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Hello! Semi-new here, just starting my journey and trying to get everything situated as much as possible. I am starting my journey in January after I choose/enroll in my job's insurance in October. I know the basic coverages for each insurance plan they offer, and (thankfully) they all offer bariatric coverage. I am having a hard time deciding on which to go with as I know they all have their own specific criteria. I am not having the best of luck getting further information on specifics from neither my workplace or the insurance companies on any specifics and they are both blaming the other party (my job stating the insurance company will have more info/insurance companies stating they need to know the exact policy from my job to give all the info)... I'm ready to pull my hair out as this seems like a huge decision to make going in blindly. I was just wondering if anyone has had any of these insurance companies and your general experience -- I know it depends on specific policies but just in terms of ease/customer service/questions answers/timeliness/billing with these insurance companies? I'll take any advice now to help with my decision! Thank you ☺️

I'm 323 as of today. Not sure how I lost 4 pounds in 6 days, but I'll take it lol Actually, I might know. So in therapy, we've been working on healthy balance between eating and working out. I was keeping my calories around 700-800 calories and working out twice per day. I've slooooowly increased my calories to between 1000 - 1100 calories per day and I do one 45 minute work out instead of two 30 minute ones and it seems like once I did that, the weight started really coming off again. Who knew eating MORE calories (along with a reasonable work out plan and not going balls to the wall twice a day every day) would be the most effective way to lose weight? My bariatric team wants me at 700 calories and at least 60 minutes or working out every day. But my body doesn't like that. My likes things the way they are. At least for now. So this is when I really had to lean on my therapist, because she's a bariatric therapist and also specializes in eating disorders, and she kind of gave permission for me to not follow my surgeon's preferences to the letter. I still try to eat what they say and avoid what they say, and I still the kinds of workouts they recommend. I just have to listen to my body when it comes to length and frequency of work outs and amount of calories I take in each day.

My surgeon recommends celebrate bariatric vitamins and thiamine supplements pre surgery (and celebrate vitamins after()

Everyone's mileage may vary, but I found this calculator turned out to be pretty accurate for me: https://mexicobariatriccenter.com/bariatric-surgery-weight-loss-timeline-calculator/ On the morning of my surgery, I was 460. This calculator put me at 372 at the 3 month mark. I was 381. It had me at 325 at the six month mark. I was 331. It had me at 267 at the year mark. I am at 261.

I bought one of those protein laden broths from a Bariatric company. They aren’t bad and since they would something warm you might not mind having that. It has 20gms of protein. I hope you start feeling better soon!

I would talk to a bariatric surgeon and have them see how serious your reflux is and if it they believe it warrants a revision, they will tell you. As far as the poor choices and no weight loss, it could be due to having gerd. I didn't get reflux from my sleeve till years later, long after I had lost most of my weight. I saw a few surgeons, and they all said that I have to get a revision to RNY, otherwise I was risking getting esophageal cancer. I also started having difficulties keeping the weight off. I couldn't sleep at all, hence I ate more for energy. Other times, I ate when my stomach hurt just to temporary pacify the gnawing pain... Etc. It's all related.

Hey all, it's been a bit since I was on here last. So, I figured I'd talk about the appointments so far. I'm still pre op and don't have a surgery date yet and I more than likely won't for awhile. Which sucks🤷‍♀️ but oh well, we all know it takes time. I had my first official appointment last month with my first official weigh in! They gave me a weight loss goal to reach which they want me to be in 150 to 155. According to the BMI chart that still makes me overweight, but that gave my that goal so that I dont get discouraged and its more realistic.My ultimate weight loss goal is to get down to 125. I've been overweight/obese my whole life and I just want my weight to be considered a normal weight, you know? Probably not a good mind set right? I already had one of the classes I need to take required by the surgical team. Which was the importance of exercise. Which went great. I also met up with the bariatric psychiatrist for a mental health evaluation. This week I have a huge appointment coming up on Friday. The appointment consists of a bundle of testing. Blood work, EKG, chest xray(I believe). I meet up with the nutritionist, I meet up with the physical therapist too (I think that is what it is) and after all of that I have a regular followup appointment to go over the bundle testing that day. So Friday is going to be a long day haha. The next appointment after that is another follow up and lastly I have a behavior modification class scheduled for October. After those appointments I think all that's left is another appointment with the nutritionist, another class and follow up appointments. What are the appointments you guys have to go through before even getting a surgery date? sorry for all the writing, but this is the only place I can really talk about it since I want to keep this journey to myself. Until I am ready to announce to people. Which that won't be until I lose a significant amount of weight. Thanks for listening!

I've always taken Centrum Silver or the generic equivalent. If you take grocery store/drug store vitamins, you have to take two a day (some of the bariatric specific ones you only have to take one a day)

I'm so sorry you're having to consider revision so soon after your original surgery. Do you think it might be useful to think about the weight loss you've managed to achieve with your current surgery, and the reflux you've unfortunately experienced separately? I have had reflux symptoms for years. They always improved when I lost weight, so after a long discussion with my surgeon I decided to go for sleeve gastrectomy as opposed to bypass. In my case the gamble (calculated) paid off. I DID in fact improve as soon as I lost a significant amount of weight again. With regards to losing weight after a VSG that is an issue you might want to address completely separately. If you can eat around a sleeve then you may be able to eat around a bypass. Do you have food addiction issues or other psychological issues that might benefit from discussion with a bariatric therapist? Having had my sleeve 9 months ago I can't imagine how I would have approached it other than how I did - as a tool to help me lose weight if I stuck to certain (hard) rules. I wish you all the best in your journey. There are many many roads to successful long-term weight loss. Seems like you've already taken a big step along one of those roads.

Hi Jessica, Here’s a link to a bariatric surgery outcomes predictor that many professionals use: https://michiganbsc.org/DecisionTools/

I usually don't digest vitamins too well, but I've tried the bariatric pal chews and they are working well for me. They come in 4 flavors and my surgeons office gave me the samples.

I was also told no on gum from my surgeon. Found this info online not to chew gum after their weight loss surgery. First, some gums can have a lot of sugar, which contributes unnecessary calories into the diet, making it harder to lose weight. But, even if they opt for a sugar free version, chewing gum can cause problems in bariatric patients. The act of chewing gum allows air to enter into your digestive tract. For people who haven’t had bariatric surgery, this may not cause any problems. But for bariatric patients having air in their digestive tract can lead to gas and abdominal discomfort. In the first few weeks after gastric sleeve, gastric bypass, or lap band surgery, some patients report excess saliva. Chewing gum can also lead to saliva production, potentially compounding their problem. Another problem with gum chewing after bariatric surgery is the potential for any swallowed gum to cause a blockage. After gastric sleeve, gastric bypass, or lap band surgery patients are educated to chew their food thoroughly to a paste like consistency. As much as you chew your piece of gum, it will never be such a consistency. The wad of gum can potentially lead to a blockage if swallowed. Most do not find the risk worth it. A great place

That is crazy. This is the first I am hearing of a “max lifetime benefit” for Bariatric - I’ll have to look into that. I still have time I have three options for insurance. BCBS is one of them but I’ve had them before and they were honestly a complete nightmare constantly messing up claims from a pregnancy, so I won’t go with them anymore haha. That also makes it seem like your surgery is crazy expensive lol which procedure are you getting done? My OOP max across the board is 3000 so I’m hoping that’s all I have to pay out of pocket. Hopefully you only end up paying $400! This whole process seems stressful, and long. Hoping to get my surgery summer on 2023! Good luck in your adventure!

I have Anthem (BCBS) and my deductible is $400 and my out-of-pocket maximum is $2500. I've paid $2100 already because it was the accumulation of all the pre-op testing and appointments I have had since starting the process in Jan 2022. When scheduling for my surgery, which was August 9th, the surgeon's office called the insurance company 3x to verify approx what my out of pocket remaining cost will be after surgery is billed and they told me $400 to meet my OOP-max and that anything over that would be paid 100%. But...my specific insurance plan has a $20K max lifetime benefit on bariatric surgery. And when I went in for my consult in Dec 2021, they told me that, after meeting the OOP-max, it would still be $12k that I would have to pay the surgeon's office. So...I got two drastically different numbers. Either I'm paying $400 or anywhere up to $12k and I have no idea what it will be until the billing goes through. HOW STRESSFUL IS THIS??? Insurance is crazy!

Hi Phoenixreborn, congratulations. Im booked in for the Spatz gastric balloon end of September. Im excited but nervous at the same time. May I ask how many millilitres is in your balloon? Where do you get bariatric vitamins from?

I’m glad to hear you are doing better but sorry you are still struggling. I’m working closely with a therapist (for years now) … since my accident, and talking through my decision to take this step (surgery … I’m scheduled for next Tuesday). I also see a separate therapist with my husband. There are days I feel like both are a waste of time, but usually I feel like it helps and I even look forward to it sometimes. Even sessions when I don’t think are really head on dealing with “things”… usually end up lightening my load and making everything easier to deal with until my next session. My best therapy advice is find someone you connect with and you enjoy talking to. Sometimes you need to go through more than one, and that’s ok. When you find the right person - it will make all the difference in the world. Thankfully my therapist is experienced with bariatric / weight loss issues. If he wasn’t, I would reach out to my bariatric program (they have a great therapist in house) or if I wasn’t comfortable with their person, I’d ask them for a referral. I hope things continue to get better.

So it may be time to take a little break from the ongoing saga of why it’s taken me over two and a half years to get to surgery and instead talk about how I got to the point of wanting to have bariatric surgery in the first place. My lightest weight as an adult was while I was in the Army. Just sheer physical activity and regular PT had me lean down to around 175 from maybe 185 when I graduated high school. Unfortunately I was severely injured in a training accident while in the service and left the military with a bad limp and a knee brace as a constant reminder. Weight wise, things went downhill from there. Being somewhat disabled made it hard to exercise, but meanwhile I was still eating like I did when I was in the service. (Lots of food, very quickly.) This was obviously not a good combination. Several other health scares and life events later, I shot up to around 240. I managed to stabilize things at this point and was even able to get into strength training pretty seriously for a while. Most cardio was still out, though. Life went on for several years, until I got a new job that paid me very well, but also took it’s toll on me physically and mentally. Within 3 years in the new job, I was up to 285 or so and climbing. I knew I needed help, so my wife and I tried just about every possible diet program imaginable. Interestingly, I’ve kept logs of every one of those diets. For at least the past 15 years, the typical pattern was for me to be somewhere between 285 and 300 pounds lose 30-80 pounds, then yo yo right back to my starting weight and then some. In about 2017, I finally asked my Doctor for help. We did all the things you’re supposed to do: talk to dietitians, try medications of various kinds, and even do physician monitored diets. None of that worked any better. The problem was, they just assumed like everyone does that I was weak-willed or to stupid to know how to eat properly. That’s never been my problem. I actually eat pretty well overall, with lots of fresh veggies, and plenty of lean protein. The problem is, in addition to all the good food, I’m also an emotional eater that soothes with sweets. I knew I’d reached rock-bottom when I started hiding food from my wife. As an example, I might buy a box of donuts and plow through it in a matter of minutes. Or buy the boxes of chocolate intended for Valentines day and devour them all in a morning. No box or bag of candy or pastries ever had the dust settle on it around me! About this time, I got up to 330 (my highest weight), and knew I needed to take a different road or I would never live to see my grandchildren. (I may never actually have any grandchildren, but that’s a story for a different day!) This takes us to late 2019 when I discovered, quite by accident, that my new insurance plan starting in Jan 2020 would finally cover bariatric surgery. After about a millisecond of research (okay, maybe a little longer), I decided this might be the thing for me. I think you already know what happened in my saga in 2020, so we’ll stop there for now and start back up next time in the summer of 2021, when I finally got the cardiac clearance I needed to get WLS.

If the GERD is the result of a hiatal hernia, not an uncommon thing and a common cause of GERD, with or without WLS, then that can be corrected, though some surgeons may not be great at doing that with a sleeve - some can, some can't and will route you direct to a bypass instead. A resleeve might be appropriate if the original sleeve was malformed - that used to be more common 8-10 years ago when most bariatric surgeons were still learning how to do the sleeve (as one prominent surgeon put it, "twenty years of doing bypasses and they think they know how to do a sleeve....") but that is less common more lately, but something still to check out. If you are consulting someone who does the DS (particularly the "traditional" BPD/DS,) that's a good thing as they typically are the most skilled at working with sleeves, and can give a good reading as to what condition yours is in. If one of them tells you that the bypass is the way to go (even though they may normally prefer the DS,) then that's usually sound advice.

I still have a double+ chin, but I can flex my neck and see tendons now. I watched a video where a bariatric doctor said that not having fat around your neck/upper chest is a good proxy for loss of visceral fat, so I'm stoked. I keep flexing my neck in the mirror whenever I'm alone with one!

My PCP has never referred me to or mentioned a neurosurgeon before. He just referred me to a pain specialist. We are doing conservative treatments right now. My PCP is only sending me to a neurosurgeon because of the position my neck will be in during the surgery. The neurosurgeon is requiring I have an MRI in the last 6 months before they will see me as a new patient. The bariatric team I am working with called me this morning to tell me that my PCP didn't even talk to my bariatric surgeon he only texted him. He told me he talked to him. I am in shock. I never would have thought he would lie like that. The bariatric team told me not to switch doctors right now as it will hold me up. They will help me do the letter my PCP wants me to write to him regarding my weight loss history and why I want bariatric surgery. They also said my PCP usually listens to the bariatric surgeon. If he is only trying to cover his *** why doesn't he just get me to sign something saying I am not going to sue him.

I'm a fan of the ones that have both footpads and handles that you hold. I don't have any data to suggest that they are any better, but it just seems like having more sensors in more places would be a good thing. The one I have now in an Omron, but I recently saw on Amazon that InBody also makes one for the home market. InBody is the brand my Bariatric Center uses, so I'm tempted to get one of those as well. One thing to keep in mind: none of these home BIA scales are all that accurate. In reality, that's not super important to me. What's more important is that they are consistent; meaning I can actually track from one week to the next if my percentage of body fat is trending in the right direction. When I want a more accurate number, I'll go get a bod pod scan. .

We all come at different angles with this issue. I had no choice, I had to pay up. I couldn't wait till the NHS recovered from Covid and I finally found a Doctor who would recommend me for the surgery. I have been asking for 25 years and several had already side tracked me onto yet another diet. If I had been given your choices then I would wait for the free option. It would be only 4 months longer than I had to wait anyway. The $18,000, I would save towards skin surgery later down the line. What do you spend on food in a week ? Times it by 52. Shakes, protein powder and bariatric vitamins are extra costs that you may need to factor in too. Keep chatting to us on the forum and read the back pages while you decide. Good luck

Hello All. Can I introduce myself. I’m Paul and exactly 4 weeks post gastric sleeve surgery. I’ve been trying to lose weigh all my adult life with varying degrees of success. All ultimately fruitless. There’s very few I haven’t attempted and I was desperate by the time I agreed to surgery. Although a various times I’ve topped 30 stone I was always able to cope with the excess weight. Not so these last few years and severe arthritis in my worn out knees has forced the issue. To get them replaced I have to be lighter. And hopefully ALM will be in less pain and I can move about easier. I was deeply ashamed about having to go down the path of surgery. I’ve loathed my size all my life and it’s had a profoundly negative effect on both my career and personal life. I was a fairly decent footballer in my time (hence the knackered knees) but undoubtedly the excess weight I carried in my younger years, whilst nowhere near as extreme, hindered my performance and damaged my self esteem. I first joined the NHS bariatric programme in late 2015 after encouragement from my GP but I promptly lost 7 stone and decided it wasn’t for me. Life, as always, got in the way and all that weight went back on by 2018\19 after I was made redundant and lost the plot. I was fortunate to get put back on the programme in 2019 and despite the hiatus of the Pandemic got invited to meet the surgeons in January this year. Can’t say I didn’t have my doubts as the date of surgery to nearer but I knew I was probably on my last chance should I walk away. The liver shrinking diet was extremely easy I felt. I stopped any form of alcohol a month before my date of surgery and I’m feeling OK now. I’ve had a couple of incidents of the foamies and have been sick twice trying to progress to purée/soft food. I’ve put that down to eating too quickly and perhaps slightly too much despite my efforts at not doing either. I find I hard to eat the 800 calories a day target I’ve been told to meet, and sufficient protein but I’m working on it. One thing that I do seem to be unusual for reading through this thread. I haven’t weighed myself since the day of the operation. Am I wrong not to do so? I can feel previously tight clothes getting baggy. My view is this is a marathon and not a sprint now and why torture myself if I can see a plateau going on for a couple of weeks. Nice to meet you all.

Yes, the IBI doctor is a bariatric surgeon and the TrueYou doctor said he's a gastrointerologist specialist. I guess I'll go back to the drawing board to find a few more bariatric surgeons and also find a GI specialist. I appreciate everyone's help and insight.

Thank you guys. I just called my insurance and I can change my PCP. The bariatric team I am working with are so nice and willing to help me also. I am so glad I found Bariatricpal thank you guys so much.