your skin cells a chance to recontruct themsleves. When you lose weight too rapidly your tissue can't keep up and you end up with bags of skin to deal with.

--Sue