She lists health problems associated with her weight: high blood pressure, varicose veins, pain and swelling in her feet and ankles, depression. When I ask about her decision to have surgery, she describes the humiliation of asking for a seat-belt extender on a plane her reluctance to go to movies because the seats are too narrow the time she signed up for a dating service, put down as body type 'a few extra pounds,' got a few responses, and then, opting for honesty, changed it to 'large.' This time she got none. She dresses stylishly, has long blond hair swept back by a headband, a classic oval face, and fair complexion. She has a close circle of friends who would do anything for her, a clear sense of who she is, and few illusions of who she is not.

Her managerial level job in the human resources department of a financial company demands tact, efficiency, and organization-qualities she exudes. Hay, 39, is five feet five (1.7 meters) and weighs 314 pounds (142 kilograms) she is morbidly obese, which makes her a candidate for the surgery. The list of possible complications includes blood clots in the lung, pneumonia, infection, leakage from the reshaped intestinal tract, and-in one out of a hundred cases-death. They overeat by snacking continuously.Īnd the surgery is risky. Even so, the operation fails in 15 percent of cases. In most instances, if a bypass patient eats sugar or fatty foods, it provokes a dumping syndrome that causes flushing, nausea, sweating.' You could say it's almost like Antabuse for the obese. 'Gastric bypass surgery is a tool,' Sugerman says. Most patients lose about two-thirds of their excess weight within a year of surgery. Gastric bypass is major surgery that shrinks the stomach's capacity from wine bottle to shotglass size and reconfigures the small intestine. Finally, after two decades of trying and failing to lose weight with (you name it) Weight Watchers, NutriSystem, a nutritionist, a personal trainer-not to mention the therapist who derided her for being fat-it has come down to this: Linda Hay is sitting in an examining room at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond with Harvey Sugerman, the surgeon who will perform a gastric bypass operation on her in two weeks.

Why we get fat