The first year was pretty good. I lost about 50 pounds. I had a few issues, but nothing major and overall I felt great. I was losing weight slowly, with minimal frustration, and basking in the compliments and goodwill of people who were trying to be supportive.

The second year was not great. I plateaued for several months, then went in to get my band tightened, but it tightened so much that I couldn’t swallow my own spit and I had to go get it untightened in the ER in the middle of the night. It was downhill from there. I never found the sweet spot between feeling satiated on smaller amounts of food but not throwing up constantly. Some people with the band do, but long term statistics indicate that the number of people who do is closer to 10 percent of all the people who have the surgery.

“Success” is something everyone should be aware when it comes to weight loss, and weight loss surgeries. For the marketing collateral they claim 60-80% “success” – but depending on what you’re reading they will define it as some small percent of body mass lost and/or limit the time to a couple of years. There aren’t a lot of ten year follow ups, and they never do the math to include the people who died from the surgeries in their failures either.

So. No happy middle ground with the band for me. In years two and three the weight started coming back, even though I was following all the rules, getting my band adjusted, and exercising as regularly as I could. For the past six years or so I have weighed exactly what I did when I had the surgery.

The day to day reality of living with this is that I eat in a completely disordered way, I eat much less healthy, fresh food than I would like (or ever did pre-op), I’m tired all the time, I’m cold all the time, I vomit several times a day most days, and I get horrible reflux if I try to sleep on my back or my stomach or my left side. In the last few months there has been blood present a few times when I was vomiting, which finally vaulted the need to have this thing out from elective to emergency as far as the insurance company is concerned.

Obviously, this is only one person’s experience. But as long as there are all those billboards touting the surgery as an easy way to get thin quickly, I think it’s worth sharing the stuff that they’ll never put on a billboard.

Curious, I did a couple of searches myself. I found out weight loss can make you happier if you have hot flashes, and I found stories about how you will be less fat and thus more happy if you eat eggs and get surgery and drink apple cider vinegar and go to the mountains (even though you’ll gain the weight back in a month, of course—yes, the article really admits that). There’s even an article about how weight-loss patches “really work.” I’m not kidding.

I did not find any stories that could be remotely classified as fat positive, with one exception. The link our tipster sent in was this one, an article that contained the tidbit that low social interaction is “twice as harmful as obesity.” Of course this isn’t fat positive on the surface, but I could make a happy headline for that, which would read: Your Friends Are Twice As Important As Your Fat. That’s pretty happy, right?

“I think fat people are sold a fantasy, and then get no support in the reality, because we’re simply supposed to be grateful that we’re no longer fat,” [Jen] Larsen says… But weight loss chat rooms, forums and blogs are filled with people who are wondering why their newfound svelte selves and stellar metabolic profiles are leaving them ever-so-slightly disappointed.

And who can blame them? Reality shows, weight loss books, movies, TV shows and advertisements all tell tales of people dropping major poundage and gaining seemingly perfect lives. They find their true selves and their true loves. They go back to school or get promotions. They become social butterflies, the life of the party.

Anyone who’s read Kate’s piece knows that’s a bunch of BS. And if you haven’t read it in a while, or ever, go and enjoy.

Accepting my fat really wasn’t the hard part. Accepting my personality — and my many limitations that have jack shit to do with my thighs — was. But oddly enough, once I started to do that, my life became about a zillion times more satisfying… The thin person inside me finally got out — it just turned out she was actually a fat person. A reasonably attractive, semi-outgoing fat person who has an open mind and an active imagination but also happens to really like routine and familiarity and quiet time alone.

That was never who I expected to be — it was just always who I was.

The Wilson Phillips singer, who currently weighs 212 lbs. despite undergoing gastric bypass surgery in 1999, tells People Magazine, “I need help.”

I keep thinking of how celebrities are allowed to be fat if they’re also very apologetic about it. (At least we have Gabourey Sidibe on Team Unapologetic.) It’s the same dynamic behind The Biggest Loser: beat yourself up, and we’ll forgive you for being fat. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

“I have to be a teacher to my daughters…Lola [her four-year-old daughter] started to notice commercials on TV with people who are trying to lose weight, and she looks at me. She’s thinking about this stuff, and it’s getting to her.”

Here’s where I want to shake her, because I’m afraid for this poor four-year-old of hers, watching weight loss commercials and hearing her mother constantly apologizing for her size. I don’t think you’re teaching your daughters the right thing unless you teach them to love themselves. Please, please, whatever else you do, teach them that.

Ah, the 1-800-GET-THIN billboards. Although I’m sure they’re all over the place, I seem to only see them all over Los Angeles. I can’t help but imagine a sinister undercurrent. Dear Aspiring Actress Who Just Moved To Hollywood… Have lap band surgery, which is a total breeze, obviously, and be transformed into the ideal thin blonde movie star type! Become the next Charlize Theron today! Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

Anyway, if you’re a longtime reader, you know my weakness for celebrity gossip, and when I saw a recent blind item, I was reminded of those billboards. This tidbit comes from from Lainey Gossip:

Our perfect parent found a permanent way to keep the weight down – with a lap band installation a few years ago. At the same time, she thought she’d help out her little girl too. By pretty much forcing her teenage daughter to have one put in as well. The child protested but to no avail. And better still, instead of paying out of her own pocket, she insisted that the surgery be funded out of her precious’s bank account. Well in hindsight, no wonder.

It’s hard to imagine this could refer to anyone but Courtney Love, who recently lost custody of 17-year-old Frances Bean Cobain. There have been rumors floating around for a while that Courtney had this surgery, and the references in the blind item to her being out of money (and dipping into Frances’s trust fund) also make sense.

Also, Frances’s medical records were reportedly sealed because they “reveal details of Frances’s relationship with her mother.” Hopefully Courtney can get it together and Frances will keep a good head on her shoulders. I wish nothing but the best for The Bean, and for Courtney too, for that matter.

One would also hope that WLS would be viewed as a serious undertaking, not a way to drop a few pounds from an already slender frame. And that a teenager wouldn’t be forced into having lap-band surgery without her consent. And furthermore, that there would be plenty roles for actresses of all shapes and sizes and races and body types in Hollywood. I mean, while I’m wishing for things…

We first wrote about Sara Rue all the way back in aught six, when she lost a bunch of weight and it was speculated (by gossipy people) that she’d had weight loss surgery and had to have it reversed. Here’s what I said at the time:

[I]f she wants to go all Reese Witherspoon for the sake of her career, I guess more power to her. I can’t imagine that looking like yet another generic Hollywood blonde would be helpful, but let’s face it, I’m probably wrong. Thirdly, I am depressed to have lost one of our hot, young, sexy, curvy-chick role models. And finally, I think she was way cuter before. But then again, we all know that girls-who-look-like-me are totally my type.

Well, I guess losing a lot of weight didn’t magically kickstart her career; but she gained some of the weight back and is now working for Jenny Craig.

“My weight has fluctuated my whole life, and because I’ve been on television since I was 11 years old, everyone has seen it,” she explains. “I think like so many women in this country I have a problem controlling what I eat sometimes based on my emotional health”… Rue’s initial weight loss goal is 30 pounds. Then, she says, “we’ll see how my body looks, how I feel, and go from there.” Her first post-weight loss goal? “Rock climbing or wind surfing!” Rue says. “The things that I’m just too intimidated the size I am now to do.” But the big question remains: Does she want to follow in Bertinelli’s footsteps and sport a bikini? “If I look half as good as Valerie does at the end of this, maybe, possibly,” Rue says, smiling. “I don’t know if I’m more scared of sharks or being in a bathing suit. Maybe sharks, depending on the day.”

Someone out there tell me you’re a fat rock climber or wind surfer! This makes me want to go wind surfing right now, when I’m way bigger than Sara Rue. Sigh. I know it’s none of my business, but she’s so cute again! I’m on the Sara Rue weight emotional roller coaster. Why does this always happen to me when some celebrity signs up to sell a diet?

Kelly Osbourne, a one-time champion for curves, is also proud of her recent weight-loss of seven kilograms. This was achieved by a revolutionary diet where Osbourne swapped her usual fare of chips and soft drink for ”fresh foods’.

See, it’s just that easy! Thank you, The Media. Anyway, she’s done an interview with the UK Mirror where she talks about how being called fat drove her to drugs and drink–but she still doesn’t like herself.

Do you ever wish you weren’t famous?
KO: [W]hen I was 15 I had people writing about how fat and ugly they thought I was. They still do it now and it still hurts, but not as much as it did back then… I gained a bunch of weight because mum had been diagnosed with cancer and I had been miserable, and he had an airbrushed picture of me on TV and said, ‘That’s not you, you’re fat.’ I remember feeling like I just wanted to crawl into a hole, and when I got home I cried for about two weeks. Comments like that led me to drugs and alcohol. When you’re 15 and you’re suddenly faced with, ‘you’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re just a celebrity’s daughter’, you’re like, ‘I never wanted to be famous’.

Are you happy with yourself now?
KO: I think I’m OK. I wouldn’t say I’m happy with myself. I would love to be a bit skinnier, every girl would.

Oh, honey. Put the blame on the media, not on yourself! (And please don’t throw out that stereotype of “every girl,” either, while you’re at it.)

By the way, in other celebrity news, the National Enquirer has Star Jones on the cover with the headline “Star Jones Packs on 45 Pounds!” I flipped through it at the supermarket (when I was loading up my cart with “chips and soft drink,” of course) and it was all “She looked so great after she had WLS! When she was thin! But now she’s ‘ballooning’! OMG!” So we have more of those stories to look forward to, I guess, if it’s true…!

Show History has a fascinating compilation of names and pictures and brief biographies of fat people who worked as attractions in carnival sideshows. (They were also known as “freaks.”)

A little background:

Professional Fat Folk of an earlier age lived to astound a public for whom not having enough to eat was a real possibility, and even a commonplace. From the 18th Century to the beginning of the 20th Century being fat was a sign of health and prosperity.

Seemingly devouring a constant plentitude of food that their audiences may not have had, the showbiz of girth and jiggle was a universal attraction in carnival sideshows, dime museums and circuses.

Fat people used to perform in many different ways, every sideshow looking for a new gimmick. They used to entertain by performing go-go dances, running 50-yard dashes (thanks, Weet, for that link), bicycling, doing acrobatics, and–yes–boxing. A surprising number had stage names beginning with “Jolly” or “Happy.” One was called “Ima Whale.”

Reading this list makes me wonder more about the lives of some of these performers–Dottie Blackhall, for example, was a 600-pound woman who ultimately committed suicide. Anroe Brown, “The Georgia Giantess,” was born into slavery. Clifford W. Krueger retired from the sideshow to become a Wisconsin state senator. One woman “allegedly died while bending over to pick up a four-leaf clover. One died from complications due to weight loss surgery.” Edward Rusk weighed 449 pounds but claimed to weigh 649 pounds (because even in 1895, people didn’t know what 400 pounds looks like). So many stories, happy and sad.

Here’s a short video clip from the 1920s of one of these performers. More photos after the jump:

At Joh’s first session with the hypnotherapist, she was asked to talk about her bad relationship with food.

But by the fourth session she was being talked through a gastric band op as though she was really going through the surgery.

To help with the illusion, special equipment pumped out the smells of an operating theatre and a recording of surgical tools being picked up and put down was played. Joh says: “When they actually come round to the final session and the therapist convinces you you’re having the op, it’s so realistic you actually believe you are lying in that operating theatre.

Yes, I’d pay money to be made to believe that I am lying on an operating table. The clink of the surgical tools is also a very nice touch.

So she goes through this imaginary operation, and suddenly, she is free!

“Now that I think I have a band I’ve cut my portion size in half. My mind thinks my stomach is tiny so I feel full much quicker. It’s also caused me to stop snacking on junk as I simply don’t feel like eating it anymore.”

Now that I think I have a band? She’s aware that she doesn’t actually have a band, so I am confused about how she can say that she thinks she has a band. Is she unsure as to whether or not the band exists? Has the line between fact and fiction been so mystically blurred that right becomes wrong and up becomes down and gastric bands lie down in the box with Schrödinger’s cat and play canasta? I guess I don’t understand how you can be perfectly aware that you do not actually have a band around your stomach, and not decide you can eat whatever you want because that band doesn’t exist. But I guess I am missing the entire point of magic imaginary weight loss surgery.

Anyway, she was a U.K. size 18, and now she is a U.K. size 12, she looked awesome both before and after and I am glad she didn’t actually get weight loss surgery to lose only 56 freaking pounds. And I am off to go get imaginary magic PhD, so that I think everyone should call me Dr. Fu.

In the clip I saw on Jezebel, Star apologizes to her colleagues for “placing a burden” on them and says she never asked them to lie, and that “Pilates and portion control” was invented by the tabloids. Oprah said “I’d heard Pilates too… I was doing Pilates and I went, well damn… what kind of Pilates is she doing?” Oprah goes on to say:

What I thought, as a viewer, is that you were… ashamed. And I wasn’t thinking ashamed of the weight because I really believed you, along with so many other people, when you were saying that you were fine being overweight. I thought you were ashamed of gastric bypass. I thought you were ashamed to say “I did it this way” and I didn’t, you know, work out every day and do the diet thing.

Star’s response is that it would have been “the easiest thing in the world to say gastric bypass” but harder to admit she had been “selling a bill of goods” for the last few years, and she didn’t want to talk about it at all. Then the clip ends.

I guess I would interpret “selling a bill of goods” that her whole “I’m fine being fat” was a lie, and that she didn’t want to admit it was a lie. But tell me if you disagree with my interpretation. I don’t feel like Star Jones is straightforward enough here for me to understand her, although I do understand simply wanting to keep it private. The Oprah blog reports on another part of the interview:

Jones admitted she was scared to disappoint people and ashamed that she wasn’t able to control her weight. “… I was an addict for all practical purposes, that I had never stuck to a real diet, that I’d never stuck to a real exercise program, and that when confronted by my doctor and the doctor said if you don’t make changes, you will die. I had no choice.” Jones said. “When you hear people say, oh, you took the easy way out, I would have longed for an easy way. It was not an easy way. It was this — the hardest struggle of my whole entire life and I still struggle.”

The ladies on The View then respond to Star’s appearance on Oprah’s show. They say things like “she looks great” and “she seems healthy and happy” and “we really do wish her well.” Then Joy Behar says:

We had to cover for her. I don’t know if you call that [a] “lie,” I wouldn’t call it a lie. But she did have her bypass, and we had to say it was with dieting and exercise, which it wasn’t. So now we all know the truth. So good. Let her go and have a happy life.

It’s interesting that she says “I wouldn’t call it a lie.” What else would you call it?

The View clip:

It’s a tough situation. Because does Star Jones have an obligation to set the record straight about “Pilates and portion control,” or does she have the right to keep her weight loss surgery private? People (even Oprah Winfrey) were misled into thinking they could lose drastic amounts of weight with “Pilates and portion control,” but was that Star’s fault? How about the average person who gets WLS… is it okay to pretend it was “exercise and diet” when it wasn’t? Why?