“I’m not the fat kid anymore!
So says Philadelphia Eagle Max Jean Guilles who lost more than fifty pounds with LAP BAND in a desperate bid to keep his job as a professional football player win a lifelong war against his weight.
You might think that an NFL player, would never need to think about his weight, but you’re be wrong. Guilles says he owes his NFL career to LAP BAND surgery, as he implied when he told a reporter last August, “I’m just playing football, man,” he said. “I’m not worried about the weight. I got that monkey off my back.”
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of obese American adults outweighs the number of those who are merely overweight, with more than 32.7 Americans qualifying as overweight while 34 percent meet the medical definition of obese. An additional 6 percent are classified as morbidly obese or super-obese.
The National center for Health Statistics is part of the Centers for Disease Control. The figures come from a 2005-2006 survey of more than 4,000 20+ adults and are the most current available. The organization classified patient Body Mass Index (BMI) of f 25 to 29 as overweight, 30-40 counts as obese and 40 or more are morbidly obese.
Applying this classification, a person 5 feet 5 inches tall becomes overweight at 150 pounds (68 kg) and obese at 180 pounds (82 kg).Guilles was nearly 400 pounds when he made the decision to have LAP-BAND surgery, driven by the realization that a host of injuries suffered over a three year period all seemed weight-related, particularly an ankle injury in 2008.
As a result of the noninvasive procedure Guilles lost ~50 pounds in less than three months. Guilles is not the first NFL professional to have weight loss surgery. Jets coach Rex Ryan also had a successful lap-band surgery in March of 2010.
Both Guilles and Ryan report that they made the decision to undergo the noninvasive procedure when they realized their weight might be holding them back professionally.
In an ESPN story, Ryan blamed his weight for him not getting the head coaching job with the Atlanta Falcons after the 2007 season. He told a reporter that he thought he was a shoo-in for the job but lost it to Mike Smith. “I think I was too fat,” Ryan was reported as saying.
As for Guilles he has his wife to thank for his new lease on life. “It’s was all my wife’s idea actually,” he said. “I thank her for that. She talked about it to the team, something that would give me quick results and something that could get me back on the field ASAP.”
Although he smilingly calls himself the “LAP BAND man Guilles was moved by more than a desire to be injury free during the NFL season. “I did it for now and in the future,” said Jean-Gilles told reports. “I.. had to lose the weight to stay on the field. And I sure didn’t want to be 400 pounds — or more — after football and then have heart problems and all kinds of health problems.”
LAP BAND has been in the news lately. The FDA recently revisited, upon by Allergan, the pharmaceutical company, to significantly lower how overweight someone must be to qualify for adjustable gastric band surgery, a laparoscopic procedure that restricts stomach intake.
“You’re talking about millions and millions of people who would meet these criteria, the article quotes Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School, as saying.
Currently , the required BMI for having LAP BAND surgery in the US is 40 or more, although patients suffering from comorbidities such as diabetes can have the surgery with a BMI of 35. The sometimes grinding pace of FDA approval led Allergan to certify gastroenterologist surgeons abroad, notably in Mexico, to perform the LAP BAND procedure. As a result, some Mexican gastroenterology surgeons are among the most experienced LAP-BAND surgeons in the world, for example Dr. Juan Lopez Corvala at the Weight Loss Surgery Center of Mexico located at Hospital Angeles who proctored the first ever LAP BAND surgeries at UCLA and USC.
This has resulted in a boon for US patients, who can save thousands by opting to fly to San Diego and take the medical shuttle to the Angeles medical complex to have their procedure with Lopez-Corvala, who has performed an estimated 6,000 of the procedures, for $5,000.
Dr. Lopez Corvala is one of the few surgeons in the world offering an alternative to LAP BAND, the gastric plication surgery, which offers patients weight loss that is faster and quicker than LAP BAND with no device. The hospital offers a free medical webcast for patients who want to learn more about the gastric plication or other weight loss surgery procedures.
