MacMadame

That's not really true. In the US we use the NIH standards but the band was developed outside the US and they use different standards. They will band anyone who is obese, which is a BMI of 30 or above. You don't have to wait to be morbidly obese like you do here. There have been some studies of "low" BMI'ers and the band and they are finding that it works great if you are "only" 50 lb. overweight. It works much better than it does for higher BMIs, in fact. So the thinking is changing that this can be preventative for those who are already past the point of no return with weight. If you have 50 lb. or more to lose, you are not looking at good odds with dieting and exercising. But having WLS will help you and you are more likely to lose all your excess weight and keep it off, thus never developing the problems that the morbidly obese get. I see the NIH changing their criteria over the next couple of years. Hopefully insurance companies will fall in line and it will be easier to get WLS.

At first I thought Cheryl was joining in the fun. But alas, she was serious.

Not mine. They are already long and droopy. Losing weight will just make them flatter but they'll still be long and droopy.

My "rock bottom" was 223. When I hear people whose goal is 200, I think "nooooooooo, aim higher" but then they turn out to be 6 ft or something and 200 is a normal BMI for them. Maybe it would be better if the poll said 100 or less lbs. to lose instead of below 200 lb.

I'm not mad at you. I'm just mad.

Just asking this question pisses me off. I really hate it when people try to grade "need" like this. I hate it when people moan that they are so heavy that they really *need* this surgery because they are 200 lbs. overweight while other people are "only" 100 lb. overweight and don't deserve it as much as them. That's just as ridiculous as this question. ANYONE WHO IS OBESE DESERVES AND NEEDS WLS! Once you are obese, dieting doesn't work and your risk of dying from obesity increases dramatically from being "just" overweight. I hate, hate, hate that in the US you have to wait until you are morbidly obese to get this surgery. It should be available to everyone who has a BMI of 30 or more. Would you ask if a diabetic needs insulin even if their numbers weren't as bad as some other diabetic? No. It's recognized that they have a disease and insulin is an excellent treatment for it and the doctor just prescribes it without the patient having to jump through hoops to prove they are worthy of it. Obesity is a disease too and WLS is the only treatment we have that works. Asking if obese people deserve WLS is treating obesity like a lifestyle choice and you earn the treatment by how much you've suffered. Most of the insurance requirements are like this... you have to be obese or morbidly obese for so many years, you have to do a 6 month diet even though there is no clinical evidence to support this requirement, etc., etc. It's stupid and wrong.

Ooh, I hate it when docs do that. I know they are trying to set realistic expectations but to convince their patients to aim for mediocrity is not how you have a successful program IMO. I went to a seminar where they said "these are the averages" and "you should aim for at least the average". My response: I'm outta here baby!

If it's an exclusion, you have to fight your company and convince them to buy the coverage. If it's an exclusion 'except in cases of medical necessity' you have to fight the insurance company to prove it's medically necessary. I have the first sort of exclusion ... and my company is an enormous company that prides itself on it's great benefits package so I am PISSED ... but I decided to go self-pay and work with them so future people don't have to go through what I went through.

Tell him that he needs to go to counseling to help fix you. Guys love to fix things. :thumbup:

Sometimes I think that if I never went on that first diet back at age 13, I would never be where I am today. Then I look at my parents and my sibs and I realize I'm probably fooling myself. :thumbup:

Jacqui, you don't look a day over 35 and even then you could pass for younger.

But not everyone is there. Some people are still in a destructive place where following off the wagon is not just making a mistake but an indication that you are not worthwhile as a person. food is "good" and "bad" and your food choices make you "good" or "bad". The way I got out of that place was to absolutely stop dieting. I quit it cold turkey about 3 years ago and started working on repairing my relationship with food. I was hoping if I did that, I would lose weight -- pretty slowly probably -- but it would happen because I was listening to my body. Unfortunately, my body is full of ghrelin and what it says is YOU'RE HUNGRY! So when I listen to it, I hover around 220-223. Then, this WLS journey I've started on is constantly trying to suck me back into the dieter's mentality where all your self-worth is tied up in food and your own food choices. I think it's pretty difficult for people who have been dieting all their adult life and still think of dieting as being a good thing that people who care about themselves do to make themselves healthy, to shut off those voices in their heads telling themselves they are bad because they ate something bad. There is a fine line between following the rules -- something that is essential for WLS to work --and defining yourself by what you eat. Not everyone stays on the right side of the line and I think that's understandable.

Ignore is an amazing awesome thing. It allows you to be out on the internet where anyone can post anything including some of the stupidest stuff I've ever seen and you don't have to see any of it! :thumbup: At my figure skating board, I have over 60 people on ignore. You will not believe some of the stupid crap people will get into over their favorite figure skaters. At least on a support board, people are more on their best behavior. Believe it or not. That really bothers me that people were mean to you after your article. But I find it very believable after reading all the stupid comments people post on the web for most WLS articles. It was because of your article that I realized that I might actually get down to 120 like all the charts say and it would be okay and I would look fine. It also made me realize that PS is not shallow and a waste of money, but that for some people it's actually reconstructive. So it did help people even if you don't know about all of them and had to put up with loons.

Sounds like it's time for some marriage counseling. Doubly time! Some guys aren't good at talking about feelings. Sometimes have a 3rd part who is fluent in "guy" can really help.

I hurt my toe yesterday too but today it's fine. Yeah, chincillas. Maybe they do fart. But if they do, it's really quiet and doesn't smell.

This thread has been awesome. I now have 6 new people on ignore because of it.

I think you should ask him what he meant. Maybe he meant "I'm settling". Maybe he meant "I wouldn't have picked you originally, but now that I have, I'm in love with you." But you don't know until you ask.

Our chins don't fart.

US docs just Lurve their bypass, don't they? I went to a seminar on Wed. and I was so frustrated and annoyed by the end. People who had done less research than I were convinced by the surgeon that "bypass is really the best, isn't it?" even though his own slides showed that the at 14 years out, the weight loss is almost exactly the same between bypass and band. But his entire attitude and the way they presented the info just screamed "get bypass because it's the best". But it's not. It's the best in some circumstances, but everyone is different and in most of medicine they try to do the least invasive, least dangerous thing *first*. This is why in the rest of the world, bypass is the least popular surgery, not the most popular.

He sounds like my father. That is not a compliment, by the way. The "are you f*cking him too" thing is COMPLETELY OUT OF LINE. He needs help and you need to save yourself.

I want a belly button piercing. And maybe another one on my right ear so one side has more than the other. I need a place to keep those singleton earrings I don't want to through out.

I was added up all my expenses related to my weight and figured out it would take 10 years for my company to break even on my surgery. So I decided not to make the "it's cheaper in the long run" argument.

Well no one did that, so it's all good. But if people put their situations out there for others to comment on ... as BrandyII did ... then people will comment on them. You can't invite people into your problems and your life and then complain when they don't say what you want them to. (Well, you can but it doesn't make you look good.) And your post makes it seem like people who are frustrated aren't welcome either. If we can't put on the happy face and gather around the campfire to sing kumbaya, then we should shut up and/or go away. Well I can. So I guess you've just given me permission to judge. :Angel_anim: My childhood was crappy and disfunctional, the sort that tv movies are made from. I surived and MOVED ON because I refused to wallow in it and define myself as a victim. I was, and to this day, am a survivor and a happy person. That's how I define myself -- even when life it kicking me in the teeth, as it still sometimes does -- and it's a big difference between myself and the rest of my family and it's why I am a big success now with a family of my own and a good job and nice things and they are still struggling. Now one of my sibs has been diagnosed with a mental illness and I recognize that "just be happy" isn't going to cut it for her. But at the same time, adjusting her attitude is an essential part of what she had to do to get better. In that way, it's like being morbidly obese. Telling a morbidly obese person to "just eat less and move more" isn't very helpful and isn't going to cut it. That's why we get WLS. But once we have this tool, we have to eat less and move more or we aren't going to lose the weight. Having WLS gives us a fighting chance, but at some point we had to do the work. Just as, at some point, my sister had to accept her diagnosis and start working with the program instead of fighting it in order to have a chance at a normal life. One of the things I've done in order to be successful is to find role models -- people who are where I want to be. Jachut is a role model to me [and other people on here, too] because she turned her fat around without going to extremes (like puking over the kitchen sink after every meal). Not everything she's done is going to work for me, but when she tells me how she got to where she is, I listen because she was successful at doing something I want to do too. To reject the advice of the successful is just mind-boggling to me. Yet people do it all the time. Instead of saying "here's a blueprint for how to get where I want to go", they do everything in their power to diminish the other person -- to make it seem like they had it easy or they are just stronger somehow or they otherwise are an alien whose advice is obviously worthless because it doesn't apply to mere humans. You can do that if you want to, but it's not the way I roll.

But not as fat as Mississippi or Alabama... at least according to the seminar I went to last night. :Angel_anim:

I think in the end, we're all responsible for our own feelings and what we do with them. You can be reassuring to someone because you love them, but at some point they have to own their feelings and take responsibility for anything stupid they do in the name of those feelings.