Gained weight to get approved

[DelRae]

My journey: I am mid way through my approval process. Next Monday will be my 4th dietitian meeting and after my fifth visit they schedule all the necessary tests, physic visits, etc. so that they are all done by the time I have my 6th dietitian meeting. Once that is complete everything gets sent to the insurance and a surgery date will be set. It's so hard waiting! I have been overweight most of my adult life. Like everyone else I could lose the weight but not keep it off and I have been looking into bariatric surgery for a while now. Got pretty serious about it this past spring when I could barely walk up a flight of stairs. I know this is going to sound really crazy, but in order to qualify for the surgery my insurance required a BMI of 35 or more with health issues, which I had a lot of. I was 3 pounds under the weight I needed to be to qualify but I made an appointment with my primary doctor and purposely gained 10 pounds. That's how bad I wanted to have bariatric (sleeve) surgery. She started the process that very day, ordered some blood work and scheduled me for a sleep test, which came back positive for sleep apnea. I called my insurance to find out what all I had to do to qualify, they called the only bariatric center in the state that I live in and things got started the next day with my first visit with the dietitian and here I am today patiently waiting for surgery day.

I really wasn't taking the dietitian thing very seriously up until last month when she started going thru how my diet would have to change, eating 3 times a day, smaller portions, etc.. Well this girl has to pat herself on the back. Last month I really got tough on myself and started seriously tracking everything I ate, getting in my water and protein, and taking my vitamins everyday. This is a very real habit that I have to get into right now, before my surgery, and I did it. Did not miss a single day. My calories got too high a lot of the days but I still tracked and got in the recommended water and protein so I feel I was pretty successful.

 

[3momchaos]

I padded my weight for my first weigh in. I had to be 40 BMI or over or 35 BMI with comorbitities which I did not have, and I was 43.9 at my first weigh in. Day of surgery 40.2. I always lose a little weight in the summer, so I wanted to make sure I would still qualify. 10 months out and now my BMI is 25. Sometimes we have to work a system that doesn’t work for us.

 

[KarenWV]

I padded my weight for my first weigh in. I had to be 40 BMI or over or 35 BMI with comorbitities which I did not have, and I was 43.9 at my first weigh in. Day of surgery 40.2. I always lose a little weight in the summer, so I wanted to make sure I would still qualify. 10 months out and now my BMI is 25. Sometimes we have to work a system that doesn’t work for us.

And what a crazy system it is that forces some of us to gain weight to get weight loss surgery. I had to do the same thing bc I only had 1 co-morbidity with a bmi of less than 40, just to be accepted as a patient. After I had a sleep study & was diagnosed with sleep apnea, I had some leeway.