Weight reduction surgery known as bariatric surgery is designed for people who are severely overweight. If you have a Body Mass Index over 40 (or over 35 with medical problems linked to your weight), surgery could be right for you.
Because surgery is just one part of controlling your weight if you’re not committed to making changes to your lifestyle and want to go on eating whatever you like bariatric surgery is probably not for you. That’s why it’s important for you to meet with our whole team – the surgeon, the counsellor/psychotherapist the dietician and the anaesthetist – so we can make sure surgery is a good choice for you and you get the best results.
The World Health Organisation uses a measure called the Body Mass Index (BMI). It is calculated using your height and weight to work out which category you are in.
As a general guide the BMI can be very useful, however It is important to note it can sometimes be misleading. For example muscle mass is considerably more dense than fatty tissue meaning that a muscular person may read higher on the scale than a less muscular person of similar proportions.
For example muscle mass is considerably more dense than fatty tissue meaning that a muscular person may read higher on the scale than a less muscular person of similar proportions.
People talk about being lazy and greedy but it’s really important to remember that being overweight is not about your personality or character – it’s a disease. Life in New Zealand makes it easy to gain weight and hard to lose it – the kinds of food that aren’t good for us are easy to get and cheap and many of us aren’t very active. Scientists also believe that our genes may play a part in being overweight.
Effectively your brain and your stomach are working against you when you try the usual methods like dieting. When you diet your brain works to control your weight while hormones in your stomach try to make up for the lost weight by making you hungry. That’s why when people lose a lot of weight they often put it all back on quickly – and even add more.
Diets, medication and work on changing our behaviour and lifestyle can sometimes result in short term weight loss but in the majority of people the weight is regained. For people who are severely overweight this isn’t enough to make a real difference to their health. Many people find that dieting and intensive exercise are lifelong battles that they can’t win. Surgery has been proven to produce sustained weight loss and reduce risk to life.
Image shows success rates according to the Guidelines by the National Institute of Health in the United States