The Taranaki mum who cashed in KiwiSaver to get life changing weight loss surgery

Friday, 1 July 2022

Justine Shera shares her weight loss surgery journey

When Justine Shera realised she was being a spectator in her son’s life due to her weight, she knew she had to do something about it.

“I just had this epiphany moment crying like, oh my god, I'm just watching this little boy grow up, and his memories are going to be of dad playing with him and that's not going to involve me,” the 45-year-old New Plymouth woman says.

After losing and gaining the same 40 kilograms three different times in her adult life, Shera decided to get $25,000 weight loss surgery to try and keep the weight off for good.

She explained to 11-year-old son Aiden she was doing it for him.

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Justine Shera has had weight loss surgery and wants to break the stigma.

“I've talked to him a lot about this is something I'm doing because I need help, because I want to be there for you and having energy and being present is huge for me and this has allowed me to do that.”

When she went under the knife and had a gastric bypass in February she was 137kg and has since dropped 40kg.

Shera was able to access her KiwiSaver funds to pay for the surgery as there’s a clause to withdraw it for serious illness deemed life-threatening.

She got a letter from her doctor and a specialist detailing how she was pre-diabetic, had severe anxiety from sleep issues, and acid reflux from her weight.

“So there were quite a few health indicators, but I wouldn't have met the criteria to go through the public system.”

For the year ending 31 March 2021, 1350 people withdrew KiwiSaver funds for ‘serious illness’ reasons, Inland Revenue figures show.

Dr Rinki Murphy has done a lot of research into clinical trials to test different types of bariatric surgery, medications, probiotics, and dietary interventions for the treatment of diabetes and obesity.

For the year ending 31 March 2022, that figure was 1320.

There are three main types of weight loss surgery - a gastric bypass, a gastric sleeve, and a gastric band.

The first two are the most common.

The bypass, which Shera has, involves creating a very small pouch out of the stomach and attaching it directly to the small intestine, bypassing most of the stomach and the first part of the small bowel.

The small stomach pouch can’t hold large amounts of food, and by skipping the first part of the small bowel, hormones that control appetite and food absorption are also affected resulting in weight loss.

Dr Rinki Murphy, an Endocrinologist at the University of Auckland, Auckland District Health Board and Counties Manukau District Health Board, says research showed bypasses were slightly more successful in maintaining weight loss than the sleeve surgery.

Murphy also says people still had to put work in to keep the weight off, the surgery was just a powerful nudge in the right direction.

“Feeling comfortable with the smaller amounts of food that you're eating is what maintains that success.

“People can regain weight, it's not impossible. It's not like when you have the surgery it's all set.”

The latest data from the Ministry of Health shows there were 763 publicly funded procedures for obesity in 2018/19 and 1231 privately funded procedures.

Shera was 137kg went she had the surgery and is now 40kg down.

Rinki says losing weight with diets is extremely difficult as our bodies try to defend the highest body weights.

“It's always trying to get us back to there, so you're having to fight your biological signals to get back up to that weight.”

Weight loss surgeries were a limited resource, Rinki says, with demand much greater than the numbers of procedures happening.

Shera thought surgery was a major thing to do. And because she had lost weight previously she believed she could do it again.

But as she got older, it became harder and it was binge-eating that was a real issue for her.

Her 11-year-old son Aiden was her biggest motivator as she wanted to be active in his life and keep up with him physically.

Shera says she had a long history of using food as emotional therapy to make herself feel good when she experienced any kind of trauma.

“It's a huge emotional and physical toll that it has on your mind and on your body throughout that whole process.”

In 2021 before even thinking about surgery, Shera decided to get counselling to try and combat her relationship with food and work through some family trauma.

Shera has gained a following on social media over the last few years under the name My Balance Project.

She has documented her body at all sizes and is very vocal about body positivity and loving the body you are in.

It was her Instagram following that made her hesitant about getting the surgery.

“In September, October, I thought I'm actually going to research this and look into it and my first thought was ‘I can't do this because of Instagram, I can't do this because of what I stand for’.

“And then I literally stopped myself and went ‘wow, just listen to yourself. You're not going to do something life changing for yourself and your family life because of, at the time, 10,000 people that you don't know, on Instagram’.”

She also had to convince husband Bill.

He wanted to know how this time was going to be different, Shera says.

She believes this work on herself has allowed her the right headspace for the surgery to be successful and the weight to stay off.

“If you do the work, and you follow the guidelines and work on your relationship with food, you will be successful.”

She was pre-diabetic, had severe anxiety from sleep issues, and acid reflux from her weight before the surgery and was able to access KiwiSaver to fund it.

The surgery, through Tailor Clinics in Hamilton, included a surgeon, a nurse, a psychologist, a personal trainer, and a dietician which are assigned to you for the first year.

“I had a consultation an hour long with each of those people beforehand and Bill came to those and once we'd had that Bill was comfortable.”

Shera waited two weeks post surgery to announce her news on her social media and was overwhelmed with support.

However, there were a couple of negative responses of people saying they were disappointed in her for no longer being body positive.

There’s a lot of stigma around weight loss surgery and Shera says she used to be part of the problem.

“I used to think that way too like that it's cheating, and it's the easy way out, but it's not.

“Even last year someone suggested [surgery] to me and I got really upset, and I even was on my stories crying, saying I see so many people having weight loss surgery who are my size, and it just makes me feel completely inadequate.”

Right after the surgery she could only have liquids and purées due to still having sutures that could split.

Then she could have a quarter of a cup of food three times a day and then two months in that increased to half a cup, and she has to eat slowly.

Currently, she can eat protein, some vegetables and some fruits but no carbohydrates or sugar.

She used to keep eating even if she was feeling full, but now she can’t.

“You can't do that because once you're full, you're full and if you keep eating, it will come back up.”

She doesn't have a goal weight in mind but definitely has goals like walking the Queen Charlotte Track with her family.

Already she is feeling fitter and out every day walking.

“Like I'm living my best life right now, my life's happy without sugar.”