1. Bariatric surgeons do not own, rent or have scheduled access to magic wands that are called pretty sticks.

2. No one is going to hit you with a pretty stick and all of your fat will fall off - magically.

3. It took you years to become morbidly obese. Weight loss surgery will help you lose a large and measurable percentage of your excess poundage more rapidly than dieting. Once the surgery has done the most it can do for you, it is possible, based on your genetic inheritance, lifestyle, activity level and eating choices that you will still be fat. Thinner than you started, and perhaps not morbidly obese, but still fat.

4. Once you are thinner, you can become fat again. If you have not made changes in your life to complement the weight reduction brought about by surgery, you can, either consciously or unconsciously sabotage the effects of the surgery.

5. Any form of weight loss surgery is a radical medical intervention. It is major surgery and you should question not only its intended results but the aftercare you will need and the quality of life issues which may present itself as a result of the surgery. Will you be able to take that 6 month off-campus trek with the life sciences department to the Amazon where you will be expected to keep up with the group, to do your part as a human pack animal and to eat what the natives eat (bats being a delicacy) or will you have to spend the rest of your life tethered to a location where you can be assured that in extreme conditions you can be hydrated and get your vitamins by iv if necessary?

6. What you eat = your diet. If you live off cookies and pasta, that is your diet. If you are a macrobiotic vegetarian, that is your diet. You cannot move the weight marker out of the morbidly obese zone without changing your diet. That may mean simply eating less or maybe making better food choices. However you do it, you diet. It is not a dirty four-letter word. It is an aspect of life that an adult has to manage - like sexual desire.

7. You have to make a conscious decision to care for yourself. That means thinking about your needs, physical, psychological, sexual, spiritual, social, economic and -- that need you skim over all the time, your nutritional baseline needs. Do you have a clue what that last one is?

8. Are you ready to change your life or are you just anxious to lose weight? Morbid obesity is more complex than calorie intake. If your only focus is weight, it will remain a focus for you and - it will probably come back.