Year after year, you resolve to lose weight, and, just as the year before, you fall woefully short of your goals. And on and on this cycle goes, leaving you feeling defeated, exhausted, and frustrated.
If you’re tired of the hamster wheel of ineffective dieting and you want to lose meaningful weight, surgery may be a good solution. In 2022 alone, nearly 280,000 Americans opted for bariatric surgery, and this number continues to rise as more people find success through weight loss surgery.
While this approach isn’t a miracle cure for being overweight, weight loss surgery can give you a big and meaningful push forward in your efforts to lose unhealthy pounds. At Rockwall Surgical Specialists, our team has helped many patients to take control of their weight through bariatric surgery.
But this solution isn’t for everyone. If you want to determine whether you’re a good candidate for weight loss surgery, read on.
Our team views the following numbers as guidelines when it comes to candidacy for weight loss surgery.
For example, the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery says you could qualify for bariatric surgery if you have:
While this list singles out Type 2 diabetes as a comorbidity, most health professionals would add other weight-related issues, such as cardiovascular or kidney disease, to the list.
We want to underscore that the numbers above are useful guidelines, but we prefer to take a case-by-case approach.
For example, BMI is a good, but inexact, way to measure whether you're carrying excessive and unhealthy pounds. This number doesn’t consider other factors, such as gender and bone size, which can influence where your ideal weight should be and what constitutes an unhealthy weight.
Or you might have another health issue that would greatly benefit from weight loss that you’ve been unable to achieve on your own.
We also take your personal circumstances into account. Maybe you have a disability that prevents you from exercising and you’re carrying too many pounds as a result. Or perhaps you don’t meet the criteria for weight loss surgery in terms of numbers, but you’ve been trying to lose weight for as long as you can remember with nothing to show for your efforts.
Other points to consider when considering weight loss surgery include:
These and other questions are important to ask yourself before embarking on weight loss through surgery.
Of course, we’re here to help guide you in the decision making. If you want to sit down with one of our bariatric specialists to discuss whether weight loss surgery is right for you, please contact us at one of our Texas locations in Rockwall, Rowlett, Greenville, Terrell, or Forney.
