Roughly 10% of American adults had been prescribed injectable weight-loss drugs – known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists- in the past few years. Most people know them by their name, such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, etc. For those who’ve struggled to lose excess pounds, the drugs are huge helps in their losing roughly 10 to 20% of their body weight, when combined with a healthier lifestyle.
Other people have lost even larger amounts of weight if they’ve had bariatric surgery, with the potential for losing upwards of hundreds of pounds lost over time, when combined with proper exercise and eating habits.
Which leads to a question one of our readers sent to us not long ago.
I’ve had bariatric surgery and have lost over 300 pounds over the last couple of years. I haven’t traveled in well over 5 years because it wasn’t comfortable but am now looking forward to my first flight in what feels like forever. As I’ve lost weight, my face has gradually become less round and although recognizable, I still look pretty different from what I looked like when I weighed over 450 pounds. Will the biometric information in my passport and driver’s license still match me or will I have problems at the TSA kiosk?
First, a huge congratulations to you – losing over 300 pounds is a great success and I know you’re very proud of yourself!
Of course, I’m not a TSA officer. But from what I understand about biometrics, you shouldn’t have a problem. Or, at worst, very few problems.
Weight Loss and Facial Recognition Technology
Unlike a photograph, which looks at “all” of your face, biometrics focuses more on the aspects of the facial area to verify that the person in the photo matches the facial algorithm data as the person the TSA agent just took a photo of. From Biometrics Institute:
There are a wide variety of techniques used to statistically look at facial characteristics in a way that is not affected significantly by age, expression, lighting, or many other variables. Such techniques might include machine learning algorithms, such as convolutional neural networks (CNN), that have been trained on huge sets of facial images. It does not directly involve measuring the distance between features. Current face algorithms describe the shape and appearance of facial features, like eyes, nose or mouth, by applying image processing specially trained to capture discriminative and stable data combined in a numeric representation which is known as a face template.
Could Major Weight Loss Cause Problems?
Is it possible your data will not match up? Well, yes.
The accuracy of facial biometrics is still relatively low, especially for people of color. However, the acceptance of facial biometrics as opposed to, say, fingerprint biometrics, is still higher. It’s also significantly easier to use in the setting of an airport than some other forms of biometrics.
PC: Bayometric.com
Why Your Facial Features Still Match
The good news is that your eyes, nose and mouth don’t change a whole lot with weight loss (or gain) because there aren’t fat deposits there; those parts of your face are mostly all skin, muscles, tendons, nose cartilage and the eyeball itself). It’s more your cheeks, under your chin and, of course, the rest of your body that are affected by changes in your weight – and those are areas that biometrics don’t focus on.
What to Do If the Scanner Doesn’t Recognize You
But COULD the scanner not be able to “tell you apart?” Maybe. But if it does, you can explain your situation to the TSA officer; you’ve lost quite a lot of weight so you don’t look the same as you used to. As you said, you’re still recognizable. It shouldn’t cause a delay for more than a moment or two (but if it does, ask for a supervisor to step in).
Happily, you’ll eventually have to get a new passport and whatever other form of photo ID you use, and then THAT one will reflect what you look like now. Well, then. 😉
Feature photo: Jackie Bese // flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0
Courtesy of Bariatric Solutions (a Dallas weight loss surgery center)
^^^ dead link above; not author’s fault – just doing what was requested on their flickr page ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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