"The Girls” have been friends, and fat, for years, having met through the Austin chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and partied together among Austin’s Big Beautiful Women community. They’ve tried every diet and every pill but getting older and facing more health and mobility challenges, some choose to have gastric band or gastric bypass weight-loss surgery.

The Girls have varied post-op experiences but one reality is true for all of them: having surgery means the loss of their primary coping strategy (eating), and the experience of shedding, or trying to shed, hundreds of pounds changes everything. Their health, their self-images, their marriages, and friendships are all at stake. MORE