Is Surgery The Answer To Your Weight Loss Struggles?

How to lose weight without going under the knife

In a bid to lose weight, many people turn to gastric band surgery, but there is an alternative way to shed weight that doesn’t require a major operation.

We all know that being overweight is bad for your health, but losing the excess weight isn’t always as easy it sounds. In desperation, a growing number of people are turning to gastric band surgery – a procedure which involves fitting an adjustable band around the top part of the stomach to restrict food intake.

Gastric band surgery can certainly be effective, and lots of patients see a significant weight loss in a relatively short period of time. However, before deciding to have a gastric band fitted, it’s important to remember that you will be undergoing major surgery, which comes with its own list of risks and potential complications.

Surgical complications

Any operation comes with the risk of complications, both during and after surgery, and weight loss surgery is no different. Blood clots and infections are both common yet serious complications which can have devastating consequences if not caught quickly. Added to that are the risks associated with going under anesthesia – and these are exacerbated in patients who are overweight. In the weeks following the operation, there is also a small risk that the gastric band could slip out of place, which would require you to have further surgery in order to fix it. 

Unpleasant side effects

Even if you come through the operation unscathed, you could still be facing some unpleasant side effects. Acid reflux and vomiting after eating are both common side effects reported by people who have had a gastric band fitted, while others go on to develop gallstones as a result of losing weight too quickly. Perhaps most importantly, gastric band surgery means that you will have to follow a severely restricted diet for the rest of your life, and you may have to take vitamins in order to stave off any deficiencies

And the side effects are not just limited to your body. With gastric band costs coming in between £4,000 and £9,500, weight loss surgery can also have a pretty big impact on your bank balance!

A superficial fix

Perhaps the biggest drawback of gastric band surgery is that it doesn’t actually address the underlying issues that caused you to gain weight in the first place. This means that you could end up returning to your old eating habits and actually putting on weight, rendering the gastric band literally useless. Many people who experience this go on to have a gastric bypass – a more extreme and permanent form of weight loss surgery.

An alternative solution

Weight loss surgery comes with a host of potential complications, and it won’t be for everyone, but luckily there is an alternative solution that offers great results without going under the knife – weight loss hypnotherapy. 

This pioneering treatment combines hypnosis with counselling and talking therapies, in order to identify the root causes of the clients’ issues with food, and to furnish them with the tools to tackle those issues and make long term positive changes to their lifestyles.

Over the course of the treatment, the client is walked through a number of visualisation exercises, and this culminates in the visualisation process of getting a gastric band fitted – offering them the benefits of weight loss surgery without having to face the risks of a major operation. 

So, instead of heading to the operating theatre, it might be worth giving weight loss hypnosis a try to see if you can ‘think yourself thin’.