You don’t have to be morbidly obese with over 100 pounds to lose to benefit from weight loss surgery like adjustable gastric banding. More and more, people with only 50 or so pounds to shed who’ve struggled with weight loss for many years are choosing to have surgery as a long-term solution to yo-yo dieting and unhealthy weight fluctuations.

Advancements in surgical techniques have turned gastric banding into one-hour (or less) procedure with very few incisions. The speedy procedure coupled with a short recovery time has made lap banding more approachable to slightly overweight adults, overweight or obese teenagers and people with difficult-to-control diabetes.

Doctors are starting to view weight loss surgery as a form of early intervention that can help prevent future medical problems associated with carrying significant amounts of extra weight. Problems such as type 2 diabetes, and the heart disease that often goes with it, are becoming increasingly common in aging baby boomers as well as young adults.

A conference of influential medical groups recently came to the conclusion that bariatric surgery is a “legitimate” treatment options for some people with Type 2 diabetes who are not yet morbidly obese — those with a BMI of 30 to 35.

BMI is an index used to evaluate body weight based on your weight and height. Over 25 is overweight while a BMI over 30 is obese.

To give you a sense of what a moderately obese person looks like, a woman who is 5’ 5” with a BMI of 30 would weigh in at 180 pounds and would need to lose 30 pounds or more to get to a healthier BMI of 25.