I don't think I've written about which type of bariatric surgery I'm having.
There are three principal forms of weight-loss surgery. The oldest one is usually called "lap band" -- the full name is laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding. An adjustable belt is placed around a portion of the stomach, and tightened to make the stomach smaller. It restricts how much a person can eat, and it slows the movement of food to the small intestines.
The band can loosen over time, and people end up gaining back all the weight. It also did nothing to control appetite, so really, it's just a more extreme form of restricting. For these reason, it's mostly been phased out by good bariatric clinics.
When this surgery was popular, my weight didn't qualify for surgery. But more importantly to me, I was never interested in this. I didn't like the idea of a foreign substance being introduced inside the body, without a lot of evidence about potential long-term effects.
The second kind of surgery is the most extreme: gastric bypass. There are two kinds of gastric bypass, but they both function the same way: by re-routing how food travels through the stomach and intestines, which also reduces the hormones secreted by the stomach.
Gastric bypass has the best outcomes, the highest percentage of excess weight loss. It also has the greatest risk of unwanted side effects, and it's more involved (and therefore riskier) surgery.
The third type of bariatric surgery is gastric sleeve. In this surgery, most of the stomach is removed, leaving a small pouch, around the size of a banana. There's no re-routing; the intestines function in the usual way.
Gastric sleeve has the advantages of gastric bypass -- small stomach, significant reduction in hunger hormones -- but the surgery is simpler, and recovery is less fraught with potentially scary side effects.
The outcomes with sleeve are slightly less than impressive than with bypass, but overall the outcomes are still very good.
This is what I've chosen. It seems like it's becoming the norm for bariatric surgery.
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