Claire Maddox

For most of my adult life I fought my weight. I lost count of the diets: some worked for a while, all of them came back, and each cycle left me heavier and more defeated than the last. By my early forties I had a BMI in the low forties, prediabetes, and a growing list of reasons my GP and I agreed it was time to consider surgery.

Choosing a gastric sleeve was the easy part. Understanding what I was actually signing up for was not. I found plenty of clinic brochures and dramatic before-and-after photos, and almost nothing that told me honestly what the decision felt like, what the operation and its risks really involved, how much it costs and why, and what the months afterwards, the diet stages, the early regret, the slow rebuild, are genuinely like. I had my surgery abroad, in Thailand, which raised its own questions that nobody seemed to answer plainly.

So I built The Gastric Sleeve Guide, the resource I wish I’d had. I write from my own experience and from talking with others who have been through it, and every article is medically reviewed by a consultant bariatric surgeon so the clinical facts stay accurate. I am not a doctor; I am someone who has been through it and wants the next person to feel less alone, better informed, and clear-eyed about what the sleeve can and cannot do.