Welcome to Start TODAY. Sign up for our Start TODAY newsletter to receive daily inspiration sent to your inbox — and join us on Instagram! When a doctor told Michael Hearn of Atlanta, Ga., that he should consider weight-loss surgery, he balked: “I was very much against weight-loss surgery at first. I felt like it was surrendering, and I didn’t want to surgically alter myself,” he tells TODAY.com. “I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to have a hamburger again.
“I asked myself, ‘Why do I eat potato chips? Why do I eat pizza? Do I eat them because of habit, or do I eat them because I think that’s the best food for me?’ It took me a while to retrain, but I can get just as much satisfaction from eating an apple. And I also learned I can’t eat a whole pizza, but I can eat part of a piece of pizza and enjoy it,” he says.