Surgery for Weight Loss?

More than 216,000 bariatric surgeries are performed in the U.S. each year, but here is the kicker:

Bariatric Surgery doesn’t work.

But wait, surely this can’t be true? Years’ worth of studies shows dramatic weight loss after bariatric surgery. It also has a more than 90% cure rate for type 2 diabetes.

Many people will say it saved their lives. So how can you say it doesn’t work?

Although there is something that does save these people and drive the dramatic weight loss and elimination of type 2 diabetes, it is not the surgery itself, but rather the post-operative diet.

The patient’s stomach is drastically reduced in size after surgery, so they are put on a diet of 500 to 800 calories per day. If they consume more than that, they could damage the stomach and actually die.

Studies show that by going on the same post-operative diet without having had the bariatric surgery, the same and often better results will be achieved as people who did have the surgery.

There are more and more studies showing this, and I will include a meta-review in the comments as a reference.

It is called a “Pseudo-Fast,” also known as a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD), or a Fasting Mimicking Diet.

It is called a Pseudo-fast because it mimics the positive effects of fasting, although the results are not quite as “good”.

Giving the surgery the credit is misleading.

Would people be more motivated to stick to a Pseudo-fast diet if they had a surgery that would make it possible for them to die if they overate?

I think this is a reasonable assumption. Does this then mean that the surgery produced the benefits? NO, it definitely does not!

If you are thinking about having any bariatric procedure done and your doctor has not made the fact clear that it is not the surgery that offers you any distinct benefit, then I would want to know why.

Why risk death on an operating table when it is actually the diet after the surgery that results in all the beneficial changes? Why pay the 10k to 30k for the experience?

Knowledge is power, and there is so much more out there to learn.

Never think you are out of options, never believe that drugs and surgery are the only way to do things. Trauma is perhaps the only exception to this.

Fasting is powerful, natural, and free, not to mention powerfully effective for healthy weight loss as well as health improvement.

What more could you want, besides wanting someone else to do it for you! I want that too, but it simply doesn’t work like that.

We can do better my friends! Happy breakfast skipping!