Reclaim You- Reclaiming You Before & After Bariatric Surgery: What to Consider
Season 1: Episode 11- Reclaiming You Before and After Bariatric Surgery: What to Consider
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Have you been thinking about weight loss surgeries?
Our cohost Laura Gordon, a therapist with extensive lived experience, sheds light on this often misunderstood journey. As someone who's been through it all, Laura opens up about her personal journey and the impact it has had on her life, body image, and relationship with food. All leading to becoming an eating disorder therapist in Pennsylvania and body image counselor.
Throughout this episode, we navigate through the world of diet culture, weight loss surgery cost, both financial and emotional, and its potential consequences on an individual's physical and mental health.
Weight-loss surgery is no easy decision. The risks involved, the physical and emotional toll it can take on a person's life, and the potential for new iterations of eating disorders are all explored in this episode. Laura discusses the complex relationship between body image, fat phobia, and the medical industry. We also dive into the reality of maintaining weight loss often through eating disorder behaviors.
Beyond the surgery, the aftermath can pose its own set of challenges and complications. We discuss the potential side effects such as alcohol dependence, increased eating disorder symptoms, and the difficulty of sustaining weight loss.
We also navigate through the impact of "lifestyle changes" and the grief that comes when the desired results aren't achieved. This episode is a deep dive into the realities of weight loss surgery, aiming to shed light and offer support to those considering this path, those who have regain weight following weight loss surgery, or those struggling with body image issues.
Check out Laura’s Blog: “LIES THE WORLD HAS TOLD ME: One woman’s journey through weight loss surgery”
Thanks for listening to Reclaim You with Reclaim Therapy!
To learn more about Reclaim Therapy and how to work with a therapist on the team, head to www.reclaimtherapy.org.
Be sure to comment, like and subscribe here, or on YouTube and come follow along on Instagram!
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[00:01] Sarah: Hi there.
[00:01] Sarah: Welcome to Reclaim You, a podcast published by the Reclaim Therapy team. Join us as we share stories, tools, and insights on how to reclaim you in the wake of trauma, disordered eating, and body shame. Grab your coffee, tea, or your favorite snack and get cozy because we're about to dive in.
[00:19] Sarah: Hey, everybody, welcome back to a new episode of Reclaim You. We're chatting with Laura today Day, about a topic that can be really vulnerable and tough, but I'm so grateful for Laura to have this conversation with us. We're talking all about weight loss surgery today, so hey, Laura.
[00:37] Laura: Hey, how are you doing?
[00:38] Sarah: I'm doing okay. How are you?
[00:40] Laura: I'm good. I'm looking forward to having this conversation for folks who are considering this or who have had weight loss surgery and might just need another perspective.
[00:52] Sarah: Yeah, definitely such an important conversation, especially for someone who has had lived experience and is now a therapist who treats folks struggling with disordered eating and who are considering weight loss surgery and different methods to change their bodies or their relationship with. So, yeah, again, really appreciate this conversation. So to start, I guess, would you be okay with sharing some of your own kind of personal experience with all of this, with your journey of having weight loss surgery and coming out on the other side? I'm sure lots of this will kind of weave in and out of the conversation anyway, but that feels like a good starting point.
[01:32] Laura: Yeah, I think that it's important for folks to understand that I come to the table today having had gastric bypass surgery. So the sleeve gastrectomy which led to weight loss in me in that first year after surgery, but eventually that weight loss was not sustainable and led to weight gain. But also I had had a history of an eating disorder and had had treatment around an eating disorder. And in the sort of five years post surgery, those symptoms came back bigger and better than ever and I wound up in even a higher level care treatment. And now that I have continued to be in this place of recovery, working around intuitive eating, working around health at every size and sort of like honoring my body wherever it's at, it's really shifted my perspective on, was this worth it, if that makes sense. And I guess it's brought to light some things that I either overlooked because I was so excited and quite frankly, desperate to lose weight because I'd been on this journey my whole life, basically, and or things that might have been glossed over right in the process. Now, mind you, I had my surgery in 2016, so no doubt there are additions and changes. And I want to say to anyone out there who's listening, it's really important that you do your research and talk with the programs that you might be working with, all the providers with whom you work, including your therapist and dietitian, and maybe thinking about talking with some folks who work in the area of intuitive eating and weight neutrality around this. But there were things that I didn't even consider. I thought, finally, I'm going to take this drastic measure that cost a lot of money and created a lot of long term, if not permanent changes to my body that in the end had some pretty significant negative consequences.
[03:47] Sarah: Yeah, the thing that's coming up for me as you're talking is just this sense of compassion for you back then and anyone in the current moment that's struggling and feeling so desperate that you have to do something, anything really, to figure this out for sure.
[04:05] Laura: Yeah, I think it's really important. And I say this to clients with whom I work who are considering this or other types of interventions. The end of the day, your body is your body and you have full agency to make decisions around your body. And I am here to offer support to help you sort of look at all of the aspects of whatever it is you're engaging in or looking to engage in. Like, okay, let's think about this, let's look at this. Let's take a deep dive. What are the impacts, knowing you and understanding you, that might be positive? What are the impacts that might be neutral? What are the impacts that might be negative? So to take some time with it, but I don't want anyone to feel blamed or shamed if they've had surgery and or if they're considering it and or have it in the future. Because we live in a world that tells us every day if we live in larger bodies. The world every day is telling us both overtly and in more subversive ways that we've talked about in the past on this podcast that our bodies are not worthy of being here. Whether it's a chair that I can't sit on because the arms are too narrow, right? And a lot of my clients talk about having to find the chair that can hold them in a place and sometimes not finding it or going to a concert and not being able to sit in seats. And just the constant diet culture BS, if you will, that's thrown at us left and right, each and every day. And that weight loss surgery is sort of presented now as this savior in all of this, if you will. And it's a huge money making enterprise. People stand to make a lot of money and are making a lot of money off of this. And the diet culture in general makes billions and billions, if not more a year. I have the figure somewhere from a few years ago, but it's projected to continue to increase each and every year. So I want to make sure that folks understand that this is meant to be informative and something to give them more things to think about. It's not meant to be a judgment on any decisions they make.
[06:14] Sarah: Yeah, shame free conversation. The space that we try our very best to create for folks is free of shame, free of the diet, culture, money making, seeds of bullshit shame that they plant over and over again.
[06:30] Laura: Exactly.
[06:32] Sarah: Well, let's start or actually, no, you tell me. Where would you like to start in this conversation?
[06:38] Laura: So I think it's important to start with our relationship with ourselves and then our relationship with food and body and how that all intersects. Because I think that the impact of weight loss, surgery of any kind impacts all of those areas. And so first and foremost, as we mentioned before, we often are entering into this process of consideration of surgery already with a deficit in our sense of self worth and value, believing that thinness is something that is necessary for me to have joy in life, for me to live a more active, full lifestyle. Some folks, health wise, it might make sense for them to have surgery. Like there might be significant health conditions. And again, that's where I always invite people to talk with their team of providers and really assess the risks. So those are some considerations that might have brought someone here. Right? And I want to honor that. But for many of us, I don't want to be in this body anymore. I hate my body and I hate my body and therefore I hate myself. So we're coming at it potentially with a lifetime of distorted body image, a lot of fat phobia that's been ingrained in us and that we really are internalizing, directed toward ourself. A lot of sense of I'm not good enough until I'm thin. And whatever thin is, every person has their own marker for that. And it brings us to the table of this conversation almost, well, I would say with a desperation, right. Certainly for me, it was like this was the last place that I ever wanted to be, but it was the only place that I felt would get me to where I wanted to go right at that point in life. And there's going to be a blog post, well, series on our website that will sort of talk more in depth about my own experience. So I don't want to divulge too much here for the purposes of time and because that's coming out, needless to say, when we're in a place of desperation, when we're in a place of like, I just want to be thin no matter what it takes, sometimes we're not hearing fully what we need to hear. Sometimes we're not tuned in to all the ins and outs of things. Sometimes we don't ask the questions that maybe need to be asked. And we're also being sold a product for all intents purposes and the medical industry does their due diligence, right? They tell us about the risks. And I remember sitting and being like, yeah, whatever. I know there's risk to this, but the risk is worth the reward because I'm going to be thin. And all these people in my life.
[09:26] Sarah: I'll do whatever it takes. Yeah, whatever it takes, exactly.
[09:32] Laura: Seeing other people who were losing weight after surgery, after years and years, it's not a lifetime of struggling. All that led me to the place. And so I'm already coming with this deficit in self worth, self value. I'm coming with some desperation, potentially. And I would say a lot of clients I work with are in that same place. And so we tend to enter into the process. We go through the motions, right? I will jump through any hoop. So if my insurance company says I need to do this for six months, I'll do it for six months. And even in the lead up to it, some folks report that it's really hard to start to make the lifestyle changes. And we'll get into some of that. But then you have the surgery, right? And the surgery itself is not without its discomfort and complications afterwards. And I'll refer you to a variety of places that will tell you what that all is. And you start to lose weight. And yay, I'm losing weight. This is great. And I start to feel better about myself because my whole self has been built upon this notion that I'm fat, therefore I'm bad. When I'm getting thinner, I'm becoming better, if you will.
[10:40] Sarah: I'm becoming good.
[10:41] Laura: Yeah, exactly. Except that the weight loss, and they'll tell you this, your weight loss is capped depending on the type of surgery you have, you're only expected to lose so much. Now, it's significant, right. The percentage of weight that I lost, I never imagined I could have lost on my own and maintained, not even maintained, I couldn't have lost it. You're losing weight, you're losing weight and you're feeling better about yourself, and then something happens and you feel like you're right back to square one. And that's something is that typically the benefits of the surgery, that rapid weight loss is only happening for the first year or two. And then after that, I remember my doctor saying, like, flat out to a room of people when we were at some of these pre sessions that they do. Basically, if you want to continue to lose weight after you hit your limit or your cap or whatever it is, if you want to continue to move toward the body that's really toned and athletic and all that, you have to become a gym rat. You have to be there every day. So when I think about that, is that sustainable? And what does that say about my relationship with exercise in my body, right? That my relationship with exercise needs to be disordered in order for me to continue to see progress, to continue to maintain my weight loss. In our world, they would say, well, it's not disordered. Everyone should be at the gym every day of the week. I had a doctor once tell me, oh, it's easy, you just take in less than you put out, right? So if you have to go to the gym twice a day, you have to and it's like, this is ridiculous. There's all the shaming, what's sustainable, how do I live? Right? And how do I cultivate a relationship with movement that is not coming from a place of fear, a place of judgment, of shame, what have you? So that's one aspect of it is the relationship with the body. So I guess we're starting there. The relationship is already distorted, right? So that exercise part, but that's further along in the process because even before that, right away you are having surgeries. That the outcome of them is that for the rest of your life you're going to be put in a place of restriction and or malabsorption, right? So literally my stomach is smaller, things have been changed in my GI, tragic, and I'm not including the balloon in this that has its other issues and is not as successful. So most people don't look at it, but it has its own stuff. But like with actual surgical invasive interventions, you've changed your digestive system. These are permanent changes. By and large, they cut out a good part of my stomach. And so for the rest of my life I will have issues with malabsorption. And I have deficiencies, as do they'll talk to you about you have to take your vitamins and they'll talk about calcium and they'll talk about vitamin D with that, and they'll talk about iron and they'll talk about the B twelve and other B vitamins. But they don't talk about some of the other deficiencies that more and more we're finding are a part of that. Other vitamins and other types of deficiencies that are important for functioning. Right? So what are the long term consequences of that? I have these deficiencies and I have this malabsorptive potential aspect of my digestive system that exists now. Now I have to buy these vitamins. That bariatric vitamins are expensive. They also are awful. They're either chewable and I literally would get nauseous trying to chew them and eat them to the point where I couldn't take them. And or they're like horse pills, they're so large that that in itself was nauseating, right? But they were also friggin expensive, like super expensive. And I'd already put out all of this money for surgery, which my surgery was covered, but there was still a deductible, a copay, things like that, and the impact of a lifetime of follow up. Right? So now I have to go to the doctor for the rest of my life, I have to get blood work for the rest of my life, I have to take these supplements for the rest of my life. And potentially I might also face consequences down the road. What if I don't have enough calcium? What does that mean for osteoporosis or other things. So just the impact financially of all that. I think it's important for folks to understand it's not just the cost of surgery.
[15:10] Sarah: And then you move on.
[15:12] Laura: Yeah. And then beyond that, I think it's important to think about some of the side effects of those restrictive or malabsorptive aspects being things like your body not being able to handle the food that you give it. And something like dumping syndrome. Right. So they'll talk to you, no doubt, about Dumping syndrome. And Dumping Syndrome is pretty typical, especially when one has had bariatric surgery. And basically think about it. Your whole digestive system has been either bypassed and bypassed, or your stomach is really small and food hits your body and just goes right through you. And you find yourself having constant stomach upsets, having to run to the bathroom, or you're having a trouble digesting food you've put in your body. And there are certain foods, especially like proteins that might be overcooked or if they're not small enough, things like for me, rice and pasta. If I eat too much, I'm going to vomit it all up. And it's not my intent to purge, but I wind up purging by virtue of the changes to my system. So some of those behaviors start to arise, and it's not pleasant. And dumping syndrome and vomiting, I had my surgery in 2016. I still have issues with both, particularly the vomiting if I've eaten something that's not small enough and or if I'm listening to my hunger, but I can't trust it because my body is not the same. Right. That's a whole nother thing.
[16:46] Sarah: I imagine for folks who have eating disorder symptoms or been diagnosed with an eating disorder prior to surgery, having these symptoms kind of arise afterwards could be really problematic in terms of really that propel into a different, maybe iteration of the eating disorder.
[17:07] Laura: Absolutely. Yeah. I found that for the first month after surgery, for the first couple of weeks, you're on this clear liquid diet, basically. And then you start to add in things. So in the beginning, you don't want to eat. In a lot of ways, you're kind of adjusting. But as you sort of as things settle and you're settling into this new digestive system, if you will, this new place. Absolutely. I learned pretty early on, and I see this in clients, and I know folks who shared their own experiences, who are friends and others. You start to cheat the system because you're hungry. Just recently, I had this conversation with my dietitian. I was like, I look at the food and I still want it, I'm still hungry, but I physically can't eat it because my stomach is too small. And so if we think about the relationship with body in terms of all the work that we talk about with really listening to our bodies, intuitive eating, understanding our body's needs, trusting our bodies. How can you trust your body when it might be saying, I'm still hungry because you're not giving me enough nutrients by virtue of the surgery or by virtue of restriction, but if you eat too much, I'm going to vomit or I'm going to dump. Right. It messes up that whole relationship. And so I think that those are important considerations and also that there are complications. I know folks who've had to have surgeries down the road for blockages that became really emergent caused medical crisis. There is risk that extends throughout the lifetime, potentially. So those are things that folks often like, well, that will never happen to me. Well, I have a friend who went to the hospital with a blockage and followed all the rules and regulations, but it just so happened it was a piece of meat that was overcooked and was a little too big and it got stuck and she had had the bypass. So yeah, it was not a pleasant experience. So I think when it comes to the relationship with the body, there are these long term impacts and then the mental health, my relationship with my own sense of mental health and well being myself. Yeah, absolutely. So some of the statistics that indicate that at least 20% of people coming to have surgery already have existing eating disorders. Right. And that's people who report because let me tell you, if you're that desperate.
[19:37] Sarah: I imagine that isn't a correct statistic.
[19:41] Laura: Yeah, I imagine, yes, because I still want the surgery. I don't want to put anything on that questionnaire or whatever they're having me fill out that's going to get in the way. So I'm not going to talk about my eating disorder. And if it's not with electronic medical records nowadays, it might be more accessible. But let me tell you, I checked that box and I put that I was in treatment for it and it never came up in conversation that I recall with any of my providers. And even before the surgery, for the two weeks before surgery, you're on a super restrictive diet to put you in ketosis to shrink the fat around your liver and you're doing like a medically supervised weight loss. So you're already leaning into restriction to prepare you. But what you're doing is you're just enhancing some symptoms that you might already be very familiar with and more susceptible to using in weight that are harmful. And there might be folks who've never had an issue per se that now all of a sudden are having issues.
[20:41] Sarah: Lights the spark in some ways. Yeah.
[20:44] Laura: And a perfect example of this is one of the things, and it's so funny because in the aftermath of surgery, the dietitian, I would meet with them and they would be like, oh yeah, this makes sense. This happens to everyone. I'm like, well, where was this information prior to surgery? Absolutely. If you put carbs in your stomach first and not protein, they're just going to go right through, and you can eat as many you could probably eat two soft pretzels. And it's like, you told me I wouldn't be able to eat more than this much food for the rest of my life, and now you're telling me, oh, no. And then there's the tricks. Like some folks I know, you find, like, a little food that's small, like an M and M or a goldfish, and these are small foods that you can eat, but it becomes that binging just adapted, if you will. Right. So, like, going through I know someone who went through packages and packages and packages of Eminems. I myself packages and packages and packages of goldfish and was in denial that I was binging on them. Right. Restriction leads to binging, is what we understand to be true. You're now restricted for the rest of your life. And, oh, by the way, you also might be malabsorptive, so now your body is also, hey, I need to eat even more than before, so the Binges can be even greater. And then how do you feel about yourself? Right. Shame. There you are.
[22:02] Sarah: Right back in that cycle. Right. Like, right back in the cycle, I.
[22:06] Laura: Went to all this effort, I lost all of this weight, and now here I am, and I'm gaining weight again. In the second year. I always say to folks, the second year, I know for me was the hardest because the rapid weight loss stops eventually, and you really do have to work. And by work, I mean continue to use eating disorder symptoms in a lot of ways to maintain or to lose more. And it's just this whole feeling of, I felt like a failure before, but I didn't have surgery. Now I had surgery that I was told should work if I do the work and if I maintain my side of the bargain, and now I'm failing. And it's, like, compounding all of that shame and blame and self hatred that already lived in me. And that was momentarily maybe covered up or given a rest by the weight loss, but is now back in full force and then some.
[22:57] Sarah: And I imagine the weight of that is just, like, so heavy.
[23:03] Laura: Yeah. And that's just in yourself now. Then we live in a world where people like to say stuff, right? So, oh, my God, you look so great. You're commenting on your weight loss, and then those comments stop, and we start to internalize it, or someone feels like they have the right to talk about how you're gaining weight or your eating habits. So it's just overall, not good. Overall, I'm just stuck in the same place I was before, but almost worse in a way. Or worse, I would say, because now I hated myself before, but now I really hate myself. And there are some studies that suggest that there's an increased risk of suicide or at least suicidal ideation, and then we also look at increased use of alcohol and other substances. So I worked in addictions, and folks that I worked with knew I'd had surgery, and they kept coming to me and saying, we are getting these clients who've had weight loss surgery and now are coming to us and never had an issue with alcohol and now are diagnosed with alcohol tendency. And I saw some of those clients myself back in the day when I was in addictions. And absolutely because those same behaviors that we use as coping, that binging, if you will. Well, I can only do so much with food right now. So some of that anxiety that I'm trying to stave off or those negative feelings about myself, we begin to move into other areas like drinking, drugs, any type of substance abuse, shopping, spending money, and exercise as well, excessive exercise, just being at the gym all the time. So that type of behavior can become evident in other areas, which is problematic and further contributes to an overall sense of self. That's pretty negative. Yeah.
[24:49] Sarah: That's a really important piece of the conversation, is the alcohol component. I've heard a lot of that, and I imagine, too, because your biology has changed, like, the absorption is probably also very different. Right.
[25:04] Laura: Oh, my gosh.
[25:05] Sarah: Probably adding the vulnerability. Yeah.
[25:07] Laura: I take a couple of sips and I forget it. Right. And yeah. What does that mean for someone who might not be used to that and might be in a vulnerable position? So many consequences, just beyond just the fact that now I might have a dependency or an issue or a problem, what have you, now I might be putting myself at further risk for harm.
[25:29] Sarah: Yeah. Do you have any statistics on the amount of people who regain weight or the weight after weight loss surgery?
[25:40] Laura: A lot of what the conversation revolves around when we look at that stuff as well, this is complicated. Yes, weight loss can occur, but there's a lot of factors as to why it might occur and in essence, shifting the blame to the patient, not recognizing that there are some significant issues. So I have some statistics. I think there was a study done on clients. It was something like five years outside of surgery, five years post surgery, and like 20% of clients have developed some sort of alcohol dependency who had never had one. That's significant.
[26:18] Sarah: Yeah. It is.
[26:19] Laura: Eating disorder symptoms being further exacerbated or being invited into them by virtue of the surgery. Yeah. So here's an example they talk about, I want to go back to the lifestyle, the lifestyle changes that are required of you, which are symptoms of eating disorders. From our perspective, a lot of the literature out there does even say for weight loss surgery to be successful, it requires significant lifestyle changes, and this is on you. So if you fail to make these changes, that can contribute to unsatisfactory results. Right.
[26:50] Sarah: It's your fault there that is putting the shame and blame right back on you. That like you are the problem, the system, the whatever isn't the problem.
[26:59] Laura: It's all you. Yeah, it's you. It's the patient compliance. Are you being compliant with all the guidelines? Well yeah, I'm trying, but now I'm starving and no one has worked with me around my eating disorder symptoms. You just let me have a surgery. Right? Is it really sustainable in the long run? Even if you have a small stomach, is it sustainable? And people talk about, oh well, I remember at the time when I had it, it was like, oh, well, they're going to remove the part of your stomach which has the hormone that stimulates appetite. So you want to have an appetite. That was like true for the first maybe nine months to a year. And then my appetite came back full force. And I remember talking to the dietitian, she was like, oh yeah, that happens with most people. And I was like, oh, thank you for letting me know now because I was beating myself up, like, what's wrong with me? Why am I hungry all the time? Well, because that is a momentary relief from that appetite hormone. And also now I'm restricted all the time. Now I'm not absorbing everything that I'm taking in. So there's so much conflicting information out there and to be quite frank, the research is limited too.
[28:10] Sarah: Probably likely biased.
[28:12] Laura: That's probably a better way to put it. It's in favor of surgery by and large versus reasons not to have surgery or oh yeah, there are these risks that makes sense with any surgery. But I think the things, the studies surrounding things like substance abuse, the studies surrounding things like suicide, weight gain, eating disorders in all the research I did were pretty scarce. But there was some research suggesting that these were problem areas and there certainly is a lot of anecdotal evidence, so I think it needs to be looked at more.
[28:47] Sarah: What are some of the other things that you wish you had known or wish you had heard prior to having the surgery?
[28:55] Laura: I think that when the weight loss slows down and stops, it's normal to feel grief. Like I was experiencing something that was so this was the thing I was looking for and now it's slowing down or stopping. And what do I do now? Now I return to I'm stuck with myself and I don't know that I trust myself, that's why I need this surgery. So there's that grief that's not being helped along anymore, if you will. And the impact of that grief on my relationship with myself and my body and food that I just, I stopped enjoying food. You know, I, I just had like the three meals I would eat that I knew I could stomach. It was hard to try new things. It would get in the way of relationships, right? Where. Someone would be like, oh, I remember I was on a vacation with friends, and there was this all you can eat buffet, and I freaked out because here I am, I'm in the throes of my eating disorder, and no one knows, or at least I don't think they know. I'm in denial of it. And they're like, yeah, it was an expensive buffet. And at the time, money was scarce, in part because spending was something that was and I was paying out all this money for what I needed for weight loss, and I just flipped out. And there was an impact on my relationships with those folks. Right. I just became really rigid, even more so than I was in the past. I was pretty rigid before and anxious and just feeling like no one understood me that I had had surgery. And why should I have to pay the adult price? And some places are willing to work with you. Most places are not, but that requires you to have to disclose. Right. They gave us a card. Like, I had weight loss surgery. Please feed me less, or whatever. It's okay for me to have less. I still paid the same. And hey, I would take home, like, several meals, but I was spending a lot of money to go out and would have, like, three or four meals worth out of what I had eaten. But that gets old after a while. Or it really was not conducive to the lifestyle that I was hoping for, which was one where I was, like, free and joyfully. Yeah. Right. No.
[31:10] Sarah: And you could fully engage in your life, finally.
[31:14] Laura: No, because I was too concerned. I was, like, hyper focused now because the folks out there that are working with you are going to and it's true. Right? Like, you have to change your lifestyle. You have to change your lifestyle. Yeah. For success. There's truth to that. Right. But we're missing that part that the change in lifestyle can bring up all these other issues. And so constantly, I was hyper vigilant. Just hyper vigilant. Hyper vigilant. And then if I fell off and was not hypervigilant, and then it would come to blame and shame, like, oh, my God, I'm gaining weight. This is my fault. I have to get back to it. I have to get back to it. Oh, my gosh, what if I need corrective surgery? Oh, my gosh, I'm such a failure. And then as my body lost weight, too it's not like your body goes back to this taut, like body. If you ever had that, which I really never did, you're going to have excess skin. And the impact on your body image when you're looking at, yeah, I might weigh significantly less, but I have skin hanging off of me. And do I qualify for surgery? Do I want surgery? Will surgery correct this and that's all predicated upon the idea that I would maintain the weight loss, right? So it's just like the body image stuff is really sneaky the way that it because in the beginning, I was I was like, oh my gosh, I feel all this freedom in my body. There were things that I could do that I hadn't been able to do for years, and it was really exciting. But that was short lived because in the long run, when the weight came back, that was a momentary relief from what was a lifetime of struggle. I think that what I would say is as your weight loss slows down and or stops and weight gain begins, we've already talked about, there are already problems that are occurring as you're losing weight. There are already things that are happening potentially, and now you stop losing weight and or you gain weight and everything is just compounded. Everything is that much worse. That much worse than it was prior to surgery. That much worse than it was at my worst. And I do think that those of us who have a history with disordered eating, eating disorders, any issues with body image, which most people are going to come to surgery with, that it's really important to think about the impacts on those areas because we can be in recovery. But now you're adding in some components to recovery that are not your fault per se, but that are going to potentially lead you back to a place that you had hoped this would take you away from.
[33:58] Sarah: And Laura is going to be releasing a series of blog posts about weight loss surgery and more kind of nitty gritty details about her own process. So I think maybe we'll release the first blog post with this episode and then kind of go from there. Yeah, I would just invite anyone who's maybe considering weight loss surgery, is on the back end of weight loss surgery and is really struggling with some of these things that Laura has spoken about. Reach out for support. Find a practice that will welcome you with open arms to kind of just stay curious about your own journey, your own process, your own goals for your relationship with food and your body. Because like Laura said at the beginning of this episode, your body is yours. You get to choose how you live in it. And hopefully you can have some support in figuring out what that kind of peaceful, trusting process looks like for you. That's free of the shame and blame and guilt and all of those things.
[34:58] Laura: Exactly. Whatever decision anyone makes, we walk with you with that decision. Right? And you've been blamed and shamed enough. We don't need to add to that. And if at any point during this it sounded like I was ******** all over weight loss surgery, I mean, I couldn't be in the place that I am today without having gone through what I went through. And so I don't blame my old self either. She did the best that she could with what she knew, and all of us are there. But if this can help others to sort of think about some other areas that might impact them, then I would say that's helpful, because not everyone's talking about it.
[35:35] Sarah: I would say so. Absolutely. There's so much there that isn't spoken.
[35:39] Laura: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So check my blog out. There might be more coming after the blog.
[35:46] Sarah: Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Yeah. Laura, I so appreciate your willingness and enthusiasm in having this conversation and supporting folks who are in a similar position as you were your younger self and navigating the ins and outs and the questions and the impact that all of this can have on someone's relationship with themselves, their bodies, with food, because the ripples are huge.
[36:14] Laura: Yes. Amen.
[36:17] Sarah: Amen. All right, everybody. We will be back next week. Check out the link in the show notes for Laura's first blog. And, yeah, we'll be back next week. Until then, take good care of yourself.
[36:33] Sarah: Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Reclaim You. Be sure to, like, comment and subscribe and check us out on YouTube at reclaim you. If you're looking to start therapy for trauma, disordered eating or body image concerns, head over to our website at WW dot reclaimtherapy.org to learn more about us and our work. We'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, take good care of yourself.
Reclaim therapy provides eating disorder therapy in Pennsylvania. Our therapists are committed to holding supportive space for people considering weight loss surgeries, or who have had them and are hoping to recover from disorder eating.
We also provide treatment for PTSD and CPTSD in pennsylvania and Horsham, PA.
As Laura shared in this episode, weight loss surgeries are nuanced and the decision to pursue WLS is individual. It is important to consider the cost of weight loss surgery, not only financially, but for your mental and physical health. If you have struggled with disordered eating, or are worried about your relationship with food and your body after bariatric procedures for weight loss, reach out today. We’ll be here to support you.