Actress Gabourey Sidibe had VSG

hahahaha!! Too funny. It is pretty well constructed... you would have to have some powerful equipment

I've got lots of tools.

Yea... This is transparent. I could see them food - I would want that. For me best is out of sight- out of mind.

I'm kind of sympathetic to VSG patients who end up with the idea that their "brain chemistry" will change, because there's so much talk about how getting rid of the ghrelin will make you want to eat less and so on and so forth. It's easy to get excited and kind of blow that up into a more powerful Now-You-Will-Only-Want-To-Eat-Just-As-You-Should sort of magic than it really is. (I just mean chatter among patients. I can only speak for my doctor and his team, but they never oversold that effect as a change in "brain chemistry" or anything. But amped-up patients seeing stuff through the rosiest glasses? I can see how a prospective sleever would get an inaccurate impression.)

"Magical Thinking"

Yikes, I got mixed feelings about this. This news will be on my mind for a while.

What mixed feelings?

I certainly don't disagree that it's refreshing to see a star talking openly and positively about a bariatric procedure, and stigma around wls isn't good for anybody. I really don't know why my feelings about this are as, uh, all-over-the-place as they are. I want to be clear that I'm happy for Gabourey Sidibe as long as she's getting good follow-up care and all that (and I assume she is!) and I don't begrudge her any steps she and her doctors feel are appropriate to keep her healthy and feeling well.

I haven't really sorted out any kind of articulate statement about why there's also some lingering weirdness about this for me, but it might come down to spending a fair amount of time (in the past, and to a lesser extent in the present) in the "fatosphere"/Fat Acceptance corners of the internet. I know Gabourey Sidibe is really important to a lot of people, and I'm guessing the Venn Diagram of "people who care a lot about this particular actress" and "fat people who don't need or don't want to lose weight, especially by surgical means" probably overlaps pretty generously. I'm imagining their weird feelings about this news, so it's weirding me out, like, by proxy or something.

Also I'm bracing myself for an onslaught of people saying "she looks great...now!!" when she was always radiantly beautiful. And maybe there's a little shock in seeing a famous person get a VSG. (My procedure.) I feel like all the other celebrities who've had wls had gastric bypass or lap band, so there's sort of a funny "but that's what I, a mere normal person, had!"

It's complicated, I guess. I'm full of feelings.

Thank you for sharing! There aren't many actresses of size out there, so I can understand that it can be a big of a loss of a role model in a sense.

I'm glad to see public figures being upfront with their weight loss surgery. Actually, I'm glad to see *anyone* being open about their WLS. The more this is normalized, the more that maybe, just maybe, it will help those outside the community realize that it's not the "easy" way out.