Weight reduction is the most obvious—and often most celebrated—outcome that results following bariatric surgery. As clinicians, we must be reminded that for our patients this physical metamorphosis has been many years in the making. While we often begin our assessment of the client by determining the number of days, months,or years postoperative a client is, we forget that the decision to seek information about bariatric surgery, and then to ultimately undergo a weight loss procedure, takes months and years for most people. This article focuses on both the presurgical decision-making period as well as the postsurgical experience of 14 patients who underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery and shared their story as part of a larger, descriptive, qualitative study focused on women who chose to undergo a surgical weight loss intervention. While the change after surgery was captivating, dramatic, and life altering, this article will also focus on understanding the journey of change and its impact on those who undergo bariatric surgery.

As part of a larger study on the lived experiences of women who have undergone a surgical weight loss intervention, we noted a dominant, strong, postsurgical theme that we simply referred to as change. Because qualitative research attempts to bring understanding to the experiences of the participants, it became clear that this experience was dramatic and a life-altering change, and it was associated with a complete physical metamorphosis that one subject referred to as her “meltdown.” In keeping with the norms of qualitative research, the research team situated the results within a body of literature that follows the Results section in this article.