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IS OBESITY SURGERY A SOLUTION?

Recent claims by obesity ‘specialists’ that surgery is the solution to obesity and that action should be taken to make it more widely available are outrageous and downright dangerous, says Caryl Richards, Slimming World Managing Director. “Any health professional who claims that overweight people are victims of a genetic disease is acting directly against the long-term well-being of the very people they are claiming to help and should be stopped!

“The proposition takes no account of the real causes of overweight and undermines the obese person’s determination to help themselves. It positively encourages overweight people to think of themselves as victims and to do nothing except wait until they have someone else give them an ‘easy out’. It’s a cruel distraction at best and at worst, while the very people who need help wait around for this magic solution instead of taking action themselves, their problem – and their health – worsens.

“Offering surgery as a solution for obesity takes no account of an overweight person’s state of mind, their motivation, their self-esteem or their confidence to make changes – changes that could save their life and protect them for life. At Slimming World, with 40 years experience of working with overweight and obese people, we have learnt that the key to long term weight management is a healthy, generous and realistic eating plan combined with real and effective support.

“By the time a person considers surgery for weight loss they have probably tried many times already to lose weight by diet or exercise or both. When they’ve failed in the past, it’s not they who have failed and it’s not the diet that failed them – it is the support system that has failed them. By now their confidence and self worth is on the floor, their motivation to try again is non existent and they need even more support. Surgery only serves to heighten these feelings of failure and lack of control, puts the solution well and truly in someone else’s hands and leaves the individual bereft of the very support they needed in the first place.

“After surgery, the problem continues, the individual still needs support to make changes to old eating habits, unhealthy lifestyles and inactive routines. Who provides them with real and effective support then – after the NHS has spent in excess of £6000? In our experience – no-one does. They have no new healthy habits, they still find it hard to eat healthily and exercise regularly – they have no lifelong solution within their own control.

“What is more, nor do their families. So instead of helping overweight people take control, instead of empowering them to make a new life for themselves and their children – what do we expect their children to do? Wait for weight loss surgery to come to them? Is the (health professional) world going mad? Thankfully, not all of them. We agree the Government should act now – but not to make surgery more available but to make sure we get responsible messages out to the public and offer them real and effective support.”

Tags: Diet & Exercise