I turned down a free gastric band op....

The growingly popular gastric band surgery that so many desperate people are putting themselves into debt for and the NHS is under increasing pressure to provide as an alternative solution to the mushrooming numbers of morbidly obese was, quite literally, offered to me ‘on a plate’ for free.

‘We’ll give you a gastric band op free of charge if you write about the experience on your weight loss Blog and magazine of our choice’ said the pushy surgeon’s PA. I turned it down flat and then rang all my friends up to be told I must be mad!

Now, my decision to turn it down certainly divided my immediate circle of family and friends not to mention the team of sponsors who are on board to help me reach my goal. If I put them in two camps, the ones rooting for me and backing my decision is by far the biggest but the friends who sighed, looked at me with bemused bewilderment were those who, like me, are waging battle with the bulge and really could not imagine why I hadn’t grabbed the offer with both chubby hands and reached my goal in record time.

After all, one said, no-one would need to know and everyone would just think you’d stuck to the diet and exercise regimes.

I’m not kidding. I had this very phone call a month or so ago from a private clinic where through my Blog and other activities with Help for Heroes, the marketing department of a private clinic chanced upon my pledge to lose all my weight the sensible way and get as much cash in via sponsorship donations for the charity.

I was gob smacked. I had never considered an operation to reduce my size although coming from someone who has spent their entire adult life searching for the ‘quick fix magic cure’ this may surprise you. Maybe I’m just a coward but it quite literally does not appeal. It’s cheating and it’s dangerous. And more importantly I value my life and don’t want to put it at risk even though being overweight admittedly does just that.

I prefer to go the long route this time and deal with those all important weight issues as I go. You know, emotional eating, comfort eating, portion control, the boring stuff but all important issues that need tackling before any long term weight loss can be reached and maintained. I have failed miserably in the past but I sure as hell don’t intend failing this time round.

But these gastric band people were quite insistent. They wanted the Blog coverage, the magazine articles about how it changed my life and quite honestly, the more they pushed the more I retreated. I’m not going to say they hounded me but by day 5 I was letting the answer machine kick in before I picked up the phone.

It was quite unnerving, but my knowledge of how the media works definitely set the green light flashing: here was a clinic desperate for business and stumbling across my weight loss Blog they must have thought all their birthdays and Christmases had come at once. Unknown and verweight women happy to talk publicly about her weight battles: bulls-eye in one.

Usually they would go for the celebrity yo yo dieter (hello Anne and Fern and oh, is that Kerry Katona in the queue over there??) but that’d cost them mega money they probably can’t afford so who better to target than a wannabe writer and offer it to her on a plate. Except that these days I’m very fussy about what goes on my plate!

Whatever route I take to get this weight off I definitely wasn’t going to ‘do a Fern or Anne’ both of whom have made a healthy living out of their weight problems but my take on them is they haven’t tackled anything at all. They have put stuck sticking plaster over their food issues.

Ann Diamond in particular is a joke.

This is the woman who puts weight on and then loses it, makes a quick DVD championing some diet or other and starts lecturing us about how she did it but then starts scoffing again and so the merry go round continues. How many books and DVDs has she produced, anyone?

She hasn’t tackled anything at all, she’s just turned her dieting demons into a lucrative career because these days she’s known for bugger all else.

Yes I know, surgery is not an easy option. They tell us the operation is life threatening but It seems an easy option to me; no sweaty gyms, no making tough choices over what to eat, waiting from one month to the next to drop a stone. No, you just hop onto a trolley, get wheeled into the surgery and have a band put around upper stomach stopping you eating large amounts of food. Talk about cop out.

Two things would worry me. The fear of complications and I speak form experience. I had peritonitis at 12 and I can still remember excruciating stomach pain and ulcers throughout that year which kept me off school for the best part of a whole term. And then there’s the quick weight loss fallout, that awful saggy skin problem which can look as ugly as the fat that caused it. Have you seen it on the TV when they show the after pics of quick weight loss? It is nauseating to watch so even after the gastric band op there is the skin cutting op to follow. Pass the bucket.

I’d rather lose the weight properly and tone as I go thank you very much.

But thanks for the offer anyway guys.