This article originally appeared on Forbes.
People who suffer from obesity, and particularly women, have for a long time received a resounding message from popular culture: You eat too much. You don’t exercise enough. You lack self-control. In short: If you’re overweight, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Bariatric surgery can help eligible patients live longer, happier lives. Yet despite recent research showing that some forms of the surgery are no riskier than other common minimally invasive surgeries, only 1 percent of eligible patients undergo elective bariatric surgery. Interestingly, 80 percent of them are women.