Insight asks: How do we decide when to intervene with surgery for weight loss? Weight Loss Surgery, Tuesday May 21 at 8:30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand.
Rachel Foreman, 28, was adamant that she would not have weight loss surgery.
She’d only been dating her now husband, Darren Foreman, for 18 months when he suggested they go and get the surgery together.
“I was really upset with him, I felt as though I wasn’t enough for him,” Rachel tells Insight.
“I told him to leave and get out … I didn’t want him in my life anymore.”
Nearly two thirds of Australians are overweight or obese – and now more of us are turning to surgery to deal with the problem.
Hospital admissions for weight loss surgery have more than doubled in the last decade.
At their heaviest, Rachel and Darren weighed 314 kilograms between the two of them Source: Supplied
“As the obesity epidemic has increased, the biggest people are getting bigger still so there’s an enormous number of people that are severely incapacitated by their extremely large size,” says endocrinologist, Professor Gary Wittert.
“The demand has increased enormously.”
At their heaviest, Rachel and Darren weighed 314 kilograms between them and while they were repeatedly advised by their GPs to lose the extra weight, they were offered little direction about how to do it, and sustain the weight loss.
“Any time we went to the GP for anything, they just say ‘lose the weight, that will fix it’, says Darren.
“That’s the extent of it.”
About two years after Darren first mentioned surgery, Rachel started to change her mind about getting the procedure when she realised that her weight was affecting their ability to get pregnant.
“It was negative pregnancy tests every single month and I just couldn’t do it anymore,” she says.
After years of dieting, exercising and failing to keep the weight off, Rachel and Darren were booked in for gastric sleeve surgery and they went together in 2018 to have the procedure on the same day.
She’s just our entire world and more than we could have ever hoped for.
A year on and things have changed dramatically for the couple, who have shed a total of 106 kilograms – but their life altering changes were not just on the scales.
“Our entire goal through weight loss surgery was to have a family and seven weeks ago we welcomed the birth of our beautiful little girl,” says Rachel.
“She’s just our entire world and more than we could have ever hoped for.”
