careya123

When you wear cotton underwear because you need the friction to keep your pants up.

12 months?! I'd go crazy. I'd fail the psych eval for that reason alone.

I have BCBS Illinois and the requirements seem reasonable. In other words, no 3-6 month diet! Although I'm on the low end of the BMI scale, I have 3 severe co-morbidities. (I have a friend at the same weight, and she is perfectly healthy. Weird.)

If you got down to the size you want to be, but the scale never budged, would you be OK with that? food for thought. I don't know why the scale isn't moving for you, but if you have lost that many sizes, things are definitely moving rapidly in the right direction. Just pretend your scale is broken and keep going.

I had a friend lose a large amount of weight. When she got under 200 lbs, people started telling her "be careful, you don't want to lose too much weight" on a regular basis. It was usually really tiny people who might have weighed 120 max. So annoying! I think people just get an image of you in their head, and they can't let go of it. If you are smaller than that, then you are 'too small.' Just ignore it. They usually mean well, even if their comments are irritating.

I'm not a fan of many protein sources myself. I'm not vegetarian, but I have been eating a lot of vegetarian meals lately (I haven't had surgery). Check out A Pound of Cure by Dr. Matthew Weiner. He's a bariatric surgeon who is really into nutrition and is very vegan friendly. You should get some good ideas there about what to eat. Also, his YouTube videos are fantastic.

Oh yeah!!!!! Nice job.

Forgot to mention, I do a shake similar to his set point smoothie. Here's what I do: 1 veg (kale or spinach has the least flavor and tons of nutrition, but I love arugula for the kick) 1 fruit (preferably frozen; berries are very low cal, but anything works) plain Greek yogurt or Protein powder flavored Omega oil supplement (I use Barlean's) Water optional: herb: I love cilantro and parsley, but I've heard mint and ginger are also good fat: a few nuts, a little avacado, nut butter other: chia seeds, wheatgrass, or other sweetener: stevia, Splenda, Torani sugar-free syrup (if you use berries, you may need a little sweetener, otherwise skip it) ice

I've just started to read his book, but I've been watching his YouTube videos lately, and they make a lot of sense to me. His main premise is to eat a lot of healthy food, rather than cutting calories. The #1 task is to eat 1-2 lbs of vegetables per day. I started doing that 3 days ago, and I've lost almost 5 lbs. That's pretty remarkable, considering my daily caloric intake has been around 2150 cals, and has included ice cream twice and one very large and delicious pork burrito. But most of my meals have consisted of fresh vegetables. (BTW, ever had purple cabbage and apple salad for Breakfast? It's delicious.) I've been on Weight Watchers many times, with far fewer calories per day, and I never got anywhere near that kind of result. Of course, it could be a fluke, but it is exciting. I'd also be interested to hear of other people's experiences, especially those who have been on it long term.

I don't use myself, but I have a friend with Crohn's disease who does. She says it relaxes her 'guts' immediately, and her pain and nausea goes away for a while. I researched it quite a bit after learning that she used it, and there are an amazing number of health benefits. As long as it doesn't make you eat more than is healthy for you, I can't see any problem with it.

I have BCBS-Ill too and I've been wondering about the supervised diet requirement. I couldn't find any mention of it, but I wondered if perhaps I just missed it. Yay! I have my first appointment scheduled, but haven't talked with anyone about it yet. What other pre-reqs did they require?