Weight loss wars: Surgery vs "The natural way".

I get asked a lot how I'm losing weight.When I reply with my standard "Eat less, move more", people seem to think that's a reason to tell me I'm doing really well and deserve extra credit for doing it "the hard way". I also tend to hear everyone's gripes about people who "take the easy way out" by having a surgery to lose weight.

Here's the thing....I'm pretty sure it's an ok comparison....I've had 2 babies. The first one was a C section, and the second one was a VBAC ("natural" birth). Wanna take a guess at which one I'd call easier? Jesus Christ, the vag birth was so much easier, by a million times. The surgery was horrendous, it interfered with my body's normal stuff and I couldn't even walk properly for weeks. After the little demon was born, I felt like I'd been kicked in the bum really hard for about a week, but went about my business. I'm thinking that it's much, much easier to just dedicate yourself to eating better and exercising than it is to incapacitate yourself with surgical intervention, have to heal and recover before you can even start, and adjust immediately to a brand new way of life. The weight loss is faster with a surgery. That's both a good thing and a bad thing. The skin issues are worse, the strain on your heart is worse, you require more psych support because the changes are faster and there's no time to adjust. If I had the choice right now, half way through (and at 99.5kg, there are still doctors who would recommend surgical intervention for me) I would choose to just keep going the way that I am, even if money was no object. Because I feel like this is the easy way. There's no downtime, I don't need to arrange work stuff around my weight loss. I'm free to choose what I put into my body and I'm not limited by things that now don't agree with me or cause me pain. This one is the right choice for me.

Now...It's up to you what the best choice is for your body. I wholeheartedly support any person who makes a change to get healthy, and I applaud everyone who's doing this the hard way with surgical intervention. Many of my friends have done it all different ways with so much success between them. My friend Paul had a gastric band and lost (kept off!) over 100kg. He's now an amazing karate dude. My friend Rhonda changed the way she ate and dropped (and kept off!) like 4 dress sizes. Did I mention she's a grandmother ( a young, vibrant and awesome-looking one, but a nan nonetheless)? My friend Alice had a gastric bypass, completely changed the way she thinks about food and is the fiercest gym queen I know (muscle-babe!) 70+kg down from her start weight. I am in AWE of all of these people and I see nasty comments thrown around like the surgery people "cheated". Are you fucking kidding me? How the fuck is spending hours a day in the gym and meal prepping like a boss cheating? The jealousy on this intarwebz is very, very real.

So I have no idea why it's controversial to have a weight loss surgery. I don't know why it divides groups of people and there's arguments everywhere about it. It is simply a person making a choice about their own body....and guess what? It has nothing to do with you, or me, or anyone else who thinks they know someone because they liked a few instagram pictures.

Chill out, people.