Permanent Surgical Weight Loss: With the DietaryRebuild®

By Brian Quebbemann, M.D.

If you want to know why millions of intelligent people choose weight loss surgery every year, "Permanent Surgical Weight Loss" has the answer. With a solid scientific background and a genuine understanding of the hurdles caused by excess weight, Dr. Brian Quebbemann explains how weight loss surgery can maximize your weight loss and help you keep the pounds off forever. This book is written in an easy, simple style and packed with valuable facts on why weight loss surgery routinely succeeds when diets and weight loss drugs fail. Using clear examples and insight from real patients, "Permanent Surgical Weight Loss" is a road map to dramatic weight loss success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350912920

Book preview

Author’s Note

The evidence is overwhelming—weight loss surgery works and works well. This is a fact that nobody can ignore.

In this book, I explain why every year millions of people choose weight loss surgery to win their battle against excess weight. By explaining a few simple truths about weight loss surgery, I provide insight into why surgical weight loss is the only reasonable solution for many people. I also provide a simple explanation of how to prepare for surgery, how to get through the surgical process easily, and how to maximize your results. You will read this book and say to yourself, That makes sense. Why didn’t anyone explain it to me that way before?

One important takeaway from this book is that surgery works without having to follow a prescribed diet. Almost nobody maintains a healthy weight by following a rigid, prescribed diet, whether they have undergone surgery or not. If it was necessary to follow a strict diet to make weight loss surgery work, why would you undergo the surgery? Instead of dictating a special diet, this book explains my easy-to-follow DietaryRebuild® process for identifying your own healthy diet, achieving your best weight and never having to diet again.

I hope you enjoy reading!

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Brian B. Quebbemann, MD, FACS, FASMBS

Clients versus Patients

I often use the term clients instead of the traditional term patients. I began using this term fifteen years ago, when I directed a bariatric surgery training program. I wanted my trainees to always keep in mind the humanity of the people they were treating. I told them that the difference between a client and a patient was that a client had to like you; they had a choice and had chosen you to be their doctor. Periodically reminding myself that my patients are also my clients reminds me that the people I treat are on an equal footing with me in deserving respect. I continue to follow this principle, and you will see the term client(s) used frequently in this book.

Chapter 1

Why This Book?

Why You Are Reading This Book

Getting to a weight that makes you happy, and staying there for the rest of your life, is your goal. You are reading this book because you are determined to win the fight against excess weight.

You’ve done the diets, you’ve done the exercise, but nothing you’ve done in the past has resulted in permanent success. You need a better strategy. What this book will show you is how weight loss surgery has worked for millions of people and why it might be the best strategy for you. This book will also outline a foolproof program to follow in the months after surgery, called the DietaryRebuild®, that will help you ensure that your surgery results in permanent success.

The people that walk in my door have tried hard to control their weight but still struggle. The fact that they are still working on it, and are looking for a better strategy, shows determination and strength. Giving up and pretending that being overweight is really no big deal, now that’s weakness.

My clients are not like all the people that try diet after diet, always dreaming that the next one will provide the magic solution. They are strong enough to accept that a healthy weight matters and they’re determined to achieve it, but they also know that most diets result in failure over time. My clients are smart; they know that millions of people have succeeded with weight loss surgery, and they’ve decided that weight loss surgery might also work for them.

This does not mean that weight loss surgery is the answer for everyone. It’s not an easy way out, and it takes some effort to make it succeed. But, for people determined to overcome their battle with excess weight, surgery can be the best answer.

Since I had a career that emphasized health and physical fitness, you would think I would naturally be motivated to stay in shape. I had always been physically active, playing sports and working out at the gym. So, it was easy for me to eat what I wanted and gain weight, then lose it when I needed to. I lost weight going from one diet to another, always gaining more weight after losing weight because I never made permanent lifestyle changes.

My string of luck ended after turning forty. I had to have back surgery for two blown discs, and when I eventually transferred to an office assignment my weight ballooned. I felt gastric bypass would give me the best chance to get control of my health once and for all.

—Edward G.

Retired Fire Chief and Successful Client

The fact that most people can’t find a permanently successful, nonsurgical weight loss method should not be surprising. Most people share a genetic predisposition to gain fat and lose muscle as they age, resulting in a lower metabolism and subsequent weight gain. This problem is compounded by numerous factors in our society that push us constantly to gain more weight. These factors include:

The big business of low-nutrition, high-fat foods

The addictive nature of highly processed foods

Social gatherings that revolve around maximum eating and minimal activity

Constant advertising that makes people think overeating makes them happy

More entertainment options that entice people to be sedentary

I have a client, a successful investor who bought a chain of 7-Eleven stores. One day, he came into my clinic and announced, I know why we’re all fat. As a weight loss expert I was weary of hearing so many simple answers to this complicated problem, but I listened.

OK, tell me why we’re all fat, I responded.

He said, Do you know what I want to sell you when you come into one of my 7-Elevens? I told him I had no idea. Slurpees, he blurted out. Then he explained that every dollar we pay for a cup of the frozen, flavored sugar water represents a profit of 98 cents to him. You buy Slurpees, I get rich. It was his best profit margin, but it was bad news for everyone who buys them.

I never checked the facts on this, but the point is, we are surrounded by cheap, ultra-processed food virtually everywhere we turn. We eat tons of fast food and junk food snacks that make us fat. Why? Because they are intensely advertised due to the fact that they are so profitable. Never mind that a person can easily find much healthier food for the same price, or less. But natural, healthy food is simply not promoted because it’s not profitable. When was the last time you saw an ad for apples or fresh fish? We are constantly bamboozled by these ads, blasted with them every time we watch TV, and because the ads are so effective, we buy and eat the garbage sold by Mr. 7-Eleven while he laughs all the way to the bank.

And the biggest factor in our failure to maintain a healthy weight might be the ridiculous diet programs we continue to try that have no chance for long-term success.

I’d had firsthand experience with weight regain after massive weight loss. Since adolescence, I’d lost 100 pounds or more on at least three occasions, through conventional diet and exercise, only to start regaining the weight in a year or less. And to add insult to injury, the weight regained was always more than the original weight lost. In 1994 I went from 375 pounds to 220 pounds for a 155-pound weight loss. By the year 2000, I’d regained all the lost weight, and instead of weighing 375, I weighed 400 pounds.

—Doug S.

Business Owner and Successful Client

When we gain weight, our physical activity drops, our muscle tone decreases, and our metabolism plummets, leading to even more weight gain. When the diets we try fail, we lose lean mass and muscle and regain only fat, dropping our metabolism even further with each unsuccessful attempt. This is the situation, and this is why you are reading this book.

Forget about nuclear war; the real weapons of mass destruction are fast food, highly processed carbs, and high-fructose corn syrup!

—Brian Quebbemann, M.D.

Why I Do It

After attending college for engineering and biology, I entered medical school at the University of Minnesota. At the time I did not know that Minnesota was one of the first medical centers in the world to perform surgery for weight loss, and did so in 1951. It was in medical school, in 1990, when I was first introduced to metabolic surgery. Professor Henry Buchwald, M.D., Ph.D., published a landmark study on the use of intestinal bypass surgery to treat high cholesterol and triglycerides, and his research showed that intestinal bypass surgery could dramatically improve and even reverse this disease. To me, this seemed enormously significant.

In my surgical training at the University of Chicago, bariatric surgery was a significant part of the training program. A watershed event occurred after my intern year, when I met a ruggedly built, six-foot-four firefighter named Frank (name changed) in the surgery clinic. The man was about 240 pounds and clearly strong as an ox. I figured he must have been a heck of a lineman for his high school football team, and I thought to myself, This is exactly the kind of guy I want climbing up a ladder to carry me out of a burning building! He was there for an annual checkup, and I assumed he had some type of hernia repair. Surely this guy had never been sick a day in his life. When my professor, a bariatric surgeon, stopped in the room to say hi, tears came to Frank’s eyes and he bear-hugged him, picking him off the ground. After the professor left, the man explained to me his story.

For most of his career, Frank weighed about 230 pounds, but after about ten years with the fire department, he started having trouble with his weight. A promotion landed him a desk job, and the combination of high stress, minimal exercise, and a bad diet resulted in an expanding waistline.