I was first diagnosed with PCOS while I was playing derby, putting in 15-20 hours of endurance practice a week. That's when my doctor really took notice because I was gaining weight. A lot of it. Totally disproportional to what I was eating and how I was exercising.

I appreciate the apology, btw.

I've had WLS and just ate my piece of string cheese and handful of nuts, so I'm aware of the regimented eating needed to succeed afterwards. I couldn't lose weight before hand — both RedBeans and I have PCOS which makes it night difficult to impossible to lose weight. After the surgery, I'm basically having success…

There's almost nothing more insulting for a fat person struggling with their weight and considering something as extreme as surgery than to have someone come along and say something like 'eat less and move more! it worked for me!'

I know you meant well, but when someone gets to the point that they're considering weight loss surgery, they've already tried the diets, and the exercise, and the years of well-meaning people saying 'well maybe if you just ate less and exercised more. And what about Weight Watchers'.

How are you feeling? Those first couple of weeks are a tired, painful bitch.

All bariatric surgeries are not the bypass, and different surgeries have different mortality and complication issues. The article uses the two terms interchangeably — I just wanted to clarify.

Yeah, I had the same 'oh, the band seems much less dangerous' idea when I first started researching WLS, but I have to say, after both reading the medical literature and the number of people in the WLS community who have had real horror stories about it, I wouldn't ever feel comfortable recommending it to anyone.

Right about the Catch 22. Rapid and large weight loss increases fertility, but getting pregnant before your body has completely adjusted is incredibly dangerous. I'm 37 actually and we're likely going to try to get pregnant after the year is up. Having another child near 40 wasn't exactly my life plan, but that's the…

I bet if you put your head to it, you could have written that post without having come off as such an jackass about it.

The band involves surgery, as its inserted around your stomach, and there's a lot of complications. There's a number of insurance companies who are dropping coverage of the band due to the high number of revision surgeries they have been having to cover.

I meant to add, check out obesityhelp.com forums. Its a good place to read about people going through the WLS process.

I had the vertical sleeve back in August. I think my history on this site and elsewhere will back me up when I say that I'm also a huge proponent of fat acceptance and I'm not a self-loathing fattie. After almost a decade of struggling with PCOS and seeing my weight continue to spiral out of control (along with hair…

The diets before surgery aren't to see if they can't lose weight (and thereby qualify for surgery). They're to see if the patient can follow the kind of strict structure they'll need to enforce after the surgery. The pre-op diet doesn't need to have a tremendous weight loss, generally, but there are some insurance…

Thanks for sharing your story.

Without knowing anything specific about your circumstances, increased alcoholism is a major concern for bariatric surgery patients for a number of reasons (which I'm sure you know, but I'll list them here for anyone else reading this — its easier to drink than to eat, psychological problems that may have lead to…

A good guess! There's plenty of shuddering moments in them.

She changed her last name as an anniversary present to her husband. So technically she's now SMP. Which still isn't J, as Jr isn't a last name.

Its not the Hostel movies.

Exactly. If one of my male friends talked about 'some crazy bitches' who frame men for rape and made it clear that they think false accusations are more important than the thousands of women who see no justice at all for their own rapes, why the fuck would I tell such a personal story to them?