Weight-loss surgery: The Facts

By Richard Laliberte

Even before the baby, 32-year-old Robin Williams was heavy. "Not obese," she says, "but definitely overweight." When she gained 80 pounds during a pregnancy in 1991, Williams, a railroad safety manager in Bossier City, La., figured she could slim down later. After the baby was born, she tried numerous fad diets and exercised with co-workers on her lunch break. But because the diets -- such as one "grapefruit diet" -- were so difficult to follow for long (not to mention unhealthy), she always reverted to her old habits. "I would lose 10 pounds in three months, but then gain it back in one or two weeks," she says. In 1997, she became pregnant again and gained 12 more pounds, followed by an additional 20 postpartum. Reaching 245 pounds at 5 feet 2 inches by age 30, Williams had become clinically obese and was at high risk for complications such as heart disease and diabetes. Now she was dieting not just to look better, but to ease increasingly high blood pressure and chronic leg and back pain. Nothing worked.

"Then I ran into a friend who'd had weight-loss surgery," Williams says. "I was shocked. She had lost 105 pounds." Williams immediately explored surgery for herself. News reports about singer Carnie Wilson's successful weight-loss surgery fueled her interest. Still, Williams was cautious. "The first doctor I saw gave me a canned speech. I didn't get a chance to ask questions," she says. "I felt like I was being herded into surgery." After consulting a second doctor, who answered all her questions, she decided to undergo gastric bypass, a common weight-loss, or bariatric, surgical procedure. The operation went smoothly, and Williams lost 115 pounds, most of it within a year. "I never dreamed I'd now be in a size 6," she says.