2025-04-20-the-two-sides-of-everything
Weight loss surgery is an awesome tool,
especially if you are over 40, pretty much always lived a sedentary lifestyle, and need to drop weight quickly.
Like everything in life weight loss has two sides. For the sake of this exercise let’s call them the pretty and the ugly side.
The pretty side of weight loss surgery
Let’s face it. Being overweight is not healthy, regardless of what people say. It brings various health issues, and in my case those were type 2 diabetes, and heart issues that were solved pretty much the moment I lost weight. Weight loss surgery helped me become active, get back into sports, start doing things I haven’t done in a very long time. I can suddenly find clothes everywhere, don’t have to go looking for those XXXXXL T-shirts that most likely won’t fit, don’t have to settle for jeans that I don’t like because the ones I do don’t exist in my size.
The pretty side is pretty and there are too many examples than I can list in this short article.
The ugly side of weight loss surgery
Just like the pretty side, the ugly side also can’t be avoided. The first thing that comes to mind for the ugly side is probably the excess skin (especially on the stomach area), but there is something much worse than that. Weight loss surgery is life-changing in may ways: the day you go out of the surgery, certain things about your life change for the worse. Your body can’t absorb nutrients like it was able to do before the surgery, so you are stuck with supplements for the rest of your life. In most cases those supplements are enough, and it’s not a big deal taking a little pill in the morning and in the evening. In other cases like my case, the body wasn’t absorbing certain nutrients well to begin with. Before the surgery I was mildly anemic. My body always struggled to absorb iron, and now after the surgery the situation is pretty bad. My doctor had me on iron supplements (beyond the multi vitamin that I take twice a day that already has iron inside) and they didn’t really help. Next step was an iron IV, and that sorted me out for a while. Now it looks like my iron is getting depleted again, and I can feel it in my fitness and performance. Suddenly I get dizzy when I stand up, or do other sudden movements, and my estimated VO2 max is going down when it should be going up. Looks like it’s time for another Iron IV to sort me out for a few months …
And this is my new reality. Supplements for the rest of my life, iron IV’s (just annoying) every few months, and blood tests every 3 months to make sure all levels are ok. For now I’m lucky that all the other tests were fine, my vitamin levels are nominal, and everything except of Iron is completely under control.
Would I reverse the surgery if it was possible?
Absolutely not. When I try to be as objective as possible and look at all the facets of my life before and after teh surgery, my quality of life is currently much higher, I’m not in any immediate danger, and the ugly side that I like to complain about is with me, but it’s nothing I can’t manage and live with. Yes, i need to pay attention to certain things, i have to make sure to remember to take my morning and evening meds, and do my checkups every three months.
Of course, all of this could have been avoided if I started taking care of myself way earlier than I did, but as people like to say, hindsight is always 20/20 (or 7/7 if you work in meters and not in feet)