Stay tuned for another episode of “The Microwave Generation – We Don’t Work for Anything”

I know I’ve said this before, but this subject is definitely one close to my heart. The article, “A Boy’s Obesity Led His Mother to Send Him For Stomach Surgery,” tells the tale of a mother who researched the Internet to find a surgeon to perform stomach surgery on her 15-year-old son after she could not find a gastric bypass surgeon to perform the procedure due to his age. The boy, Andrew, who was 5-foot-4 and weighed 260 pounds told his mother, “There were times when I felt I just couldn't go on.” According to the article, after being rejected by the gastric bypass surgeon and, “already a veteran of numerous failed diets, exercise programs and summer “fat” camp, Andrew became convinced that weight-loss surgery, which had transformed the physique of a family friend, was his only hope.” Andrew reported that his teacher walked past him in the lunchroom and said loudly, “‘Are you sure you should have gotten doubles?’”

Told that he would have to wait 3 years until he turned 18-years old to have the surgery, “he pleaded with his mother for help.” So, his mother, instead of taking every step she could to help him lose weight, like cooking and eating healthier, taking him on walks or to the gym, and encouraging him to make a lifestyle change, because she was “worried about his (her son’s) increasing girth, high blood pressure and severe sleep apnea, Cheryl Burrill said she didn’t think her son could wait three years. Scouring the Internet, she found Reston surgeon Eric Pinnar, who specializes in “lap-band” surgery.”

So, the “microwave generation” filled with kids and teenagers who want everything in life to come easy for them without ever having to work hard for it have found a way to eat whatever they want, get as fat as they want, and then beg their parents for stomach surgery to lose weight. I not only find fault here with the parents and the teenagers requesting this surgery, I also have an issue with the doctors who are performing these surgeries. According to the article, “Although a handful of doctors have operated on children and teenagers, some weighing more than 700 pounds, bariatric surgery has been regarded by many doctors as too risky and drastic for patients under 18. A 2007 study estimated that 2,744 teens underwent weight-loss surgery between 1996 and 2003, a number that more than tripled between 2000 and 2003. Many pediatricians and pediatric surgeons have been leery of the procedures, which have not been studied in children, require lifetime adherence to a strict dietary regimen, and can cause hazardous nutritional deficiencies and, in rare cases, death.”

Now that this phenomenon is gaining popularity, gastric bypass surgery studies are being conducted by the NIH and the FDA, reporting that this surgery may decrease the numbers of obese adults by early intervention through encouraging gastric bypass in teenagers. The article goes on to say that “‘We know that the vast majority of morbidly obese adolescents become morbidly obese adults, and that medical and behavioral therapy doesn't work for them,’ said Evan Nadler, director of New York University's minimally invasive pediatric surgery program who is involved in the FDA lap-band study. ‘These kids are sick. This is truly a disease, a problem we can treat with the best means we know how. [Surgery] is the only known mechanism for sustained and significant weight loss.’”
The article then reports that “Two other factors are fueling the reevaluation of weight-loss surgery: the relentless increase in childhood obesity and the dismal results of behavioral treatment, consisting of some combination of diet, talk therapy and exercise. Behavioral treatment has a long-term failure rate estimated at roughly 95 percent.”

If we start at home teaching our kids how to live health lifestyles from birth, we would not have these problems. Instead, we allow our children to eat whatever and whenever they want because we want to avoid confrontations. What happened to the days when you actually did what your parents told you to do? What happened to the times when your mother and father ran the household and not the child? I know that when I was growing up, there was no such thing as weight loss surgery. You got outside and you ran around and played all day. You did not sit around the house, watching TV, playing video games, texting your friends, and listening to your iPod while munching on all the sweets you wanted to eat. You ate home-cooked meals every day, and there was NO WAY my parents would even entertain the thought of spending thousands of dollars on surgery because somebody at school teased me about my weight, whether it was the teacher or a student.

Have we become so jaded and superficial that appearances are more important than teaching our kids life principles, like putting down the Snicker’s bar and instead eating a piece of fruit, or getting up off the couch and run some laps around the neighborhood? I am sorry, but I know about healthy eating because I have had to make the sacrifice to lose weight for my own health problems. Yes, it is hard, but it can be done with dedication and commitment, and lots and lots of patience. You did not get fat overnight, so you will not lose weight over night or even over one year. It may take 2 or 3 years. Are our precious children to privileged to wait a reasonable amount of time before they start seeing results?

In the end of the article, one of the teenagers who received weight loss surgery brags on how great she is sticking to a diet and playing sports. Why could she have not done that before the surgery to lose the weight? Would it not be less expensive to just change the grocery list and buy a treadmill? And what about the doctors? Are they so desperate to increase their wallets that they will risk the lives of teenagers to decrease theirs? Now that this is gaining more popularity, when will it stop? We better get ready, because soon we will be signing-up our 4 and 5 year olds because they are a little too chunky. And that will be sad. Because I love babies with fat cheeks. Hey, I was one.