"Alyssa Remaly performs a step test for physical therapist April Clark; Alyssa Remaly, right, nine months after surgery. "

"Her ankles ached. Her blood pressure and cholesterol were high. Yet Alyssa, who goes by "Lyss," couldn't contain the urge to overeat. "

""I'd make secret trips to Burger King, eat three Whoppers by myself and then go home for dinner," she said. "

"These days, if Lyss eats at Burger King, she can't finish more than a quarter of a Whopper -- without the bun. "

"Over the course of a year, the freshman at Ball State University in Indiana has dropped from a size 20 to a size 16. The scale now reads 210 pounds. Her weight has continued to steadily decline ever since Lyss had stomach surgery last year at the age of 17. "

""I did it mainly for health reasons," Lyss said. "I was afraid of being diabetic at age 18 or having a heart attack at 21. And yeah, I'm not going to lie: I'd like to be able to wear a bikini." "

"As the popularity of these operations has skyrocketed among obese adults, an increasing number of doctors are asking, "Why not children, too?" "

"For decades, the number of kids trying weight-loss surgery has been tiny. The operations were risky and pediatricians hesitated to put adolescents' developing bodies under the knife. But better surgical techniques, coupled with the growing ranks of dangerously obese children, have begun fueling a change of heart. "

"The number of U.S. kids having obesity surgery has tripled in recent years, surging at a pace that could mean more than 1,000 such operations this year, according to a report last month in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. "

"Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is leading a large-scale study to see how young patients respond to various types of weight-loss surgery, including gastric bypass, where a pouch is stapled off from the rest of the stomach and connected to the small intestine. "

"University of Illinois at Chicago, where Lyss had her surgery, was the first medical center to get the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration in late 2004 to study another type of stomach surgery, called gastric banding, in people under age 18. "

"UIC this spring will join a new, multi-center clinical trial that implants an adjustable gastric band, called the Lap-Band system, in 150 obese teens. Shown to be safer than gastric bypass surgery in adults, the laparoscopic procedure wraps an adjustable collar around the stomach, separating it into two sections. When patients eat, the small
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