I Had My Stomach Stapled At 14 Years Old. That Surgery Didn't 'Cure' Me — Far From It.

285 pounds. Forty-three years old. Summer 2024.

“Have you thought astir GLPs?” my superior attraction doc asked arsenic she listened to my heart.

I laughed nervously. “No, but I americium now.” Humor has ever been my shield.

She didn’t flinch. “Your BMI is implicit 40. You’re astatine hazard for each sorts of wellness conditions. Why don’t you look into our weight-loss program?”

My labs were fine. But that didn’t matter. My assemblage size unsocial was capable to warrant a prescription. I near feeling ashamed, reminded erstwhile again that medicine sees fatness arsenic a illness successful itself — careless of existent wellness indicators.

This wasn’t the archetypal time.

In 1995, I was 14 years aged and weighed 367 pounds erstwhile an endocrinologist bluntly told my parent that I would “likely beryllium bedridden by 20.” He described my legs arsenic “enormous” and referred maine to bariatric surgery. Soon after, I underwent a tummy stapling process that near an eight-inch scar down my chest. 

At the time, pediatric value nonaccomplishment country was quite rare. But to my doctors, my abdominous assemblage made it acceptable — adjacent necessary.

The process turned eating into a rhythm of symptom and vomiting. Food lodged successful the tiny transition created by the staples near maine doubled implicit until I threw it backmost up. I became, successful effect, a medically induced bulimic — praised, nonetheless, for my weight-loss “success.” 

Within a year, I had mislaid astir 100 pounds. Friends, household and adjacent acquaintances congratulated me. No 1 saw the unit done to my assemblage oregon the harm it did to my narration with food. They didn’t cognize the country near maine babelike connected ice cream, crackers and mashed potatoes due to the fact that I could easy chew that worldly down to a pureed consistency to debar the symptom that followed whenever nutrient got stuck successful my staples. After the surgery, and adjacent inactive today, I can’t tolerate astir effect — excessively acidic — nor galore vegetables — excessively fibrous. Stomach stapling didn’t marque maine “healthier;” it lone made maine thinner.  

That country didn’t adjacent “cure” me.

More than 2 decades later, successful 2017, weighing astir 390 pounds, I went nether the weapon again, this clip for a sleeve gastrectomy. By then, I had surrendered to the diet concern complex, a multibillion-dollar ecosystem built astir the thought that abdominous bodies are inherently flawed. The unit was relentless — to fix, shrink and negociate a assemblage that medicine had ever treated arsenic a occupation to solve.

And the scrutiny wasn’t constricted to exam rooms. In restaurants, connected airplanes, astatine conferences, strangers felt entitled to remark connected my body. I’ve been mocked for eating a donut, told loudly successful a nutrient tribunal that I was “killing myself,” and subjected to humiliating requests to beryllium reseated connected flights. I’ve adjacent overheard cruel remarks successful a connection radical assumed I didn’t understand. Those moments near wounds acold deeper than immoderate vigor rash oregon bruise from too-small chairs.

Society’s obsession with fatness extends good beyond idiosyncratic interactions. Fat radical are consistently portrayed successful the media arsenic lazy, undisciplined oregon morally flawed. Research has documented however these stereotypes power wellness attraction practices and workplace discrimination. This taste communicative seeps into medicine, wherever clinicians — adjacent those with bully intentions — tin unconsciously perpetuate stigma.

Today, astatine 44, I’m connected Wegovy. Reluctantly. When I started, I told my doc my extremity value was 250 pounds — a fig that, astatine 5’10”, felt close to me.

Now I measurement 235, down 50 pounds successful 8 months. My doc tells maine to enactment connected it. And I’m not definite wherefore I’m listening.

Initially approved to dainty Type 2 diabetes, GLP-1 medications similar Wegovy are present viewed arsenic a breakthrough for value loss, but for me, they consciousness similar different section successful the aforesaid story: doctors offering interventions driven little by my existent wellness and much by the fearfulness and stigma that situation fatness.

Why bash I instrumentality it? Because sometimes it feels easier to unrecorded with the carnal and affectional broadside effects of medicalization than with the relentless judgement of others — and, astir troubling of each for me, with my ain internalized fatphobia.

Here’s the truth: Fat patients aren’t blank slates waiting for salvation. We cognize the statistics, the risks, the aesculapian language. What we besides cognize — often much than our doctors — is the crushing value of fatphobia disguised arsenic aesculapian concern.

Studies show that value stigma successful wellness attraction leads patients to hold care, debar screenings and person poorer intelligence wellness outcomes. Weight bias, it has been argued, tin besides trigger accent responses, rise humor unit and worsen metabolic markers. In different words, the judgement itself is harming our health.

And fto america not hide that the usage of GLP-1s tin travel with a full caller acceptable of harms successful the signifier of utmost broadside effects similar chronic diarrhea, terrible nausea and pancreatitis, each familiar broadside effects to those, similar me, who antecedently underwent value nonaccomplishment country that permanently altered our digestive systems.

While GLP-1s often pb to value loss, research shows that the value comes backmost erstwhile the medicine is stopped. Similarly, long-term studies connected value nonaccomplishment country uncover that galore patients yet regain a important information of the value they lost. This rhythm of losing and regaining value — often called value cycling — has been linked to antagonistic wellness outcomes, including accrued hazard of heart disease, precocious humor unit and metabolic issues, immoderate of the precise conditions value nonaccomplishment interventions are intended to prevent. And erstwhile you are caught successful the cycle, which research suggests is triggered by societal stigma surrounding fatness, it tin beryllium incredibly hard to interruption free. 

Obesity medicine is booming successful ample portion owed to GLP-1 drugs. But if we don’t face the bias that underpins it — the reflexive presumption that fat equals sick — we volition support reproducing the aforesaid harm.

Medical acquisition is portion of the problem. Physicians-in-training often harbor implicit anti-fat biases and person minimal guidance connected treating patients with respect careless of weight. Moreover, BMI — a instrumentality utilized ubiquitously — is simply a flawed instrument. It correlates poorly with wellness outcomes erstwhile considered alone, and often oversimplifies analyzable metabolic and societal factors. 

Although galore radical presume that a abdominous assemblage is inherently unhealthy, research shows that assemblage size by itself isn’t a reliable predictor of mortality risk. This is particularly the lawsuit erstwhile different metabolic hazard factors, similar precocious humor pressure, diabetes oregon precocious cholesterol, are absent. Exercise physiologist Glenn Gaesser has agelong emphasized that it’s fitness, not fatness that amended predicts semipermanent wellness outcomes. And the 2 are not straight correlated — abdominous radical tin inactive beryllium acceptable and healthy, conscionable arsenic bladed radical tin beryllium unhealthy.

We indispensable besides not hide that fatphobia is rooted successful racism, arsenic sociologist Sabrina Strings outlines successful Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. The earliest traces of fatphobia weren’t astir assemblage size, but astir achromatic folks distancing themselves from Black people, specifically Black women. When medicine jumped onto the fatphobia bandwagon, the fearfulness of Blackness morphed into an ideological fearfulness of obesity, and mendacious claims that assemblage size and wellness are synonymous.

It’s clip for change. Medical schools indispensable thatch that BMI is not a proxy for health. Doctors indispensable beryllium trained to dainty abdominous patients arsenic full people, not arsenic problems to solve. Health systems indispensable admit that value stigma itself causes measurable harm, and instrumentality policies to mitigate it. This means redesigning exam rooms with due equipment, grooming unit connected inclusive communication, and reevaluating the connection utilized successful aesculapian records, prescriptions and attraction plans.

From puerility to adulthood, I’ve been told that “something indispensable beryllium done.” Rarely has anyone stopped to inquire what surviving successful this assemblage really means to me. Rarely has anyone asked however the shame of changeless surveillance affects my well-being.

I whitethorn proceed to instrumentality Wegovy, oregon I whitethorn not. What I bash cognize for definite is that immoderate determination I marque astir value nonaccomplishment is shaped much by however nine treats abdominous bodies than by concerns astir my health. Fat radical tin beryllium healthy. Fat radical tin beryllium happy. But successful a civilization obsessed with shrinking our bodies, it’s incredibly hard to judge that’s true, fto unsocial unrecorded arsenic if it is. 

I americium much than the size of my body. Every abdominous diligent is. Medicine needs to larn to spot america that way, oregon exam rooms volition proceed to beryllium places wherever our wellness and happiness instrumentality a backseat to thinness astatine each costs.

“Five Star White Trash: A Memoir of Fraud and Family,” by Georgiann Davis, is forthcoming from New York University Press. Georgiann describes it arsenic an unflinching queer effect to JD Vance’s ”Hillbilly Elegy,” successful which she guides america done her bonzer beingness filled with medical, familial, and transgression fraud.

This nonfiction primitively appeared connected HuffPost successful September 2025.