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I don't know about this company or policy in particular, but many won't approve revisions for weight gain. Some, however, approve them if there are medical issues. Since you've had issues with GERD and high blood pressure, that *might* be enough for some companies -but again, not all companies approve revisions. I wonder if a doctor could have a peer-to-peer review with them. Although your current surgeon isn't in your network, so that might be an issue - is there a bariatric surgeon who's in your network that you could do a consultation with?

I had a revision front band to gastric sleeve.......I never "ate around my band" and it was highly effective for 8 years until I began having reflux during the night and aspirating. Aspiration pneumonia can kill you!! I was unable to have enough fill in my band for it to be effective, so without my "tool"......my weight began creeping back up. I developed pre-diabetes at end began having joint problems due to the weight gain. So glad you surgeon recommended the sleeve. He said it was a restrictive procedure like the band, and since I did so well with the band that it should work for me. Band failure can be completely unrelated to the direct actions of an individual. Sent from my SM-G930V using the BariatricPal App

P.S. tomorrow will be one week without Pop. It hasn't been a problem. It is all the food and the continuous weight gain (ooops). My brain thinks that because I'm having surgery- I can eat what I want. Totally backwards I know- but it does. So this 6 month for insurance has really done nothing positive for me. Oh well

I have my VSG booked for next month; from the general research I've done and from what my surgeon says, WLS is a good solution for the uncontrolled weight gain, even though it's hormonal. I know everyone's journey is different, but are there any women with PCOS who have WLS success stories you'd be willing to share? I'm very nervous that I will do this serious surgery and it won't work, even if I do everything right. I'm so tired of gaining weight, though, and I need to get ahead of it before it gets totally out of control. Thanks in advance for sharing your stories with me!

honey everyone has that feeling of "what did I do" after surgery. I spent about 2 weeks feeling like I had made a huge mistake. After that I realized it was the best thing I could have ever done for myself. initially your eating while healing is definitely different from your normal. The new normal starts to give you more choices and you will start seeing the results of your better choices which will give you a good mental attitude and motivation. I was 66 years old when I made the leap to surgery, I was banded in January 2013. When I had my surgery I had diabetes, which was getting increasingly worse with my weight gain and lack of mobility, I was on the verge of starting insulin and my cholesterol and blood pressure were getting higher. Since surgery I am normal and do not take any medications . You will be able to eat normally, but it will be a new normal, you can eat real food and enjoy eating out but your outlook will change. Hang in there and remember to focus on why you had your surgery. We are all here and there are so many here who have had all of the same feelings as you just ask questions and make sure you listen to your body and ask your Dr. for anything medical.

So, to try and answer the questions, 6 months pretyy much only ground beef for meat, chickens , steak , pork would not go down and would cause me problems. 1 year out pretty much could have anything if I had sosda with it. What I believe is one of my greatest downfalls was stopping the exercise and drinking soda. I believe they started my down hill sprial. As far as head hunger not sure on that although I have been in emergency services for 25 years and have seen some pretty awful things so I am not sure if it is related to emotional issues. I am a very busy and usually a very happy person so I don't really want to hang it on that as well. Really I think it comes down to comminment and exercise as all weight loss does. It was a great tool to get my weight down to where I felt comfortable emotionally and physically to exercise and be active. When that changed and I relied on the vsg is when I started to fail though weight gain was slow at first so I just kind of lived with it.

HI Y'all, I wanted to do some research with REAL people instead of reading about it in some report. I'm wondering how much weight (IF ANY) you have gained since being sleeved. I go up between 1-3 lbs. so my answer would be 1-5 lbs. I'm curious to see how this goes. Thanks!

wow amazing that there isn't much weight gain

Hi Everyone :-) Today is my 4 year anniversary. I was the one that originally asked the question about weight gain after surgery. Well I'm here to tell you that you can definitely GAIN WEIGHT BACK and not just a few pounds. Although I'm very content and blessed to be wearing a size 8 today I was actually wearing some size 4's years ago. And was a perfect size 6 for over 3 years. My goal weight was to reach 150 lbs. (a normal BMI weight for me). I got as low as 144 lbs. Today 4 years out I weigh 165 lbs. I have reached as high as 170 lbs. during my period. The sleeve is a PHENOMENAL tool and 4 years out I STILL have amazing restriction. The weight gain is from not eating properly, PERIOD. For the MOST part I'm still making pretty good choices, but obviously there are choices that haven't been all that great to gain all this weight back. I know age has something to do with it as well. I am 46 going on 47 and lots of changes going on lol. BUT NO EXCUSES for sure. Again I'm content and watching my weight pretty closely now to make sure I don't gain any more weight and would love to be back to 150-155 lbs. I know it's possible for sure. I'm so thankful for my sleevie.

Oddly I gained three pounds in the third week post-op. A week later it disappeared. I would not attribute this gain to hormonal changes as I am post menopausal. I have several autoimmune diseases and I am inclined to believe that this sudden weight gain is related to inflammation.

Wow, just in time for the holidays. Guess that solves the weight gain for holiday seasons. Good luck to you and definitely keep us posted. You will find wonderful support here, I know I have.

Remember too, my weight gain was due solely from my Plastic Surgeries. I've actually LOST weight since then. I was just "keeping it real" is all. ;o) Really I've only gained at most 4 Lbs due to TOM. Never more than that and it always drops right back off with a few friends.

Oh, one last thing: it's very, very normal to plateau, and it's very, very normal to regain 5 or even 10 pounds (depends upon your frame; us bigger guys can gain 10 pounds as easily as you smaller gals can gain 5). When the weight gain starts getting into the 15 or 20 plus pound range, that's when something is going wrong in your weight loss, and I'd talk to your dietitian/nutritionist/doctor/personal trainer about it.

Join us in the veterans forum. There are a lot of us who are fighting weight gain after being sleeved awhile. You can do it. You need motivation from the rest of us. There is also a maintenance thread in there. It helps to be accountable. I am working on 10 right now.

Thanks for posting, Anything you can say about your weight gain would be very helpful to us all...and we will be there for you and your continuing journey too!

Oh Janice5/32, did you start gaining weight in the first place and become overweight because you were feeling insecure about what you felt was a boylike figure? Maybe just subconsciously? If so, that might explain your intense discontent. You think you are heading to your worst fear, one that you had already "fixed" by the weight gain. (Our brains don't "fix" things very well, do they?!) That must be tough, knowing you did the right thing for health but still feeling it was so wrong. It's a definite disconnect, for sure, but I think you just weren't prepared to deal with that part. Especially at 23! It's a tough age of self discovery. And I think I understand, as at one of my more successful weight loss program schemes (I've tried them all!), I did a hypnosis course/support group thing. It was rather enlightening to learn that some of us gain some of this weight without realizing it as a form of protection. I myself have always had difficulty dealing the right way with attention from men, so after a failed engagement (wherein my fiance jerkface slept with his coworker's super skinny girlfriend, how cliche!), I ballooned well past my usual safety plumpness as I NEVER wanted to feel that betrayal pain again...so I was "protecting myself" by ensuring that I was the one ignored at the bar with my thinner friends, and feeling like I was in control by having taken myself out of the game completely. Which lead to never leaving my house, which lead to more weight gain, rinse, repeat. Of course, there are many reasons I'm overweight (all of which I take responsibility for), but that was an aspect of it that has been "working" for me. But now five years of this with a brand new high blood pressure diagnosis and and some intense latent loneliness later, I believe I'm ready to change all that and not be afraid of what happens if I'm not invisible anymore, or to not have the overweight thing be something I can point to as THE REASON WHY NOTHING WORKS IN MY LIFE. Yes, it's a scapegoat, and I'm ready to see what it's like without it. It will be tough, I know, without my tubby suit of armor. I'll probably be all "THE REASON NOTHING WORKS IN MY LIFE NOW ARE THESE FLAPPY BAT WING ARMS AND THIS SAGGY PANNIS I HAVE TO TUCK INTO MY PANTS", hehe. But you only live once, and I'm ready to hurtle into that unknown, as the other rare times I've taken a chance in my life usually turn out pretty good. Although I think that my view may be opposite of the way you are seeing; as maybe you are afraid of becoming more invisible in a way you intensely fear or somesuch, but it's a similar thought process, no? A twisted protection or fear of the unknown and the change. Anyhow, wow, did I just make this all about me? Yes, yes I did. Sorry. I hope you can make a breakthrough in the mental side soon and enjoy your rockin' new bod! We are all pulling for you and hope to see a glorious celebratory post in the future. If not, you can gain it all back by eating little bad things all day long, right?

Hello my peeps! It feels like FOOOOOREVER since I've posted here. I haven't weighed in a looooooong time :-(...the last time I weighed myself I was 147 which would be a 3 lb. gain from my lowest of 144. I fear I may be at least 155 now, but not sure. I'm still wearing 6-8 however some of the 6's feel snug and I FEEL BLOATED :-(...I have not been eating the way I should and not drinking enough Water (water has always been a problem for me). I really need to up my exercise back to 5x a week. I have been going to 1 hour Zumba classes Tues, Wed, but I just bought Zumba Fitness Rush for Xbox Kinect and I really LOVE IT! I can do it at home YAY! SOOOOO with that said I have decided to join weight watchers TOMORROW...I have always loved their program and want to learn about the new 360. I heard fruit is 0 points now LOL! And I really really really need to be accountable to a weekly weigh in. I know I'm gonna get what the heck is this girl doing here looks... but I gotta do, what I gotta do I will probably have to change my weight gain vote from 1-5 lbs to more :-( ....but praying I can get back to that level, I CAN DO IT...Stay tuned...

Say it with me now, folks: plateaus are a normal part of the process. Getting stuck is a normal part of the process. I know... we don't want to hear that. I didn't want to hear that. I still hover anxiously near the scale sometimes, worried about every bleep and bloop on the number. But the fact is that the typical weight loss of a sleever goes something like this: A HUGE, exhilarating loss at first... it's almost effortless. You fart and the pounds come off. You eat good and the pounds come off. You eat BAD (which, you know, for a sleever in the early days means something like "well, last month I ate a cookie...") and the pounds come off. The problem with this early phase is that it completely destroys our sense of what a "normal" weight loss and maintenance profile feels like. This early phase where the weight just drops off is not normal. It's great, but it's not normal. Once you start getting down to what your body thinks its weight "should be" (it's actually a great deal more complicated than this; your body doesn't really have any idea what you "should" weigh, it's just that feedback mechanisms start to come into play and exert more force than the downward push from the sleeve) the loss will become slower and slower. And it isn't just a "steady" slowness; it's not like your body will go from 5 pounds a week to 3 pounds a week to a pound a week in a smooth progression. In fact, at times you'll plateau for days or weeks or even months (near the bottom end of the curve) at a time. At times your weight will even go up slightly (slightly: a prolonged and significant gain is usually a sign that something is wrong, whereas a 5-10 pound gain is typically a Water weight gain or a normal plateau fluctuation). You can break through the plateau -- assuming that you're not already at the low end of body fat -- but it doesn't always happen when you expect it to happen -- sometimes you get stuck and then you cut your calories and up your exercise and nothing changes (or you even gain a little) for days at a time, and then when you give up, suddenly your body starts shedding weight again. And finally when you start getting down near or below the low end of normal body fat (for most of us, it seems like this is around 20% body fat; fat location along with factors such as age and genetics seems to determine your "realistic minimum body fat"), shedding every ounce is a lot of frigging hard work, every day, forever. Most of us have a hard time keeping up that level of dedication (else we wouldn't have been obese to begin with), so most people seem to stick around 25%-ish bodyfat, which is still technically overweight (and of course, those of us who are very self-critical will harass ourselves mercilessly over that fact) but is, in fact, much healthier than the 40%, 50%, or even 60% body fat that some of us started with. Indeed, it's healthier, on average, than most modern Americans! The real problem is that early phase, where weight loss was effortless and we could do no wrong. It's sad to say, but important to remember, that that is not the norm. The sleeve continues to be a tool, and as long as you don't abuse it too bad, you can be pretty confident that you won't spiral back into that morbidly obese category. But it's not zero work, it's not effortless. You have to start really working it after a point, and the lower your body fat gets (remember: measure body fat, NOT weight -- weight can fluctuate by as much as 4 or 5 pounds *in a single day* due to water weight changes) the more you're going to hit plateaus, of longer and longer duration, and maybe even see some backtracking. The great thing about the sleeve is that even if you gain a few pounds, unlike before you can be pretty confident that you can get rid of them pretty quickly with a little self-discipline. Sorry for the long post, but it seems like a lot of people have sort of unrealistic expectations about life with the sleeve, and then whenever they see a blip on the scale they freak out and assume all is lost. It's not lost when you plateau or rebound a few pounds. It's completely normal.

I'm so happy to see that 1-5 lbs. (so far) is what seems to be weight gained for a sleeve patient. I am 14 months out and I'm still in that category as well. After Thanksgiving I lost any weight ever gained and actually dropped an additional .4 and dropped to 144.3, so far, so good...yayyyy! Thank you sleevie!

there are virtually no dumping with the sleeve and its extremly rare, no malabsorb with the sleeve, no puking, no limit of size food to a point that one eats, or great restriction. Yer band is in there just as long as somone who started at 400 pounds. If you had to have it remove, and didnt want weight gain again you would still have to do a revision surgery. You still have the same odds of typical LB problems popping up as any of the others with more weight to lose. JMO, but I think you have subjected yourself to the same issues you didnt want t have, down the road. JMO, no offense intended. Sandy

Ladies, For those of you who are really and truly "stuck" at a weight, and feel like you're already doing everything you can, I wonder if you've considered body fat testing? I think body compositions can very so much, and it may be that you're where you should be regardless of what the scale says. Those "extra" pounds may be muscle, or extra skin. I recently discovered there's a mobile service in my area that does submersion body fat testing, and the pricing's pretty good. I'm pretty tempted to give it a try at some point, just to satisfy my own curiosity about how I'm doing. I totally understand having a goal, and not wanting to give up on that goal, and my blessings and support go out to everyone that's working so hard to get to where they want to be, but I know for myself that I have a bad habit of getting more and more disciplined to reach a particular goal, and not being able to maintain that discipline long term. The last time I lost a lot of weight I started training for a 10.5 mile event (walk/jog for me, mostly walk). In order to build up the endurance for mileage I was doing 2+ hour workouts regularly. It simply wasn't something I could imagine keeping up indefinitely, though, and once the event was over the weight started to creep back on, sending me spinning into a downward spiral of weight gain >> depression >> more weight gain. I'm not saying this is an issue for anyone else, but I'm working hard to make sure that whatever I'm doing now is something I can honestly and truly contemplate doing for the forseeable future, because otherwise the weight it helps me lose isn't going to stay off. (And, as time goes on and my metabolism changes, I may have to get even more disciplined just to maintain!) I'd definitely still like to lose a few pounds, and I suspect they'd come off more quickly if I tightened things up a bit, but I remind myself that I've made HUGE progress, I look great, I should be really proud of what I HAVE achieved, and the most important thing is to continue to work on good, healthy habits I can stick with. If I take off a few more pounds in the process, that's just "icing on the cake" (if you'll forgive the expression!)

Hey y'all: Well, I got on the scale this morning and was exactly the same as before my conference. I'm telling you, it's kind of great and kind of weird all at the same time, because while at this conference I just ate and drank whatever sounded good at the time--I'm talking about drinking at least 2 glasses of wine a night, a Starbucks full-fat, full-sugar mocha a day (which really didn't sit very well, I have to be honest and say--kind of quease-inducing), meals that had multiple courses (although I tried and mostly succeeded at keeping things very veggie-centric), and--brace yourselves--dessert. Yes. I ate a few bites of tiramisu at dinner Saturday night, and it was ah-may-zing. I was really kind of scared to get on my scale this morning and frankly shocked to see no weight gain at all--no loss, but no gain, either. I feel like I've dodged a few bullets, although I was mentally prepared to see a higher number. The whole process of this conference has really been eye-opening for me in lots of ways. First, I realize now that I really can relax about eating--my sleeve definitely does its job and restricts the amount of food I can tolerate. It also restricts the types of food I am able to comfortably eat--I "can" physically eat lots of different sorts of food that I couldn't tolerate at all when first sleeved, but I don't feel comfortable when I eat certain things--most of them happen to be not such healthy choices--so I'm not nearly as interested in eating them any more. Vegetables, however, are completely sleeve-friendly, plus I love them, plus I like how I feel physically when I eat them. Sweet Starbucks coffee--not so much; I drank it because it was available and my usual wasn't available, but I will not be making that a regular thing, as it didn't make me feel good enough to overcome the queasiness from the sugar (and I absolutely will not drink artificial sweeteners--just a personal aversion to that). I was able to find appetizer-sized meals that worked in every restaurant we visited. I ate in public with friends almost every meal. Not one person ever commented about how little I ate except my mentor; we went to lunch, and my waiter was quite concerned that I didn't like my grilled asparagus vinaigrette because I couldn't finish the appetizer-sized portion. My mentor, who had seen me eat several meals by that time of the conference, told the waiter, "She doesn't eat much--that's why she looks so great!" I just grinned and told the waiter it was delicious but I was full. All's well that ends well. I walked past people that I've known for twenty years and had them not recognize me until I spoke to them. Had a lot of double-takes. Had one guy come over to my table, sit down, and start talking with my mentor--I have worked closely with this person in the past at a conference--when my mentor turned to me with a comment and used my name, this guy's jaw dropped open and he spent about ten straight minutes apologizing for not recognizing me. I got used to saying, "Yeah, it's pretty different for me, too!" I was startled to have men break into a trot from behind me in order to get to a door first to open it. My carry-on luggage was stowed for me and retrieved by various guys on the plane--and believe you me, I'm 6'2" and perfectly capable of lifting my little carry-on bag into and out of the overhead bin. LOL I was flirted with by several strangers, waiters, old friends, and colleagues at the conference--not in an ugly way, mind you, just friendly flirting. My husband said, "You have lost your invisibility. What an ironic thing that you got smaller and are no longer invisible." He is 100% right! No more invisibility. And I realized that where I used to get really uncomfortable with men noticing me, I'm able to deal with the flirting in a friendly way (most of the time, just a big smile) and just take it for what it is, which for me is as a non-pressure compliment. So, all in all, a very enjoyable conference, both for the content of the conference itself and also for the nice responses to the "new" me. I had a lot of questions about "how I did it," and I responded quite honestly that "I had surgery, and it took!"

low estrogen will cause weight gain for sure. I know from have hysterectomy and never taking estrogen or any hormones I was referring to Patrick's post about the soy I quoted it but i dont see that part

I had it from 2003 to 2012. I didn't find out about the erosion until my band was attempted to be replaced because I didn't have any symptoms, other than weight gain. I attributed the gain to stress and quitting smoking. I went for a fill and found no fluid. I had the port replaced first but it kept losing fluid so we thought I had a defective band. I had one of the small bands done in Mexico as self pay. My insurance wouldn't pay. Now I'm married and my husbands insurance pays. And I'm so incredibly happy!

Visalus is NOT a good option because it is SOY protein which is bad because of something to do with Estrogen - it raises Estrogen levels which can cause weight gain.