Thanks.

At the last support group meeting the topic was for everyone to describe how they had "put skin in the game" in order to succeed. The coordinator had in mind things like relationships with friends and family (some people lost one or both because the other party couldn't accept the person's decision) or bets that they made with someone about whether they would be below a certain weight by a certain date. When they got to me (and because of where I was sitting I was the next to last person that spoke) I pointed out that we had ALL put skin in the game by having the surgery in the first place. Unlike a diet that you can try for a while and decide if you thought it was going to work, this was a one-way trip. We let some doctor make sushi out of our insides and there was no going back if it didn't work (technically some of the procedures are reversible, but it is only a tiny, tiny fraction that are ever reversed).