Rampant health issues are a cascade effect brought on by obesity. Even weight-loss surgery, the medical industry’s newest darling, is now being singled out for its ill effects and frequent failure. Logic dictates these surgeries should contribute to post weight loss health issues, for weight loss surgery involves invasive implantation of foreign objects and the tampering of the body’s normal construction and function, something the body is designed to fight. Ironically, we see the cosmetic implantation industry continue to grow despite long-known, expensive and painful health ramifications, but vanity and outright laziness happily and voluntarily seek deep pockets in individuals’ deep-seated quests to “fix” one’s self in a society where the homogenized fake has found its own redefinition, that of status indicator and aesthetic acceptance.

When exactly and why did we turn the corner to where the weight conversation is less about bypassing the bypass or undoing it, less about conquering one’s eating disorders or changing one’s lifestyle with permanent intention and execution, and more about embracing the aesthetics of a condition that is now as before extremely costly and morbidly dangerous?

Is changing one’s lifestyle – which means real change and growth – by committing tough love and doing the work (fitness and lifestyle) being ignored in deference to the diet and food industries, for whom it can only be about profit – the low-cal/diet foods and plans sold? Has advertising created an addiction for the very need of such crutches? Deference to diet and food industries must also include bowing to the mass quantities of food made and sold to provide those weight-ballooning calories in the first place, aka the original source material for one’s obesity/weight problem.

Important to note is the exploding plus-size fashion industry who wants its plus-size demographic as is and then some, again a simple, profit-based quest to grow the bottom line. As for the weight loss surgical industry, Americans have been and continue to be programmed to see and depend on high cost fixes in all matters of health, for healthcare is shareholder/profit driven and money calls the shots. Always has, always will. While infertile couples pay dearly out of pocket and family planning remains America’s medical and political albatross, obesity surgery is regularly covered, which only serves to protect and grow the market and the high profitability of its products and services.