Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head Paperback – February 19, 2013

Jen Larsen echoes what many folks think: If I lose the weight, my life will be (fill in the blank.) We blame the weight for the issues we have, yet the weight is actually a physical manifestation of a problem. The weight is the evidence of an emotional, medical or physical (or combination) issue.People are not overweight because they think it's fun. People are overweight because:1. An emotional issue needs to be resolved.2. A medical issue is causing weight gain (some medications cause weight gain)3. A physical issue needs to be resolved (i.e. sedentary lifestyle.)I would tell you more about how great this book is, but I will let Jen speak for herself through some favorite moments:*When you lie, you are reshaping the world in the image that burns bright in your head. When you lie to people, when you tell them exactly what they want to hear, you are making the world a better place for them. You are smoothing down a red carpet and ushering them forward into a brighter reality, a happier one in which you are the person they expect you to be. In which you are exactly as cool as they think you are, before they know any better. Before they catch you in a lie.*What you need to know about is the feeling of failure, radiating from the outside and filling up the entire inside, because so many people manage to either be thin, or get thin and stay thin. So many people manage to be happy - which is the same thing as thin. So many people manage it, but I have failed over and over.*My body felt like a lie - I was the not the person that my body insisted I was. In my head, I wasn't fat. In my head, I was lovely and bright and sprightly and confident and I could be a happy person. In my body I felt like I was trapped by gravity, earthbound, sure that anyone who saw me believed in all the cliches about fat people - that they thought I was slovenly, lonely, bad-smelling, alone.*In seventh grade, I met the boys in my homeroom who felt they needed to explain to me that I should have been ashamed to go around looking the way I did and thinking it was okay. At first, the knowledge that being fat calls for embarrassment confused me, bewildered me, set me off balance. Years of high school and experiments in trying to hide, in trying to fit in, in trying to stand out, taught me that when you are fat, that is one strike against you. It is a vulnerability that attracts enemies. It is the target toward which anyone can aim confidently and score a direct and palpable hit. A statement of fact was enough to brutalize me: "You're fat," spit with a helping of scorn, of disgust, was weapon enough to end any argument, to destroy me.*I thought being skinny meant that the worry and stress and anxiety my body had caused me would be over. I wanted to punch my clock, step through the exit door, and be free and clear and with no obligations, in the Land of Eternal Slimness where problems did not exist.*Getting weight loss surgery was like setting off i9n a full-out sprint, away from all the terribleness inside me that had clearly developed as a result of my weight. But in my flight, I also carried away all the good things, the things that had been untouched by my size, that had nothing to do with my weight or my self-image. you see, I wouldn't so much be changing as revealing these things that had been obscured for so long.*I was supposed to be done with my body, but my body wouldn't go away. It changed under my hands in the shower, my topography shifting and moving like an earthquake was rumbling. It kept demanding food, and as I recovered from surgery, I felt my old urges, my hungriness reemerge, that sense of need, that sense if I did not eat now, right this second, I would be missing something, losing something that could never be recovered.*You lose weight with no sense of personal responsibility, without having to develop self-awareness, self-control, a sense of self. In fact, you go ahead and you lose your sense of self and your sense of stability and your way, along with two or three or four pounds a week.*I thought I finally understood it - why some thin people were so angry at fat people for being fat. They thought fat people were breaking the rules. They assumed fat people got to eat the cake. They assumed that fat people never turned down anything. They assumed that fat people slept in a be of ham with a pillow of bacon and never said no to seconds or shared their dessert, and they thought, that's not fair, and they were probably as angry at fat people for being able to eat as fat people were angry at skinny people for being able to be thin.*How long had I spent thinking that I couldn't do things until I was skinny? How much of my life had I wasted, how much of this kind of soaring joy, flying down a hill recklessly with all my worries streaming behind me, had I missed? Why had a spent so long hating myself, and why had I spent so long waiting?*I don't think I gained weight in order to hide from the world - I think that weight and size are much more complex issues than that. But I think it was comfortable and easy to let fat be my whole problem. And when I was left with no fat but plenty of problems, I was the only one left to blame. It's like I had cleaned out the flooded basement, which is great and all, but now I had to actually address the cause of the flooding, and it was harder than you think. It's so much harder than I was led to believe.And that is where I am in my journey - still trying to address the cause of the flooding. Some of it was addressed by WLS. Some of it is being addressed with my recent diagnosis and treatment of ADD. I am a work in progress and I always will be. And that's okay.Highly recommend.

Before my review let me state that I do not read Ms. Larsen's blog and I have no plans to start reading her blog. I am critiquing her book and journey based purely on the information she shares in her book. If there is actions she took that she did not mention, before you flame me(and all flames will be ignored and I will just think you are an ass), remember I have no way of knowing about them if they were not in her book. Also I seriously doubt that my opinion is going to affect Ms. Larsen's feelings or book sales. There are many of you out there that seem to simply love this book and its author, I'm happy that you enjoyed this book and are so supportive of her. For me however...I found myself being very angry with her actions and the example she was setting for other people. I am still glad I read the book, and the third star of my rating was earned in that epilogue alone where she tells other to do as she says not as she has done! I am donating my copy of this book to the library where I work, and I will recommend it to my patrons as a cautionary tale of what not to do. I am not against W.L.S., for some it truly is a tool and the only option left to a healthier lifestyle.This book made me angry because it seemed like Ms. Larsen just woke up one day and deciding that she had to have weight loss surgery to fix everything wrong in her life. The book makes it sound like she did not even try to lose her weight through life style changes, eating right and exercise. She had her mind set on surgery and that was going to be the only way. Of course by the sounds of it the weight loss industry that revolves around these surgeries fed this lie and stream rolled her and others into getting it done. It sounds as if these companies only care about making sure you are a candidate and are approved so they get get your $$$. They hand you a list of doctors to go see that of course are going to rubber stamp you and not actually question your motives or mentality. Do they even try to educate their patients about the non-surgical methods of losing weight and that IT IS POSSIBLE! DIETS DON'T ALWAYS FAIL! You need to have some willpower, and really that comes pretty quick once you start losing weight. You just have to want it bad enough to work for it. There is no quick fix, there is no easy way, even surgery is not an easy way as Ms. Larsen discovers, and losing weight is not going to automatically fix what is wrong in your life or head any more than say moving across the country. I was really disappointed that she couldn't even bring herself to lose the 20 pounds the doctors recommended before surgery. They are going to be preforming an operation that is going to alter your life and body for ever, don't you think you should listen to what they are telling you to do! She wanted the change but didn't want to have to do any work for it. She did not earn her weight loss, if she had maybe it would have not messed with her mind as much. By earn, I mean make any changes at all in her diet or way of living, she continued to not exercise and continued to eat crap. I still eat crap too, but I do so in moderation, but on the whole I know that I want to reach my goal weight a hell of a lot more than I want that slice of pizza...and I really miss pizza. It wasn't until she realized that the weight she lost was not going to fix all that was wrong in her life did she start to examine her eating habits and lack of exercise. I don't think she ever gave up the drinking and smoking. It was then that I began to start to respect the author even a little, she had redeemed herself in my eyes.Everyone who has a significant amount of weight to lose has to find their own way and this is Ms. Larsen's journey. They also must choose it for themselves not for those around them. I do agree with her at the end Life is easier when you are thinner, it is a shame that our society puts thinness on such a high pedestal because we are ostracizing some pretty amazing people out there that don't fit into into societies parameters of acceptance. While I don't approve of her methods I am happy for her for her results. Everyone deserves to be happy and to have what they want, and I hope that she is finally at a place in her life. I hope she has changed her self-destructive behavior and continues to do well in life.Like I said I am glad I read the book and am going to encourage others to read it as well. In the end it makes me really happy and thankful that I chose to lose weight the way I did, through determination and hard work. After I am done losing I am going to know how to keep it off, I will have my own set of tools and knowledge to help me stay healthy and active for the rest of my like. Sometimes W.L.S is not permanent, it is not a guarantee that you will keep the weight off forever. If you do not change your eating habits your relationship with food you can gain it all back despite having surgery. My way might have been slower, but it was healthier and a whole hell of a lot less expensive. I also have not had these side effects that she talks about throughout the second half of the book. Please if you are reading this book thinking about having one of these surgeries, please....please try my way first. Try changing your diet and exercising. I lost 200 pound, it can be done. If you succeed you saved yourself a ton of money and possible complications. Surgery is always an option, but once it is done it can't be undone. If you do opt for surgery talk to many different doctors and doctors not on the list these clinics give you. Know all your options before hand and all the possible complications.

I really enjoyed this book, it was frightening to read someone else talking about the excess and how it isn't really about eating or enjoying food but more about trying to fill the empty hole. What we do to ourselves is crazy.