A study that explores patients' perspectives on a life-altering
surgery
Bariatric surgery rates around the world have increased exponentially
over the past decade. In Extreme Weight Loss, anthropologists Sarah
Trainer, Alexandra Brewis, and Amber Wutich provide us with an inside
look at how patients experience this medical procedure, as well as its
far-reaching and complex personal implications.
Drawing on patient interviews, survey data, and more, Trainer, Brewis,
and Wutich explore why people decide to undergo bariatric surgery, and
how that decision transforms their lives. They show, in painstaking
detail, how the journey to weight loss is can be at once painful and
liberating, dispiriting and self-affirming.
Extreme Weight Loss explores questions about which bodies are treated
as though they belong in modern societies, and which bodies are treated
as unwanted. It considers how people challenge and manage these unfair
standards, illuminating what it means to be large-bodied in America's
diet-obsessed culture.