Anne Diamond reviews “Before And After: Living and Eating Well After Weight Loss Surgery” by Susan Maria Leach. Publisher: Harper Collins £6.49
If you think obesity surgery is an easy option – and that you can eat whatever you like without having to face the consequences – you’ll be shocked by this book. While the bits about the author’s gastric bypass operation and after-care make compulsive reading, it is also mind-boggling to learn what you can and cannot eat, what you will and will not throw up, and which foods will give you the dreaded “dumping” syndrome - where a couple of bites of sugar can torpedo you to the loo followed by hours of palpitations and sweats. American Susan Maria Leach spent her childhood and teenage years torturing herself with back-to-back diets, gave it all up and ballooned to 20 stones, and then opted for surgery – whereupon everything changed. She lost ten stones, got her life back, and wrote this book. I usually hate recipe books without pictures – but this is written for the foodie, the gastronome who may well have got fat because of a passion for food, cooking, eating and entertaining – and who wants to stay in love with all of those things despite having had obesity surgery. And yes, it can be achieved – but you have to be obsessive about the ingredients – so that everything still looks exciting for your guests but also follows rigidly all of your new eating rules. Thus the book goes on and on ad nauseam about miniscule grams of protein, carbs and fats, until you think – is it worth it? For Susan it is. Gastric band patients like myself, Fern Britton and Sharon Osbourne, and thousands of other UK men and women, don’t have to obsess quite like this – we are just required by our band to eat less in volume. Those with a bypass have to avoid sugars, fats and even carbs like poison. Now you can see how hard it might be to throw a dinner party which you could possibly enjoy – without just sitting on the sidelines nibbling a stick of celery. As such, this book is an absolute lifeline. Just get an expensive set of scales and go for it!
