You decide to get WLS so you can lose weight and get healthy. You know it won’t be easy, but often, people assume you’re getting WLS because you’re lazy, or you feel guilty for taking the easy way out even though you know that’s ridiculous.

Fair or not, there’s often a lot of guilt involved with WLS. Do you (or did you) feel guilty about deciding to get WLS? Why? Was it because of outside pressure, or did you just feel guilty? Do you still feel guilty? How did you get over your guilt? Do you feel the need to justify your decision?

For me, I was lucky. My family was supportive, and I guess I didn’t really look at other people’s perspectives. I just knew I needed to do something, and I did. By now, I am proud to say I have the lap-band, and my ability to live a happy life is all the justification I feel I need.

My family and friends are very supportive but I did question myself. At times I would think I am taking the easy way out of losing weight but now after my surgery I can say it is no easy way. Having to adjust your eating/drinking habits is a lot to deal with. Especially if your socialization revolves around going out to eat and drinking. But I am happy with my choice.

I have gone through a plethora of emotions along the way, getting to approval, with surgery now less than two weeks away, but I can honestly say that guilt has never been one of them.

Probably the biggest emotion for me has been gratitude. I'm grateful that the surgery exists, that it's been perfected along the way, that I have a choice of procedures, that my insurance covers it, that I can take a full six weeks off of work to heal and adjust, that I've been given a second chance, that I have the full support of family and friends, that I chose to surround myself with the people I know will give me the encouragement I need, that I found this forum, that I made so many new friends going through the exact same process! The list is endless!

I don't listen to the naysayers. I personally choose to believe that a lot of that stigma comes from those who have never been fat, obese fat, not 10 or 20 pounds fat, and so have no idea of how much it negatively affects every aspect of our lives and limits our future. Plus I myself had no idea what the surgery was all about until I dove in and researched and took the classes etc. A lot of them are just uneducated on the subject and choose to stay that way.

Sometimes in life you have to take a leap because doing nothing, or simply repeating what hasn't worked before is just not acceptable anymore. I'm ready to leap!

I've never had even one ounce of guilt, none!

I don't have any guilt but I will say I didn't do the surgery for years and years. Someone asked me why and after thinking about it long and hard I have come to realize I was afraid to succeed.

I was hiding behind my weight and trying to be invisible and now I am losing the weight and gaining confidence I am grateful for the surgery and the health it is bringing.

Hope that makes sense.

Yes, I did feel guilt at first. I felt guilty that I needed help to lose weight because it had been the only thing in my life I had failed at. Failure is my biggest fear and I felt by accepting the fact that I couldn't do it on my own I was a failure.

I was also terrified my surgery wouldn't work so I only told my immediate family and a few close co-workers. Now that I'm only 14 pounds from my goal weight I've been telling most people who ask how I lost weight that I had surgery. Of course I explain that they only did surgery on my stomach and not my brain; I still choose what I eat which is important.

But I don't feel the shame or guilt I had at first now that I feel successful. I've always been a very stubborn, driven person but my weight has always held me back and now that it isn't I almost don't know what to do with myself! I finally met the goal I've been striving for my entire life. Now I need to come up with some new ones and the world is full of possibilities :-)

I don't know that I felt guilt... but I did wish I had been able to do it without surgery. However recently I've noticed that this is FAR harder than losing weight the normal way. I have done it successfully and just not kept it off and I'm telling you that was NEVER this hard. This IS the hard way. It is also the only way I'm going to be able to keep it off. I know I'm still in the healing phase and can barely manage the calories in a day to do more than function at work, and working out (which I'm only now cleared to do) sounds like a bad joke but I also know that's going to improve as well.

And I know that I have family members who don't approve and aren't saying anything because I announced it with the blanket statement that I didn't want input and maybe when I'm having an easier time with it they will as well because my post op pain was pretty severe and they could see that.

But I also know that this was absolutely the right decision for me. You know how sometimes things just start falling into place? That started happening for me when I made this decision. It may have been the domino effect, it may have been fate, or it may have been that finally I was ready to make decisions that put my own well being first but since making this decision my life has started shifting. I'm still mostly focused on the day to day of healing and getting healthy, but the bigger picture is looking pretty good in a way it hasn't before.

Nope

No guilt here! Life is too short for guilt or regrets.

No matter how shitty I feel at any given moment, I realize that I am very blessed. Two great kids, a great marriage,a successful career, and a solution to the weight issue I've fought for decades. I have NOTHING to complain about and certainly nothing to regret or feel guilt about.

Guilt for what ? Getting healthy and strong , leaving co morbidities behind ? In the past I have had Lasik surgery to correct eyesight problems, sinus surgery to correct breathing problems ( childhood broken nose ) and dental surgery to remove impacted wisdom teeth. Nobody suggested I should feel guilty or try to correct those problems by myself. Same goes for WLS, it solved a problem my body could not solve by itself. Not feeling guilty, just extremely grateful.

I haven't felt any guilt. I have had fleeting (seconds) moments of "what have I done" and then I remind myself that 20 years of dieting failed and this is my solution.

I probably feel some guilt about all the time I wasted before, events that I skipped with family and friends, etc.

I have never felt one ounce of guilt. I have been blessed to be surrounded by nothing but supportive people. My family, friends, and co workers all have been so encouraging.

Even if people had been negative I still would not have had guilt. It's my body and my life and I was ready to get healthy and live life to its fullest again!!!

Guilty about choosing WLS? No way.

Guilty about not being able to control my weight prior to WLS? Yes. But mostly I felt frustrated about not being able to solve that problem.

So when I learned about the sleeve -- and the benefits it could offer (reduction of ghrelin, restriction of food volume, greater odds of long-term weight maintenance) -- the decision to choose VSG surgery was easy.

Guilty about choosing WLS? No way.

Guilty about not being able to control my weight prior to WLS? Yes. But mostly I felt frustrated about not being able to solve that problem.

So when I learned about the sleeve -- and the benefits it could offer (reduction of ghrelin, restriction of food volume, greater odds of long-term weight maintenance) -- the decision to choose VSG surgery was easy.

LOVE the pic. I'm a very logical person as well. I'm always using this quote.

I never felt guilty about having WLS. I feel more guilt about allowing my weight to physically impact what I can do with my children. I know in my heart I have given my good faith effort to get rid of the weight sin surgery.

What I am most proud about is having a 9 year old daughter that is happy and healthy (in a normal weight range). She is active and beautiful! I have taught her to make good food choices. She exercises with me. I am showing her that even though Mommy is bigger she never gives up.

So although I feel a smidge of guilt of not going down the Water slide or not riding the roller coaster, it doesn't prevent me in teaching her healthy, positive behaviors. WLS opens the possibilities of being a more physical, active person. I see it as a win-win.

A little P.S. to this ...

One of the biggest contributors to my obesity was my inactive lifestyle. By inactive, I mean my resistance to standing up and walking across the room to do something, to walking for exercise, to moving for pretty much any reason at all.

But here's the deal ... when you're obese, you hurt. Your knees, back, entire body hurts. You're not insane for not wanting to move, you're just trying not to hurt.

One of the biggest shocks about having lost over 90 pounds is that now I move it, move it, move it. I want to walk, I want to clean house, I want to walk around the living room while the microwave is heating up Water for my tea, I want to make the bed, I want to walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth, I want to mow the lawn, I want to do the grocery shopping. I want to go on business trips and go shopping at the mall and take the garbage out to the garbage can and take the stairs.

I even move my ankles in circles when I'm sitting down.

And that makes all the difference in the world in terms of the calories I'm burning up and the new metabolism I'm buildling. I can now eat 1,750 calories a day at 144 pounds and not gain weight. I'm not sure but what I wasn't gaining weight at 235 pounds while eating 1,750 calories a day.

There's a point you cross as you get fatter and fatter where things get really rough. You simply can't move enough to keep your metabolism high enough to lose weight even if you're not eating all that much.

I honestly don't know how else I could have lost all this weight if I hadn't had WLS. And I didn't truly appreciate the interaction of all these factors until I'd gone through the weight loss phases and nearly 3 months of maintenance. I also know there's a lot more for me to learn.

It's time now with 70% of American adults being overweight or obese that we start having grown-up conversations about the complexity of obesity and the elements required for its solution.

"Just say no" is about the stupidest approach to reducing obesity that I could imagine. If fixing it were simple, I'd be all for that. However, after you've crossed the obesity bridge it ain't all that simple to get back across it.

The guilt associated with WLS would evaporate if, as a society, we understood the actual causes that made us obese and kept us obese from a scientific/medical perspective, instead of from a moral perspective.

Shame and guilt not only don't help us -- they just damage us more.