The procedure turned eating into a cycle of pain and vomiting. Food lodged in the tiny passage created by the staples left me doubled over until I threw it back up. I became, in effect, a medically induced bulimic \u2014 praised, nonetheless, for my weight-loss \u201csuccess.\u201d <\/p>\n
Within a year, I had lost nearly 100 pounds. Friends, family and even acquaintances congratulated me. No one saw the violence done to my body or the damage it did to my relationship with food. They didn\u2019t know the surgery left me dependent on ice cream, crackers and mashed potatoes because I could easily chew that stuff down to a pureed consistency to avoid the pain that followed whenever food got stuck in my staples. After the surgery, and even still today, I can\u2019t tolerate most fruit \u2014 too acidic \u2014 nor many vegetables \u2014 too fibrous. Stomach stapling didn\u2019t make me \u201chealthier;\u201d it only made me thinner. <\/p>\n
That surgery didn\u2019t even \u201ccure\u201d me.<\/p>\n
More than two decades later, in 2017, weighing nearly 390 pounds, I went under the knife again, this time for a sleeve gastrectomy. By then, I had surrendered to the diet industrial complex, a multibillion-dollar ecosystem<\/a> built around the idea that fat bodies are inherently flawed. The pressure was relentless \u2014 to fix, shrink and manage a body that medicine had always treated as a problem to solve.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom childhood to adulthood, I\u2019ve been told that \u2018something must be done.\u2019 Rarely has anyone stopped to ask what living in this body actually means to me.\u201d<\/p>\n And the scrutiny wasn\u2019t limited to exam rooms. In restaurants, on airplanes, at conferences, strangers felt entitled to comment on my body. I\u2019ve been mocked for eating a donut, told loudly in a food court that I was \u201ckilling myself,\u201d and subjected to humiliating requests to be reseated on flights. I\u2019ve even overheard cruel remarks in a language people assumed I didn\u2019t understand. Those moments left wounds far deeper than any heat rash or bruise from too-small chairs.<\/p>\n Society\u2019s obsession with fatness extends well beyond personal interactions. Fat people are consistently portrayed in the media<\/a> as lazy, undisciplined or morally flawed. Research has documented<\/a> how these stereotypes influence health care practices and workplace discrimination. This cultural narrative seeps into medicine, where clinicians \u2014 even those with good intentions \u2014 can unconsciously perpetuate stigma.<\/p>\n Today, at 44, I\u2019m on Wegovy. Reluctantly. When I started, I told my doctor my goal weight was 250 pounds \u2014 a number that, at 5\u201910\u201d, felt right to me.<\/p>\n Now I weigh 235, down 50 pounds in eight months. My doctor tells me to stay on it. And I\u2019m not sure why I\u2019m listening.<\/p>\n Initially approved to treat Type 2 diabetes, GLP-1 medications like Wegovy are now viewed as a breakthrough<\/a> for weight loss, but for me, they feel like another chapter in the same story: doctors offering interventions driven less by my actual health and more by the fear and stigma that surround fatness.<\/p>\n Why do I take it? Because sometimes it feels easier to live with the physical and emotional side effects of medicalization<\/a> than with the relentless judgment of others \u2014 and, most troubling of all for me, with my own internalized fatphobia.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the truth: Fat patients aren\u2019t blank slates waiting for salvation. We know the statistics, the risks, the medical language. What we also know \u2014 often more than our doctors \u2014 is the crushing weight of fatphobia disguised as medical concern.<\/p>\n Photo Courtesy Of Georgiann Davis<\/p>\n Studies show<\/a> that weight stigma in health care leads patients to delay care, avoid screenings and have poorer mental health outcomes. Weight bias, it has been argued<\/a>, can also trigger stress responses, raise blood pressure and worsen metabolic markers. In other words, the judgment itself is harming our health.<\/p>\n And let us not forget that the use of GLP-1s can come with a whole new set of harms in the form of extreme side effects like chronic diarrhea, severe nausea and pancreatitis<\/a>, all familiar side effects<\/a> to those, like me, who previously underwent weight loss surgery that permanently altered our digestive systems.<\/p>\n While GLP-1s often lead to weight loss, research shows<\/a> that the weight comes back when the medication is stopped. Similarly, long-term studies<\/a> on weight loss surgery reveal that many patients eventually regain a significant portion of the weight they lost. This cycle of losing and regaining weight \u2014 often called weight cycling \u2014 has been linked to negative health outcomes, including increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and metabolic issues<\/a>, some of the very conditions weight loss interventions are intended to prevent. And once you are caught in the cycle, which research suggests is triggered by social stigma surrounding fatness<\/a>, it can be incredibly hard to break free. <\/p>\n Obesity medicine is booming<\/a> in large part due to GLP-1 drugs. But if we don\u2019t confront the bias that underpins it \u2014 the reflexive assumption that fat equals sick \u2014 we will keep reproducing the same harm.<\/p>\n Medical education is part of the problem. Physicians-in-training often harbor implicit anti-fat biases and receive minimal guidance<\/a> on treating patients with respect regardless of weight. Moreover, BMI \u2014 a tool used ubiquitously \u2014 is a flawed instrument<\/a>. It correlates poorly with health outcomes when considered alone, and often oversimplifies complex metabolic and social factors. <\/p>\n Although many people assume that a fat body is inherently unhealthy, research shows<\/a> that body size by itself isn\u2019t a reliable predictor of mortality risk. This is especially the case when other metabolic risk factors, like high blood pressure, diabetes or high cholesterol, are absent. Exercise physiologist Glenn Gaesser has long emphasized that it\u2019s fitness, not fatness<\/a> that better predicts long-term health outcomes. And the two are not directly correlated \u2014 fat people can still be fit and healthy, just as thin people can be unhealthy.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/68c99d01180000c4085cf54d.png\")
The author in 2018, at 37 years old.<\/p>\n