Hello everyone,

I went to see my surgeon the other day in Celebration, Florida and it ended up being a informative seminar about all the surgeries they do. Since I am going through my insurance I will need to go on a 6 month weight loss program with weight checks every month. I guess this is for insurance purposes, but what exactly am i suppose to do? I am only about ten pounds over the 100 pound requirement and about 1 or 2 % over the 40% BMI requirement.

Basically my worry is if i lose too much weight i will fall to 39% BMI and my insurance will not cover my surgery. What am i suppose to be doing here? Am I suppose to be maintaining, losing, gaining more? When i went to the seminar they weighed me, is that the weight they will use for insurance purposes? does anyone know? please help? I would like to start my diet now, but only if it will not effect my surgery coverage.:scared0::confused1::confused1::thumbup:

I had my surgery thru Kaiser and they required a 6 month program to lose 10% of your total body weight before surgery, but they used the before weight and bmi to determine the surgery qualifications. I don't think you have anything to worry about. We actually had to go to a class every week and weigh-in which at first, I thought was dumb, but now I'm very glad I had to do it because it taught me how to diet with a balanced 1500 calorie per day meal plan. I lost almost 30lbs during the classes and thought it was a great way to prepare for surgery. You'll be much more prepared for eating after surgery after going thru this, so you are lucky. Good luck!

Hello everyone,

I went to see my surgeon the other day in Celebration, Florida and it ended up being a informative seminar about all the surgeries they do. Since I am going through my insurance I will need to go on a 6 month weight loss program with weight checks every month. I guess this is for insurance purposes, but what exactly am i suppose to do? I am only about ten pounds over the 100 pound requirement and about 1 or 2 % over the 40% BMI requirement.

Basically my worry is if i lose too much weight i will fall to 39% BMI and my insurance will not cover my surgery. What am i suppose to be doing here? Am I suppose to be maintaining, losing, gaining more? When i went to the seminar they weighed me, is that the weight they will use for insurance purposes? does anyone know? please help? I would like to start my diet now, but only if it will not effect my surgery coverage.:scared0::confused1::confused1::thumbup:

Hey Mick. Some of my thoughts on this issue are personal opinion, but there are some things you probably need to do for sure. I would definitely call the insurance company and ask them if their 6 month plan requires weight loss. If it does, as mb said, they probably would have to use your starting BM as the qualifier and it wouldn't matter how much you lose. If their 6 month plan does not require weight loss, then they probably would use your weight at the time of the official insurance request for approval. This is how my plan operates.

I had these same concerns as you when I started my 6 month process. From my perspective, I'm just trying to maintain. I do have more wiggle room than you to lose some weight, but if I got too gung ho, I could diet myself out of qualifying for surgery. When I asked someone on the insurance end what would happen if I went under a BMI of 40 after 6 months of dieting, I was told flat out that the surgery request would be denied.

So, I went on to question the point of the 6 month plan if I couldn't lose enough to really lower my BMI. I was told something to the effect of "it's more about you following through with the 6 months of monitoring than it is about losing weight." I guess this makes sense because they want to be sure that you are going to follow through after surgery with the appointments, diet, support groups, etc. So, they put you through the ringer for 6 months to see if you've got what it takes to stick with it. You miss one month of your appointments and you start from scratch. :sad0:

The other thing you need to do is get your surgeon's specific requirements about weight loss. Some require that you lose a certain amount, others may have no requirements in this area. My surgeon requires that his patients not gain anything after their 1st consult with him. That's one of the reasons I wasn't in too much of a hurry to go for my 1st consult after the seminar. It's less time for me to at least maintain. Since my weight tends to go up and down alot, I've got to monitor myself when I get closer to surgery and I may have to do a liquid diet to drop a few pounds.

This may sound like I'm being lazy to some people, but I've got a lot going on right now, and stressing about my weight is low on the list. I've arranged my schedule so that the two months after surgery will be my time to focus on my diet and healing. This 6 month thing is definitely do-able, but you have to work it. Get the specifics on EXACTLY what is expected of you over the 6 months and write it down. Map out a plan for how you will meet your requirements each month and leave some wiggle room for getting your appointments in each month; definitely don't schedule your appointments in the last week of the month because something may come up and you might need to reschudule.

Good luck and keep us up to date on how it's going.