(PART 1) BEYOND THE SCALE:
NAVIGATING LIFE AFTER BARIATRIC SURGERY
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Episode 243:
Show Notes
Episode 243:
Transcript
Dr Mary Barson (0:04) Hello, my lovely friends. I am Dr Mary Barson.
Dr Lucy Burns (0:09) And I'm Dr Lucy Burns. We are doctors and weight management and metabolic health experts.
Both (0:16) And this is the Real Health and Weight Loss podcast!
Dr Lucy Burns (0:17) Good morning, gorgeous friend. How are you this morning on a beautiful bright Tuesday morning? I am with, not Dr Mary, but an amazing guest who I think you guys are going to love. Her name is Tash Jarrett. She's a wife, a mama. She's a passionate health advocate, particularly for people living in bigger bodies who have had bariatric surgery. She is an absolute champion, so inspirational. And I know we usually kind of hate that term, but Tash just has some magic about her. So I was so grateful when she agreed to come on the podcast. And Tash, welcome to the podcast.
Tash Jarrett (00:57) Thank you so much for having me, Dr Lucy. I am so thrilled to be here.
Dr Lucy Burns (01:03) Yes, well, we are thrilled to have you. I met Tash, I actually met her quite a few years ago, but we recently reconnected on a Healthy Habits Summit that we were both part of. And I heard her speak and I thought, ah, we've got to get you on the podcast. So Tash, can you tell us a little bit about your journey as a woman who was living in a bigger body?
Tash Jarrett (01:28) Absolutely. So thank you again for having me. And guys, thank you for listening. First off, I should say that I had my very first bariatric procedure or weight loss surgery procedure, nearly 17 years ago now, I had a lap band. And at that time in my life, I had young children. And I'd been through all sorts of things in my health, all kinds of health challenges, I'd actually been in a car accident. And I had a really massive inguinal hernia, which had sort of popped up in my caesarean scar. So basically from the lap sash of the seatbelt at the accident. And anyway, because I was very new, I was a very new mama again, at that particular time, he was only seven weeks old when the accident happened. I was carrying all of my bubby weight, at that point, as we do. And, and my surgeon suggested that what he thought would be the best option for me would be to have surgery that would help support quick weight loss so that the hernia could be repaired, and that the repair would be successful. I probably should have had a little bit more thought around that at the time. But anyway, I just wanted to get back to my life. I wanted to get back to doing the mom things. And you know, little kids, they needed me. So I went down that route wasn't great for me. But a couple of years later, I had the lap band out and swore off all bariatric procedures for a long time. I did not want to know anything about it again. And over a period of eight years, my weight steadily increased, and it started to really impact my life. And I decided eventually, after a lot of discussion, a lot of thought that I would go down the route of having a gastric bypass. I'd watched my siblings both go through bariatric procedures, they had sleeves. And because of my weight, my BMI, which I also hate, but anyway, that's okay. Because of how heavy I was at that time, I believed and because of the prior lap band, that I would be recommended to have a gastric bypass. And I did a lot of research about that, went and saw the surgeon and the surgeon did recommend a gastric bypass. And I'm now six and a half, nearly seven years post-op. And I've maintained that weight loss. So that's just sort of a very quick little, little nutshell.
Dr Lucy Burns (04:33) Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things where I mean, you've started with the lap band surgery, there's certainly evolved like evolution in medicine. So you know, 20-30 years ago, I mean, 50 years ago, we used to do stomach stapling, it was called. And that was a massive procedure because we didn't have laparoscopic instruments. It was really pretty rudimentary. And you know, we've evolved now. The lap band, I think, in general, doesn't seem to have certainly had anywhere near the results that more definitive surgery has for the majority of people. But I guess for some people, it's useful. But yeah, it seems that for most, it's not that useful.
Tash Jarrett (05:23) Yeah, well, for me, it wasn't.
Dr Lucy Burns (05:25) Yeah. And with reasonably high complication rates. So tell us then what was going on for you before you had your surgery? What were the drivers there?
Tash Jarrett (05:40) The drivers prior to my gastric bypass, I was in a place in my own life, where I was actually working in my own business at that time. And I had so many physical limitations, that I'd completed some studies. And I had so much to offer. And I was desperately wanting to be in a different field. And I had been for about 80 job interviews. And in each interview, I would think that it went so well, I would think that everything was okay. And they'd say, you know what, we loved you. And I started getting this feedback, we loved you, we really loved you. But you know, there was just someone that was just a little bit more qualified. And I kept getting this feedback over and over and over and over again. And eventually, I started to wonder, I wonder if maybe my size was the reason that this was happening to me. And also, my children were growing. And I was wanting to be more active with them. I was shutting myself away a lot that had some comments about about how big their mom was and things like that. I didn't want to embarrass them. I also had polycystic ovarian syndrome. And I just noticed that my weight was just climbing and climbing and climbing. So they're sort of the things that were going on in the background.
Dr Lucy Burns (07:27) Do you know what though, like just to it is appalling, I think, our society's judgment of people in larger bodies. And I think the underlying premise must be that you know, oh, well, they're just, you know, they're a bit lazy, why would I want to employ a lazy person? Or, you know, well, they can't even manage their own health, why would I trust them to manage my business or something along those lines, which, you know, I'm just gonna say it, that's a little bit of bullshit.
Tash Jarrett (08:01 Oh, I agree. It's actually a lot of bullshit. Because what any employer back then would have gotten from me would have been my whole heart, like complete devotion to that role and to their customers. And you know what, the very last interview that I went for before I decided I was done, I'm not interviewing again until I've had bariatric surgery. I got feedback and the recruiter rang me and they said, the employer can't offer you the role, but they were wondering if they could have your personal contact details because they'd love to catch up and be friends. Because, you know, you just really seem like the kind of person that they wanted to be friends with.
Dr Lucy Burns (09:00) My brain's just hit the ceiling.
Tash Jarrett (09:03) Yeah, well, okay. You want to be my friend, but...
Dr Lucy Burns (09:07) Yeah, yeah, but I'm not good enough for your job.
Tash Jarrett (09:11) Yeah, that's right. So that was one of the massive factors. I realised then that unless I actually did something, I was probably going to keep having the same result. And so that is really why I eventually decided, yep, okay, we're doing it. We're doing the thing.
Dr Lucy Burns (04:41) Yeah, yeah. Which look, you know, I think is a blight on society, but I also recognise that you know, it's all very well for, you know, us to say, well, society shouldn't discriminate. But if you're the person who's being discriminated against, that doesn't help you.
Tash Jarrett (10:01) That's right. It doesn't help support my children. It doesn't help give them the kind of life that I wanted them to have. It doesn't change anything around that. And it's not that I don't love people who are passionate and who advocate in that space. I think that they're amazing and wonderful. But for me, with the decline in my health, my increasing weight with polycystic ovarian syndrome, and all of the different factors factored in, I decided that I needed to make that appointment. And the tipping point for me, like there was the job interviews, there was all of that, but the tipping point was actually my graduation ceremony for my course, because, you know, there's always a delay in that ceremony taking place. And I went to the ceremony and they didn't have a robe big enough to fit me. And I walked across the stage that night, fully aware that I looked different to everybody else. I felt so much shame, so much embarrassment on what should have been an amazing, amazing evening. I should have felt all of those, you know, good vibes, those good things. And I didn't get that. What I got was a big dose of, we don't have to fit you. So on the drive home with my husband, I just said to him, I can't, I just can't keep doing this. And he said, okay, well, when we get home, let's increase the health insurance. And so that's what we did. Yep. Yeah. All the things, all the weight bias, all the stigma, it sucks and it's wrong and we should not have to live with it.
Dr Lucy Burns (12:01) No, no. And look, society is doing more, I think for size inclusivity. Oh, a hundred per cent. At an individual level, it's often not enough still. So yeah, I'm sorry that happened. I really am. I just think that totally, totally sucks. Thank you. So the next step, so you did some research.
Tash Jarrett (12:30) I did. I did research. So I had a 12-month period of time to research because obviously if you go down the route of having a metabolic bariatric procedure through private health, I needed to have top-level private health for 12 months for that to be covered. So I set about using that time to try to find a surgeon in my area. I did that. I spoke with a lot of different people and I jumped online, joined support groups, and did all of that kind of stuff. And obviously I also researched via APHRA. I did a lot of things around all of that and I was very, very happy and comfortable with my choice. So once I knew roughly who I thought was going to be a fit for me, I went and saw my GP and he was completely on board and thought that this was a really great step for me. And so he made the referral and I made my initial appointment. And then after I had my first consult, we booked my surgery for the day after my private health insurance matured. Yes. And so then I was just waiting, waiting.
Dr Lucy Burns (14:02) And were you nervous?
Tash Jarrett (14:04) Yes. Horribly, horribly nervous. I actually wrote a goodbye letter to each of my children in case things went badly. I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified. So much was playing into all of that. I was scared about the surgery, but I was scared about the change. I was frightened about what that would mean and what my life would be like. And also I knew I was removing what I felt was probably going to be an excuse because I definitely had hidden myself away for a lot of different reasons, but I'd done that for a long time. And I knew that once my weight started to come off, I would no longer have that excuse anymore. And that was its own wind screw.
Dr Lucy Burns (15:00) Absolutely. Well, we often talk about, you know, the fear of weight loss. So, you know, people have fear of, you know, missing out on foods or, or those sorts of things, but actually fear of success. So what, what is it going to mean for me if I'm actually in a smaller body? What does that look like? Yeah. And I think some people can't quite get their head around that, but what did it mean for you that fear of success?
Tash Jarrett (15:28) Fear of success for me meant that I would actually know that it was just because I was unsuitable for something rather than I didn't try. I had set up in my mind a whole lot of reasons why it was easier to be in a bigger body because I was frightened of rejection. Very, very frightened of rejection. I was very frightened of what that would look like and what that would mean for me personally. I had a wonderful, I grew up in a wonderful family. I have a very loving mum and dad, but I had some really deep-rooted self-esteem issues and my battle with my weight started when I was eight years old. So it had been in my life, that battle for such a long time and feeling always a bit different to other people and I was just frightened of what it would look like if I wasn't then able to do the things that I wanted or if I wasn't then as successful as I hoped I'd be. There was always this dialogue in my head, well, if you weren't big, then it would be like this. And I could allow myself to be happy in that thought or in that fantasy, but when it came to actually, oh my God, here it is, here's a new life. How do you, how do you manage that?
Dr Lucy Burns (17:09) Yes. The interesting step that you just said then was that it started when you were eight and we did the low carb road show a couple of years ago now. And we had a beautiful endocrinologist talking to us about PCOS and that's when the weight gain starts for girls with PCOS when they're eight. And you just think, what? Eight? Like it's, you know, it's the peak of their childhood where you should be just gallivanting around and skipping and doing all the things and not feeling different.
Tash Jarrett (17:48) And I did. I remember waking up and suddenly I developed and it literally was an overnight or over probably the course of a week. I suddenly had stretch marks. All of these things had just happened in my body and I did not know what was happening. My mum was like, oh, well, don't worry about it, darling. That's how I was. And then Nan was the same. Oh, sweetheart, you're fine. That's how I was. So we had this obviously inherited condition and we've just accepted that this is just how it is in our family. We don't have a name for it, but this is just how it is. And I knew that I wasn't different to the people in my family, but I was very different to my friends, very different to other people in my world at that time. And I just felt so out of place and broken. Like there was something really different about us.
Dr Lucy Burns (19:05) Yeah. Yeah. Dr Mary describes this as well because she also has PCOS and describes this thing that when she was eight or nine, she thought that she was unlovable because she was fatter than her friends. And it's like, oh God, it's heartbreaking. It really is. And I guess what you're really describing is the kind of two drivers, therefore, were the desire to fit into a society where we still value thinness over fatness, where we still glorify the bikini body and we discriminate against the people that don't measure up to that standard. But also the root cause of this being insulin resistance, which runs in families and drive out chronic disease. And you could see your future laid out in front of you.
Tash Jarrett (20:07) I could. I absolutely could. And that played into my choices as I got older. It is the reason why I was willing to have a lap band, even though I was terrified of it and I had heard some negative things. I still knew that, well, number one, I had this gigantic hernia. But number two, I was battling every step of the way. And by that time, we knew that I did have PCOS. I was very, very fortunate in that I was able to have children. Just, yeah.
Dr Lucy Burns (20:53) Yeah, absolutely.
Tash Jarrett (20:55) But oh my goodness, my body did all of the things, like hair on the face, the melasma, just all of the things and obviously the weight. And so that's why I was willing to do the lap band. That's why, even though I was terrified, I was willing to go down the route of having gastric bypass surgery because I hoped that maybe my body would be normal. And I didn't even know what that was because I'd always been in a bigger body. But I just desperately wanted to be able to not get pointed at, to know that if I was attending a job interview, I'd be seen as a person, not as a number on a scale, someone that they would look at. And you know, as soon as you walk into a room, if you've been in a bigger body, you'll know exactly what I mean. You see the look. It's that one that starts with your eyes and it quickly dashes down and then it comes back up because we know intellectually now in 2024 that we can't be judgmental or we're not supposed to be judgmental about people's size, but there's still that bias there. And I experienced it.
Dr Lucy Burns (22:30) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that and to say that we know it's wrong, but the burden of bearing that stigma shouldn't be on the individual.
Tash Jarrett (22:46) Exactly. I agree with you.
Dr Lucy Burns (22:47) I mean, again, it's that individual. They are, they're discriminated against and, you know, and it's not right.
Tash Jarrett (22:59) And, you know, for a really long time, I also struggled with the thought of having bariatric surgery because I didn't want to just give in.
Dr Lucy Burns (23:11) Yes. I can, I can understand that. Yes.
Tash Jarrett (23:15) I didn't want to just give in to all of the people that had judged me. It was so hard because I come from a family where being in a bigger body is something that, that is quite common. I didn't want anybody to think that I was, that I was in any way trying to distance myself from that.
Dr Lucy Burns (23:45) Yes.
Tash Jarrett (23:46) You know what I mean?
Dr Lucy Burns (23:47) Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah.
Tash Jarrett (23:51) It was hard. It was such a hard choice on so many levels. And I think I waited until it like financially, it was affecting our lives. My health was being affected. My relationships were being affected. Every part of my life was being affected before I finally went, okay, let's do the surgical thing. Let's, let's do this.
Dr Lucy Burns (24:13) Yeah. And I think this is the tricky thing for the body positivity movement is fantastic because it absolutely, we do not, as a society, we should not be judging. And it can be both positivity for anything, whether it's size, you know, for me, disability, I have a really, really obvious disability that I get judged for all the time by people who don't know me. The body positivity movement is fantastic for that. But I do know that there are people who have been part of that movement who have then gone on to do things that do change the size of their bodies. And then they get judged for sort of abandoning the cause. And it's not about that at all.
Tash Jarrett (25:02) No, it's not. I mean, now when I wear a bikini from the front, you know, it's reasonable from the back, I look like a sharp pain and all my, all my little wrinkles and crinkles and everything like that. And I'm totally fine with it, like completely fine with it. Most days, some days it still does affect, you know, my thoughts about myself and, you know, like all the skin that I have, it doesn't matter what we choose. And this, this is something that I've found in life. It doesn't matter what we choose. We need to be choosing it for reasons that are empowering for us because other people are always going to have an opinion.
Dr Lucy Burns (25:47) Absolutely. Absolutely. And, uh, you know, they have an opinion based on a quarter, a 10th of the facts. They don't know the whole story and nobody can know the whole story except the person making the decision.
Tash Jarrett (26:02) That's right. So that is really the point that I came to. I went, okay, I know about me. I know about all of the different parts of me, everything that's being affected by this extra weight that I'm carrying. And I need to do something that is going to be able to be something that I can live with something that is going to empower me to live the kind of life that I want to live so that I will be able to maintain my mobility as I age so that I will be able to be there for my kids so I can do the things that I want to be able to do. And that is such a powerful driver.
Dr Lucy Burns (26:49) Yeah. So, you know, let's fast forward a little bit. You had your surgery and, uh, has it been the silver bullet?
Tash Jarrett (27:00) No, no, no.
Dr Lucy Burns (27:03) Tell us about that.
Tash Jarrett (27:04) Surgery is, it's awesome. It's done in Australia by skilled surgeons who are, who are trained in their field. They're great at what they do. They give you a safe bariatric metabolic procedure. And I thought that I was fixed. I thought, woohoo, great. This is great. Until I was probably about three weeks post-op and my kids and my husband came home with KFC. And I ran to the bedroom and cried and had a massive tantrum. Why did you bring that into the house? I miss food, blah, blah. And it was then that I kind of realised, oh my goodness, this is about so much more than just a surgery. It's about learning to live with the choice that I've made, but also I had to deal with all of the emotional factors that were clearly at play and probably were some of the reasons why I'd been unable to address some of my weight issues. Of course, I fully believe, that there were genetic factors at play, but I needed help to learn how to eat well. I thought that I did. I thought that I did eat well. I thought that I ate balanced meals and I did, but I ate gigantic portions. And I freely and willingly admit that I used to eat five cups in a meal. My portions were very significant. I needed to learn how to balance my meals in a better way. I needed a lot of help with that. I needed so much help with all of the emotional factors. I needed a psychologist and that's what I did for myself. So I needed help with that. I needed help with moving my body as well. So I sought assistance with that, but the surgery didn't just fix me and it doesn't. I mean, of course, there's that honeymoon period, that first 12 months where the surgery does what it does. We do lose weight, but hopefully, we want to live a really awesome, empowering, inspiring and incredible life and whatever that looks like for us. And that's when all of the work that we do in that first 12 months really starts to pay off. Yeah, absolutely. So for me, it looked like making a lot of changes in that.
Dr Lucy Burns (30:07) Yeah, totally. I think what you're describing, and this is, I guess, one of the things that we really try and spend a lot of time talking with people about is that obesity, which is the medical term, is a condition that affects our metabolic hormones. So the metabolic hormones are all awry. They're not in balance. We've got leptin that's very high that should, if it's doing its job, it's supposed to tell us that we're full. The problem is it becomes dysfunctional so you never feel full, which is why people can eat large amounts of food. They don't have access to their stored fat because insulin levels are high, so they run out of energy. So they do need to eat. And then it's like you start eating and there's no off switch. And then it's when people go, well, you just eat too many ingredients. It's just not about that. So we've got those sorts of biological things. And I love the whole biopsychosocial model, which is an old model, but it applies so well to this condition because it is. It's in our psychological drivers where food is soothing, food is love, food is calming, food is social, there's food, all the reasons we eat that aren't hunger. So all the non-hungry eating. And then just the social, our societal way we have changed the way we eat our food, society, the way we no longer really, lots of people don't have meals anymore. We eat in front of the telly, but also the type of food we now, you know, what is food or the processing, the ultra processing of food, all of that. So there are multiple layers to managing weight. And I think that when people perhaps rely just on one thing, that's when they're not necessarily optimising their results.
Tash Jarrett (32:09) Yeah. I think for optimisation purposes, what I know has been really helpful for me is to understand the reasons why I was eating as I was. And it was really in those first six weeks after my surgery, when I realised, oh my goodness, my support system has been cruelly cut from me. And now I cannot fit in the food that I was having when I was happy, sad, depressed, stressed, all of the things, all of the times that I was eating when it wasn't for hunger or enjoyment. And that's not to say that we should only eat when we're hungry. I understand that you know, food is about more than just that. But for me, I was just using food as my support system for my life. And I didn't have the kind of coping strategies that were going to optimise my journey in the long term. And I had to learn what they were or what that was going to look like for me because I just didn't know. I had grown up in an environment where we had good news. We eat. We are sad. We eat. We are depressed. We eat. A bad thing happened today at school. Oh, come here. Let's eat.
Dr Lucy Burns (33:51) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And lots of societies do that. Absolutely.
Tash Jarrett (33:54) Yeah. And that is what was modelled for me. I don't blame that, but I just adopted that. That's just what I did. And so I had to learn new ways.
Dr Lucy Burns (34:10) And that, my lovelies, is the end of this episode. Join us next week where we go through all the new things that Tash had to learn on her journey to real health and weight loss beyond bariatric surgery. See you soon, my loves.
Dr Lucy Burns (34:25) The information shared on the Real Health and Weight Loss Podcast, including show notes and links, provides general information only. It is not a substitute, nor is it intended to provide individualised medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor can it be construed as such. Please consult your doctor for any medical concerns.
