farfi

I am not the same person that posted earlier about smoking a cigar but thought I would chime in.
Everyone is different and every situation is different, what might work for one might not work for anyone else. I smoke a quality (not a gas station bought) cigar about every night. I also have my cigar with either a glass of whiskey or rum. I am in really good shape and have done very well after my surgery. I actually ran my 2nd 5K yesterday (my first one was back in May) and finished 3rd in my age group.
Clearly the cigar smoking is not slowing me down at all.

Congratulations!

I wish you all the success in the world with Both! You can do this. You are much stronger than you think!??

It's the best thing ever. And being able to quit before getting ill is Even better. My grandma used to smoke 3 packets of cigarettes a day and she was forced to quit due to a stroke. I Will turn my life 180 degrees by getting the surgery done and quitting . I want to be fit and healthy. Thanks for your advice and support!

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It's the best thing ever. And being able to quit before getting ill is Even better. My grandma used to smoke 3 packets of cigarettes a day and she was forced to quit due to a stroke. I Will turn my life 180 degrees by getting the surgery done and quitting . I want to be fit and healthy. Thanks for your advice and support!

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I quit in July of 2006 when I had my youngest son (no nasty comments about smoking while pregnant please- he’s a strapping 12 year old). I actually had my husband go home and throw away all the cigarettes and ashtrays from the house and cars. He then thoroughly cleaned the house and cars and let them air out. So when I came home there were no remnants of smoking anywhere. Both of my parents smoked so it was hard for the first month going to their house but it got better. My parents don’t smoke anymore (my dad has had trouble with bacterial and fungal pneumonia and my mom has had sepsis and was on life support and recently had a lobectomy to remove the upper lobe of the right lung because she had lung cancer).

I was a heavy "vaper" for the last 6 years and a smoker before that. About 1 1/2 months before I planned to quit, I used patches and nicorette gum, then about a month before surgery - stopped everything. It was difficult for a week, less so the second week, and I was home free thereafter.
Chantix might be a good idea for you - I've read lots of positive experiences from people quitting with Chantix.

Farfi wanted to say Hi to you.
I'm on Wellbutrin(buptopion) not a smoker, never was. I take it for depression and it is an easy and good drug . Also I have lung cancer deaths in my family and a cousin died of esophageal cancer wh9 was a heavy smoker and drinker. Neither cancer was nice to die from, Please try to quit, for those who love you but for yourself most of all. I'll be your friend either way but I'll be especially proud if you can do it.

Hate to break it to you- but quitting my 20 year cigarette habit proved to be much less of a battle than this food stuff has been.

I quit using a combination of bupropion and electronic cigarettes. However- be mindful that you will probably get tested for cotinine(the metabolite if nicotine), so if you do use electronic cigarettes, you’ll need to ween down to a nicotine free juice at least a month before being tested.

I have been cigarette free for 8.5 months and do not miss it at all.

I quit before for 5 years. Was stupid and started again and smoked for 5 more. Both times I quit using Chantix. I quit in March and had my RNY last week

I quit smoking in 2004 and I'm so glad I did. I was lucky and my employer offered a program to quit, so I did counseling and back then they used Wellbutrin (Zyban) as an aid to help withdrawal symptoms. It really worked, not to say that it made it easy by any means, but the withdrawal symptoms were much less unpleasant than in my many past tries to quit.
Maybe you can ask your surgeon or your primary doctor about any programs that might be available in your area. I feel like the support helped, and I remember they had a survey that identified the level of physical and psychological addiction and then had things to help like nicotine patches and nicotine inhalers to help decrease slowly instead of cold turkey, and fake cigarettes to hold to help with the psychological part.
It's hard, but the benefits to your health will be worth it.

On another thread, someone suggested putting a load of ashes/butts into a plastic bag. When the temptation to smoke hits you, open the bag and take a big whiff.
Good luck, I know it's hard!

In socialized medical system, it's a lot harder to fight and appeal denials of procedures. I don't know how the system works in Argentina, but some nationalized health systems (UK for instance) have loosened some of these requirements based on more recent studies. The problem you guys have is that some of these arbitrary requirements are used as a way to reduce the number of potential patients and ration out care to the patients that the state managers determine would benefit most. For all the complaints we have in the US with the cost of medical coverage and issues dealing with insurance companies, we do not have any rationing of care, long waiting lists to get an appointment for the operation and you can pick your doctor (and there are a lot of them to choose). Every time I hear people on the far left in the US call for "medicare for all" or some other nationalized health care system like in the UK, Canada etc., I think of the dark side of those systems and I'll take what we have here any day before we become a nation of rationed health care.

I have EmblemHealth GHI and they had a six month requirement of medically supervised nutritional monitoring and counseling, but no weight loss benchmark. I was 4 months in when, in June 2018, they revised the criteria to eliminate the requirement. The major bariatric organizations and institute (See, e.g., American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery's Updated Position Paper on Preoperative Supervised Weight Loss Requirements (March 2016) have all come out with position papers saying that these types of requirements serve no medical benefit, are not supported by any scientific evidence and only delay necessary treatment--which can harm patients (particularly those with co-morbidities like Type 2 diabetes). If you (or anyone else) is denied coverage because you have failed to meet this arbitrary and ridiculous requirement, you have a very good basis for challenging the denial. This requirement only serves as a barrier to necessary treatment for patients who stand to benefit from it. The new position advocated by most major institutes and associations is that surgery should be determined based on the BMI you present with at your initial consultation with the bariatric surgeon. EmblemHealth is hardly a trailblazer when it comes to loosening their approval standards and criteria, so if they did away with this requirement you can best most other companies will be revising their policies in the near future. I would definitely fight hard if any body's carrier denied coverage based on your purported failure to meet this arbitrary and pointless requirement.
Although this may be slightly off topic, many insurance companies have other similar absurdities in their requirements. For example, many require that you do not have an active eating disorder. With few exceptions, every person who has a BMI over 35 (and definitely if you're over 40) likely has an active eating disorder (binge eating, carb addiction etc.) likely has an eating disorder (binge eating). This should not be a basis for denial of coverage.
Putting these two condition for approval together and you have nothing but a hardened barrier to treatment that is not imposed on any other medical condition. If a person has an addiction to drugs or alcohol, most insurance companies provide in-patient coverage for detoxification and rehabilitation. Could you imagine if insurance made that coverage contingent on the addicts ability to prove they stayed off their drug of choice for 6 or more months before they would cover the cost of rehab???
In the case of obesity, diet and exercise alone does not work for the morbidly obese, so why impose a requirement that they lose 5-15% of their body weight as a condition for surgery. Worse yet, some carriers require patients to show they they failed a to lose 5% of their body weight after 6-24 months of supervised medical dieting. This creates a perverse incentive for a morbidly obese patient to go through counseling, but ignore the advice and not lose weight (all the while allowing their health to deteriorate).
These types of requirements need to go. Do what you need to do to qualify for the surgery you need--but fight your ass off with the carrier if your denied coverage based on these arbitrary (but strictly enforced) requirements.

I was in your shoes with the same symptoms if not more. Use the Military Diet and then start a low/no carb diet. If you stick to the military diet, you are guaranteed a 10lbs weight loss. You will also be open and ready to take on any diet. I started out at 407 about the time I hit the table I was 338. You can repeatedly use the military diet whenever you slack off. Be aware, you will not see the results until the following week. Look it up. It definitely worked for me.

Hi! I'm in the pre op stage. My insurance needs to follow my process for six months for the surgery to get approved they also make me lose 10% of my body weight. I do not have any advice to give you but i wish you luck!

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