I watched a story on A Current Affair about a guy named Kyle who lost 77kg in a year and now is left with a large amount of excess skin as a result. He now expects that the Australian government should foot the $40,000 bill to surgically remove his excess skin, claiming that he should be rewarded for the effort that he put in to losing all of his weight. He believes that if the Government is willing to provide funding for lap-band surgery, then his case shouldn’t be any different. While his efforts should be commended and that he has the right to be upset about the funding of lap-band surgery, I don’t believe that his surgery should be funded.

In 2000, I reached a significant milestone of my own, reaching my goal weight of 69kg, after losing 67kg in 13 months on my own and without any help from surgery, gyms, personal trainers etc. I lost my weight sensibly by creating a healthy eating plan and by walking in my backyard around my clothesline. I too was left with a massive amount of excess skin which eventually needed to be removed surgically because no exercise was going to get rid of it. It never actually entered my mind to consider having the Government fund my surgery. At the time, I reached my goal, I was left with excess skin and it was my own decisions to have it removed. No matter what the cost was to me, I considered it my own reward for actually losing my weight and providing myself with a longer life. Unfortunately our world is accepting obesity as part of our normal lives more and more and frankly I believe it is crazy. I think we need to open our eyes to the growing obesity concern and do something about it. Yes I believe that we should encourage people to lose weight and yes I believe we should commend those who succeed, but I don’t believe that our Government should be funding lap-band surgery or removal of excess skin. There are so many other millions of causes that we should be putting our taxes to for example, breast re-construction for cancer patients. If you are interested to learn more of my personal experience with removing my excess skin, refer to my book The Clothesline Diet which describes my journey in great detail. I invite you to sahre your view.