Setting a weight loss goal is the first step—and for many people, it’s the last step. Significant weight loss can be extremely difficult, and sometimes it even feels impossible. Weight loss surgery is an effective tool that many people choose precisely because it can help turn your weight loss goal into a reality.
Why Weight Loss Surgery Makes the Difference
You have severe obesity if you’re more than 100 pounds over your ideal body weight. This can put you at risk for health conditions related to obesity, including type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, asthma, hypertension, and heart disease. It also can mean you’re more likely to feel trapped in a cycle of weight gain that feels impossible to break. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), people who are severely obese may become resistant to achieving and maintaining weight loss using methods like diet and exercise alone. The NIH recognized that weight loss surgery is the only long-term solution for weight loss in those who have severe obesity.
How Weight Loss Surgery Works
According to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), as many as 90 percent of people with severe obesity who have bariatric surgery maintain successful long-term weight loss. My New Beginning offers several bariatric surgery options.
So how much weight can you lose? Each of the surgical options offered at My New Beginning have helped many people achieve their weight loss goals, but they have different averages for weight loss:
- Roux-en-Y gastric bypass: 70 percent of excess weight
- Sleeve gastrectomy (Gastric Sleeve): 60 percent of excess weight
- Duodenal switch: 80 percent of excess weight
Bariatric surgery works by making surgical changes to your digestive system anatomy that help promote weight loss. Some of these changes work to limit the amount of food you can eat at one time and others work by changing the way your body absorbs food, which affects your energy rate and metabolism. No matter what kind of surgery you choose, it’s important to view bariatric surgery as only one tool on your weight loss journey. Nutrition, exercise, and changing other behaviors are all still important to achieving your weight loss goal.
Bariatric surgeries can be defined as “restrictive” or “malabsorptive”, or both. In restrictive surgeries, like the gastric sleeve or gastric banding, the size of the stomach is reduced (or “restricted”), so that you feel full after eating smaller amounts of food. In malabsorptive bariatric surgery, the anatomy is changed to create a way for food to bypass part of the small intestine, limiting the amount of nutrients from food that the body absorbs.
Malabsorptive Surgeries include the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and the duodenal switch. Gastric bypass surgery is actually both restrictive and malabsorptive. In this surgery, a small stomach pouch is created and the small intestine is divided at a specific area. The lower part of the small intestine is pulled up to the small pouch, which creates a new stomach. Since the new stomach is smaller in size, the procedure is restrictive in that it helps you eat less food at a time. Since the upper portion of the intestines is bypassed, the amount of calories and nutrients absorbed by the body is decreased.
The duodenal switch procedure is also both malabsorptive and restrictive. The surgery both reduces the size of the stomach and the amount of nutrients absorbed by the body, by reducing the size of the small intestine.
Who Should Consider Weight Loss Surgery
If you’re considering weight loss surgery to help you achieve your weight loss goals, you’ll need to meet certain criteria to qualify. Some of the main qualifications include:
- Be 18 years or older
- Be at least 100 pounds overweight, with a BMI of 40 or more, or have a BMI of 35 or more with a health condition associated with obesity, such as diabetes hypertension, or heart disease
- Have tried unsuccessfully to meet your weight loss goals through other weight loss methods
- Undergo a psychological evaluation to determine you are emotionally healthy to make a decision about weight loss surgery
- Be committed to long-term follow-up care and lifestyle changes.
Check out our frequently asked questions for more information about qualifying for weight loss surgery.
Achieving Weight Loss Goals Through A Comprehensive Approach
Surgery alone isn’t the answer. The reason weight loss surgery is so successful in a program like My New Beginning is that surgery is part of an overall program of support that not only helps you lose weight, but maintain that weight loss for a lifetime.
My New Beginning has designed a program that meets such high standards for surgery volume, patient care and support that it has achieved numerous designations, including as:
- Accredited Center under the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program of the American College of Surgeons and American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery
- Aetna Institute of Quality® Bariatric Surgery Facility
- Blue Distinction Center by Blue Cross Blue Shield
- Cigna Certified Hospital for Bariatric Surgery
- OptumHealth Bariatric Center of Excellence
The program includes support, resources and education both before and after surgery, with dietary and psychological counselling, support groups, comprehensive patient education, and clinical follow-ups after surgery. Along with surgery, this system gives patients the level of support needed to achieve long-term weight loss goals.
Getting Started Today
If you’re ready to learn more, you can get started today by contacting us! Reach out to learn more about how weight loss surgery works and how you can take the first step.