So I've found out my employer covers Bariatric Surgery for weight loss and I have been considering the surgery for some time. I had recently decided that I was interested in the Gastric Sleeve as I didn't want to take vitamins and was overall scared of the intestinal re-routing of the Bypass. The specific program with my employer is a pilot program and only one surgical center in the US is allowed, luckily for me it was only 200 mi away since we're nationwide that isn't the case for a lot of employees. After attending my initial consultation I was met with some resistance over wanting the gastric sleeve. The wife of the surgeon who is also a family medicine doctor said that Gastric Sleeve surgeries are ineffective for people with my BMI (hovering near 60) and that if I was going to have surgery I should consider a surgery thats more likely to achieve the results I want. I've been leaning towards their advice and am now considering the Gastric Bypass more heavily.

My reservations are thus: Currently I feel like the biggest impediment to my natural weight loss is a simple lack of energy. I can put together months of working out or even diet and lose weight. I won't bore you all more with that sentiment because I feel you've all been there. The gastric sleeve was more resonable to me because I feel if I could get under 300 lbs my activity would increase significantly. I'm no stranger to the gym as is and feel very comfortable weight training and exercising in the gym. Just by being under 300 lbs I would likely be meeting strength goals that are common among athletes (squating 1.3 times your weight, etc). So I feel like my weight loss would go fairly well sub-300 with any method.

My questions: I've looked on the forums and have seen numerous people with lots of weight loss with the gastric sleeve. I'm worried that the Doctor could be right and that a gastric sleeve would be ineffective. My initial reaction to the doctor was that she was being a bit negative. She said that at my BMI it would be unlikely I'd be in the upper percentages of weight loss (60%+) with the gastric sleeve because I have so much weight to lose. My reaction was that this was faulty logic and that a person with a high BMI would likely lose more weight than someone with a BMI closer to 40 for instance as the closer you get to goal the harder it is to lose.

Is gastric sleeve effective for people with High BMI's nearing 60+? (I've googled the hell out of this trust me.
Does anyone know of a place that has demographic data so that I could get a picture of statistical groups that include my age and gender?
Do men have better, worse, or equal success as women?
What about different age ranges? Do younger people have better success than older people. (Older and younger is relative) We'll say sub 45 and above 45. But more importantly an age group that quantifies me in it.

I want the surgery to go well, I want to be successful and I don't want to deal with a lot of complications. Does anyone have any advice or insight to help me reason this out?

Edited July 2, 20179 yr by P-Diddy
clarification

Thanks Bryan I appreciate your input. You're almost my exact demographic and oddly enough you started your consultation almost exactly two years prior to mine. Small world!

This guy did VGS, started out at 400 lbs., and has a ton of YouTube videos. https://www.fighting400.com/