A Weight Loss Journey from the Islands

all right

today i’m going to talk about weight

loss surgery and living on guam it’s one

of the

fun topics i get to talk about sometimes

and uh the interesting thing some people

who have weight loss surgery they don’t

like to

to talk about it very much for for some

reasons and

that’s okay i’m going to talk a little

bit about it and kind of my journey a

little bit and some of the things that i

i work through in the process

you know there’s an old saying that

nobody ever goes hungry on guam

and it’s absolutely true everywhere you

go on guam there’s food everywhere

people will offer you food and people

want you to eat with them it’s

kind of socially expected that people

want to eat with you or offer you food

and it’s hard to lose weight and it’s

really hard to lose weight and so

there’s a some scientific literature to

show that

people who populated uh the small

micronesian islands

there’s a thing called the bat gene and

that is there’s a gene that they ended

up developing so they could go on long

open boat ocean voyages and so there’s a

theory that maybe people who

live on small islands have a genetic uh

propensity to being you know obese or

fat well

i think part of it too is social i think

we have a very

large social culture here that’s based

on food so it’s hard to diet

and so you take this issue about social

kind of expectations for food and

sharing food because if you don’t share

with people with people you can kind of

be a little bit rude or why don’t you

like my food or

you have all these dynamics going on

well there’s another secret about living

on water

the other secret about living obama is

temperature okay

it’s 85 degrees every single

day i mean without stopping you get up

in the morning

the average temperature is probably

going to be about 85 degrees

you’re gonna go to bed the next day it’s

gonna be 85 degrees again so for that

reason

life on guam feels like the same day

every day now i’ve shown some statistics

up here to show

various cities in the world new york

you have seasons the temperature goes up

and down on average san francisco

has seasons it goes up and down on

average you have four seasons

uh miller in australia four seasons

cape town south africa four seasons

london four seasons

on guam we don’t have seasons that tell

us the time has passed and so

days kind of get blurred together very

very quickly

the the way we perceive time is

different here

and that affects how we eat and how we

diet also because it’s

easy to lose track of time it’s easy to

lose track of

of what we’re doing exercise and fitness

and eating wise

so i first came to guam in 1996

and my by 1998 i gained some weight i

weighed like 220 pounds

not too much i was like 205 210 now

weigh about 220 pounds but then between

2000 and or between 1996

and 2016

in the space of 20 years i had went up

to 310 pounds i was

pretty pretty dang heavy now i’ve got to

tell you

that at 310 pounds i could care less

whether i weigh 200 pounds or 310 pounds

i could care less i

could care less how i looked i could

care less what people thought of me

weight-wise i just didn’t care

but one thing that wayne so much did

affect me was health-wise it was really

hurting on my health and that is it got

to the point where

i knew i had to do something but i

didn’t want to admit it i was in denial

and you know here’s the thing so i i

decided to go because i was having chest

pains or whatever i went to my heart

doctor

and and by the way guam you sometimes

have to go to medical care in like the

philippines or

other places so i went to my heart

doctor in the philippines

and he gave me a tough talk he’s like

you should put your affairs in order

because your weight’s killing you

and you know prepare to die so to speak

and i don’t really have the way of

putting into that scare me to death

and uh and you put it in terms like oh

you know you’re probably not gonna be

live long enough to see your daughter

get married that kind of thing so he

really like

put a lot of heavy duty pressure on me

and so i decided then to look at

solutions and the solution

um that i i found was weight loss

surgery

and uh and that’s the path that i went

down

and that was in 2016 early 2016.

it took nearly a year to go through the

insurance hoops and the

in the preparedness hoops because on

guam they don’t offer the surgery i had

to have it done elsewhere i had it done

in

in taiwan and so i had to go through a

lot of

pre-checks that were pretty you know

not inconvenient but you know their

hassles or normal

medical bureaucratic hassles i had to go

through and so all kinds of checks and

that went to one cardiologist who they

flagged me for my heart’s all your

heart’s not good after the surgery

and the cardiologist on guam who was

busy at the time

he was talking to me that was checking

my health

he asked me why am i having this

checkout how long i have weight loss

surgery

and the first thing the doctor told me

is it doesn’t work

and this is a medical doctor weight loss

surgery doesn’t work

you know you can do better just by

dieting and you know

and so you end up hearing opinions a lot

when people talk about weight loss

surgery and you hear opinions from all

kinds of people

and i have to say uh the surgery that i

elected there’s two basic kinds of

weight loss surgery i’m not gonna go

into the

specific terms for them but one type of

weight loss surgery is just where they

narrow and staple your stomach they make

your stomach maybe

significantly less sixty percent seventy

percent less

than in size and and you can lose weight

the other type of surgery is kind of

where they

reroute your your digestive tract or

your intestines a little bit

which is a little bit more radical

surgery so the surgery that i elected

was basically the one where they

narrowed your stomach it’s very simple

very delivered procedure it doesn’t take

very long

but it took a lot of insurance to go

through to get it done the insurance

company was very very helpful by the way

that worked with me for it

but uh it was mainly that getting

through the health checks and then

working around my work schedule because

i had a long time to go offline and get

surgery but the thing i want to mention

real quickly

about about the surgery is during the

time i was waiting

for the bureaucratic approval to get the

weight loss surgery i did what’s called

a pre-operation

diet and i lost in the space of

seven months that’s how it took me to to

get through all the hoops

in that seven month time frame i lost

about 50 pounds

and so i went from like 310 down to

about 260 pounds

just getting ready for the surgery which

is what you’re supposed to do and i

didn’t know that at the time but that’s

the ideal way to do it you kick off your

weight loss surgery

by the time i showed up at my doctor in

taiwan he’s like are you really sure you

want to do surgery it looks like

the the diet is working well for you

like no no no i i need the surgery

and so i had the surgery in december of

you know people say obese and overweight

i’m not obese overweight i’m fat

and i want to be really blunt when i say

that now i may not

look back to some i mean look really bad

at others it’s all

out of perspective but in my mind

i’m still 310 pounds i’m not

200 pounds because i think like a 310

pound person

hungry all the time well and

sometimes not all right seafood and i

want it and quite often people who are

overweight or are bad have food

obsessions you see

the stomach surgery that you might have

or the surgery you might have to lose

weight

really isn’t needed what they need to

develop one day is brain

surgery for people who are overweight

and

that’s the reality they need to fix your

brain your behavior

and that’s the hard lesson i had to

learn but i know

that without the weight loss surgery as

a tool i wouldn’t have been able to lose

the weight that i just know myself

but you know that’s the key thing i

think is behave

so you know i have a few basic rules and

i wanted to share them with you three

basic rules and a little advice

for doctors medical doctors in

particular

first rule i want to share with everyone

whether you’re

overweight or not overweight my biggest

piece of advice to everyone is

throw your scale away stop weighing

yourself

every day unless you have to for some

work reason or something you have to

weigh yourself but in general i found

whether i’m overweight or not overweight

my weight might vary by

five pounds on any given day and people

become emotionally attached to the silly

numbers on the scale

and you know uh the biggest piece of

advice in that regards is throw away the

scale don’t stop looking at the scale

stop fixing your happiness to a number

on a scale that’s my my first thing and

when people

want to get the weight loss surgery or

they get the weight loss surgery they’re

obsessed with how much

how fast can i lose it’s all about

this fixation that people have on the

scale so that’s my first

piece of advice throw away the scale my

second piece of advice

is one that kind of shocks

people who are overweight is if you want

weight loss surgery to work

when you go and you eat eat until you’re

full

and then whatever is left throw it away

don’t pack it up and put it in the

refrigerator

don’t store food in the refrigerator eat

exactly

what you need and don’t look at it

anymore because remember

if you’ve had the surgery or you’re

thinking about this

weight loss issue what’s happening is

your brain

is still the weight that you started at

and i found that when i store food in

the refrigerator i don’t need i’ll think

about it all the time

and the first moment i get i’ll go and

eat it when i can

and so when i throw it away it’s forget

about it

and that shocked some people but it

worked it really works well

same thing when i’m in a restaurant when

i’m full i call the waiter over and

that’s it i’m done i don’t care how much

i’ve eaten if i’m full of people

people who are overweight often have

obsessions with food and if you look at

the weight loss websites people who want

surgery they constantly talk about food

they’re just totally obsessed

it’s really interesting

the third piece of advice i have is

learn how to throw away the opinions of

others

you know especially when people are

giving you advice about your health

or weight loss surgery or dieting or

anything else

or how you look or how you should feel

throw away those opinions

stop listening to people you know i

can’t tell you the number of times

people have told me oh my brother had

weight loss surgery

it didn’t work my cousin had weight loss

surgery it didn’t work

well you know it’s like those urban

legends i want to know who their

brothers are

you know i’ve even looked up people who

told me that

and i looked for their family online i’m

like no that person didn’t have

weight loss surgery now i mean for

whatever reason

people love to tell you negatives or oh

you took the easy way out

yo you had weight loss surgery oh that’s

the easy way out no

not for my health there’s no easy way

out you have to do what you have to do

for your health

it’s not about happiness and my regard i

was happy at 310 pounds

health-wise i was very ill and so i had

to have the surgery and it helped it

helped me a lot

you know i have some final advice if you

are considering weight loss surgery

talk to real doctors and real medical

professionals

don’t talk to idiots on the internet

this world is full

of idiots on the internet and they’re

all over the place they’re on these

weight loss websites they give each

other advice the worst advice i’ve seen

i did a count study one time at one of

the social media websites

where people were pretending to be

weight loss surgery patients

i estimated 40 to 60 percent of the

people

giving opinions on that site had never

had surgery because i

do social media investigating no way

they had surgery

they probably just looked something up

on the internet or repeating or

parenting

what they hear from other people to make

themselves feel important or something

it just it drives me crazy

that people will allow the internet

to be more important than the advice of

medical professionals

and on the point about medical

professionals the medical community

needs to make up his mind about weight

loss surgery and come up with some

fairly consistent standards because

there is a large variance

in advice various surgeons have and i

think

as as this surgery becomes more popular

these

the protocols and things like that will

become more standardized

so some doctors will say you should diet

this long before the surgery or you

should not eat this or that after the

surgery

they need to maybe come to more of a

consensus and that’s my

my my larger point mainly for the

doctors and doctors

especially the doctor told me the

surgery wouldn’t work he was wrong

you know that’s the other thing you know

doctors are not gods and coach they’re

guys and gals with opinions and a lot of

time they’re right

sometimes they’re wrong but if you want

advice on weight loss surgery talk to a

doctor or medical professional somebody

is an expert in it

thank you very much