Sexy Celebrity Weight Loss Secret #468 Gastric Band Surgery

If you're rather obese, or rather famous and need to lose a few pounds, a handy way of doing it is surgically. Sure, you could spend a life time eating right and exercising, but sometimes a fast paced lifestyle and a crack like addiction to fast food will leave you a little more rotund than is pretty, or healthy. In case you're the sort of person who only does things that cool people do, you'll be interested to know that Sharon Osbourne had the treatment, Courtney Love has been highly rumored to have had it, and there are sure to be many others.

This is a very popular (though often denied) diet amongst Hollywood's glitterati, and carries the added advantage of not actually being a diet. Gastric Band surgery involves the insertion of an adjustable gastric band (looks to me like a twist tie to me, but what do I know?) around the stomach, creating a 'pouch' that holds about 50mls of liquid. Interestingly enough, many popular perfumes are also sold in 50ml receptacles, so if you want to get an idea of the size of the stomach post surgery, check out this bottle of Britney Spears' 'Midnight Fantasy' fragrance. If that doesn't make this seem glamorous, I don't know what will.

The band is then inflated with liquid, which is a nifty way that surgeons can adjust the tightness of the band depending on the patient's needs. Once the band is in place and inflated, you feel rather full rather quickly as you fill up your little pouch, which then drip feeds the rest of your stomach slowly. Over time, weight loss occurs due to the fact that stuffing your face just got a whole lot harder.

Of course, there are some downsides to the 'easy' surgical method. One of them is a little happening known medically as 'productive burping'. This means that the patient burps up their food. Yummy partially digested upchuck. I reckon it would be about the time you revisited your french fries that the Nikes started to look real good. To curb 'productive burping' (oh how I love that phrase), patients are recommended to eat less, eat more slowly, and chew their food better.

There are some other adverse effects that can take place due to gastric banding, these include (in no particular order):

Nausea

Constipation

Chest Pain

Infection

Fever

Pain

and occasionally, Death

Oops, that would kind of suck huh.

A quote from the NY Post that supposedly originated with a friend of Courtney Love's insists that she has had the surgery, and that it's not pretty: "She's telling people she got the gastric band surgery. She even said she had to sleep with a towel by her because the surgery makes her [vomit] all the time and is worried she won't be able to make out with anyone because of her breath."

Yummy.

Still, when you're living la vida loca, death can often be riding shotgun a great deal of the time. It's actually kind of cool if you think about it, in much the same way that E.Coli is pretty cool.