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Surgeons now perform gastric surgery on people who are simply overweight.

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Janet St. James reports

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If you've tried every diet on the market without success, there may be another option.

Surgery once reserved for the dangerously obese may now be available for people with far fewer pounds to lose.

Surrounded by all sorts of temptations, it's no wonder packing on the pounds is a cakewalk.

Taking them off, though, is no picnic.

For many, dieting turns out to be impossible.

Last year, about 200,000 Americans more than a 100 pounds overweight opted for obesity surgery.

Now that option is open to people half as heavy.

Six months ago, and about 50 pounds overweight, Mary Gray was considered chubby.

But after years of failed attempts to drop the pounds, she opted to cut the calories with a knife or a scalpel to be exact.

She had gastric bypass surgery.

"I got diabetes and I didn't want to have diabetes. Because I lost my mother and my two sisters to complications from diabetes," said Gray.

When Baylor bariatric surgeon, Todd McCarty, started doing obesity surgery, he stuck to the 100-pound standard.

Not long ago, he was asked to operate on a woman considered just moderately obese.

"The first time I did this, I had to be coerced," he said.

Since then, McCarty has joined a growing number of bariatric surgeons who support surgery for chronic, failed dieters.

"If you had a pill that you could give somebody that would resolve their diabetes, their hypertension, their reflux, their sleep apnea, and help them lose weight and you only gave pill to one-half of one percent of the eligible population, the public would be in outrage. Yet that's what we do with the surgery," he said.

But some medical experts disagree.

Obesity expert, Dr. Lewis Pincus, has dedicated his life to teaching people to lose weight with lifestyle changes. He believes surgery is a bad idea, unless the patient has developed extreme health problems like diabetes.

"I don't think we should throw in the towel and just send people to surgery," he said.

"Lifestyle change isn't sexy. Especially looking someone in the eye and saying, 'I don't know if we can have you lose a 100 pounds without surgery but we can have you lose enough weight and give you a plan and system so that food will no longer be a threat,'" he said.

But Gray says she knows surgery was the right choice.

"I feel great. I feel real good."

Some six months after gastric bypass, her high blood pressure and diabetes are gone.

And, she's proud to have reached her target weight - not skinny but healthy again.

"I was blessed," she says.

Insurance companies have slowly started to cover surgery for people 100-pounds or more overweight.

Patients who typically weigh less than that, and have no medical complications from their weight, must pay out-of-pocket for this operation.

E-mail jstjames@wfaa.com.