Medical Fatphobia - Tumblr Posts

LAP Bands should be illegal

This post is going to deal with medical fatphobia, weight loss surgery, coercion, emetophobia, food issues, disordered eating, and just all around bad shit. But it’s important.

Shortly after I reached adulthood, I was coerced into weight loss surgery. I weighed about 250 pounds and was considered morbidly obese.

The Lap Band is a disgrace to the medical profession and is just another example of how the medical profession does not care about the lives of fat people.

To preface this: the surgery works. I lost 70 pounds and people treated me differently and I hated them all for it.

The Lap Band made my life miserable. When it was filled, I could not eat until noon without getting stuck. Even then, getting stuck was always a risk. There was a strict diet to follow and you were supposed to be safe from that if you followed it. On top of that, there were rules for how you ate. One standard I saw was not to eat in bites larger than your fingernail. Can you see yourself doing that for a week, let alone years and years?

Getting stuck is a horror you can't imagine. The food lodges in the top of your stomach, blocking off your system. You continue to produce saliva and swallow it down. Slowly, the mucous in your saliva builds up. It feels like you're drowning. Eventually, you have to essentially throw it all up. A disgusting experience (and a mortifying one if you're in public.) The saliva is thick and ropy. This experience is often called "sliming" on the forums.

I became frightened of eating in public. In a way, I became frightened of food altogether. I knew something had to give the day I reacted to someone biting a hamburger in a tv show the way a regular person would react to a killer jumping out in a horror movie. I developed the disgusting and unhealthy habit of chewing and spitting out food. I completely lost my enjoyment of many foods I had previously enjoyed because of how problematic they were (I can no longer enjoy a chicken thigh for example.) I stopped eating meals and began grazing. I developed eating habits worse than the ones that "made me fat"

After 3 years, I had the band emptied of fluid, which significantly decreased, but did not stop, these problems. I regained the weight, and found it didn't bother me. (Along the way I discovered that my discomfort with my body had never been weight related)

I had my band removed after 6.5 years earlier this year. I am in a support group on facebook for victims of this malpractice. There are 5.6 thousand members, each with their own horror stories. Some of them cannot get the band removed because insurance will not cover the procedure, though they happily covered the band's placement. Some have tried to go through with removal but have had surgeons try to coerce them into getting a different weight-loss surgery instead of just removing it. Many have long-term damage from the band eroding the walls of their stomach or esophagus, or from the band adhering to multiple organs. Many of them had the band for 12-14 years, before removal because none of our doctors told us it needs to be removed within 10.

Many practices no longer perform Lap Band surgery and now believe it is unethical. The surgeon who removed my band still performs this surgery regularly.

A study performed in 2011 with 151 lap band patients, found that 22% of patients experienced minor complications and 39% experienced major complications. The person who coerced me into surgery actually experienced major complications and needed an emergency removal.

I experienced no serious complications. Everything I described above is considered normal. And It still drastically lowered my quality of life.

I don't know why I'm sharing this or who I'm sharing it for, but here I am. If you know anyone considering the lap band surgery, don't let them go through with it without knowing the truth. And please be kinder to your body than the medical profession wants you to be.

'fun' fact: you can starve to death and be fat the entire time. this piece of information saved my life, so i'd like to share it as widely as possible.

there's a common misconception that starvation will necessarily make you emaciated, and that if someone is fat they must be getting enough to eat, or an excessive amount.

this just isn't true. fat is an organ, not an inert storage of 'excess' calories. the old idea that gaining weight is caused by taking in more calories than your body needs, and its corollary that reducing caloric intake will automatically result in weight loss, is simply not true. the human metabolism is just way more complex than that.

one thing that can commonly happen is that, faced with repeated or long term caloric deficit, the body chooses to prioritize fat accumulation over other things in hopes of assuring survival. this can occur due to food insecurity, eating disorders, illness, dieting, or other factors.

caloric deficit can sometimes cause weight loss, certainly. but not in everyone, and not in the long term. 95% of dieters, for example, regain the lost weight and often more in addition. the science overwhelmingly supports this, including studies created by people who were trying to find long term weight loss methods. intentional weight loss is impossible in the long term in most cases, and the methods people use to attempt it are harmful to their health.

so yeah. whether due to anorexia, food insecurity, illness, or anything else - a person can be starving and still fat. or become fat(ter) due to repeated or ongoing caloric deficit, or both.

you can be fat and need a feeding tube, though medical fatphobia often makes medical professionals insist otherwise, to fat people's detriment or death. people can starve to death while fat.