Did you lose with diet and exercise?

At my annual mammogram today, the nurse was shocked by my weight loss and asked if I lost the weight by "diet and exercise". I said yes, and added that I had gastric sleeve surgery.  

She dismissively said, "oh ... by surgery" as she noted it in my chart. I said yes, I had surgery, but unfortunately it only works with diet and exercise.  Y'know, like simply paying for Weigh****chers doesn't mean the weight comes off or stays off.  

I'm glad I said it, but it did not get through.  Pffft. (I didn't need the big purple gown.)

Congratulations for not needing the big purple gown!  In one of my doctor's office they always had to hunt for several minutes for the big purple gown as if I was the only woman of size that came into the office.

As for the nurse....well, pfft says it all

Love the analogy - just paying for Weigh****chers doesn't mean you lose the weight automatically.  I'm going to use that!

p.s. Also love that I don't need the big gown at the doctor's office anymore either.  Woo hoo!

Good for you! I also like your analogy!

I'm my PCPs office the smaller folks get scratchy paper gowns to use - I am happy to not need the larger gown but at least it was a more comfortable cloth one!

What really irked me was last time I was at my Bariatric surgeon's office - the medical assistant that was rooming me (doing the initial intake of information/vitals) and pulled out the big blood pressure cuff and wrapped it around my arm (I'm at a 22 BMI and have tiny arms). I said "I don't need that cuff anymore" and she said "eh" with a shrug and proceeded to use it anyway. I probably could use a pediatric cuff at this point. Can you say inaccurate blood pressure measurement or what!

Nice job on the gown victory! Most people don't understand what the surgery does, and even more people are too ignorant to care either way. I don't put energy into trying to explain it anymore.

When someone says "oh you had surgery to lose weight?" I reply with "Hell yeah I did!" And a smile. We all know we've taken the hard route to healthy living. The good news is, our weight loss will last instead of bouncing up and down like non-surgery losers!  

I love this and am going to steal it and use it in my responses!!!  

"Y'know, like simply paying for Weigh****chers doesn't mean the weight comes off or stays off."

People are just not educated about WLS. Good for you, we had WLS and proud of it. It;s alot of work now the we're post op but its our new life style.

God, that's so frustrating, isn't it? I hate people who are dismissive of all the effort it takes to lose weight, whether you have surgery or not! 

Yay for no big gowns!

I am baffled that someone who is supposedly a healthcare professional would say something like that. I must say my doctor has been extremely supportive of my surgery but I have had people telling me "Oh you took the easy way out". They don't understand that this ain't no walk in the park to do this and that most of us have had years and years of massive struggles before we even got to the point we were courageous enough to have the surgery. You can either opt to educate them or to let them be ignorant. Most people think it's a solution, but we know it is a tool that will only help if you put the work and effort in.

I am keeping the weigh****chers comment, priceless!!!

I've only encountered one person post-op (and I told everybody about my surgery) who kinda snorted when she heard about it. I ignore such people. Don't ever feel that you have to justify your surgery to anyone. Instead of getting defensive about it, just smile pityingly at her ignorance, then let it go. It's not your responsibility to change other people's attitudes, which is an exercise in futility anyway. You know what the surgery and your hard work accomplished. That's all that matters.

psychoticparrot