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6 month non-surgical weight loss regimen?



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My insurance is requiring a 6 month, non surgical weight loss regimen, WHAT did your personal physician or surgeon do for this? My Doctor isn't sure exactly what he needs to do for me. Thoughts? Help! I have every other requirement met already. except this one!

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I did the entire thing through my surgeons office. My surgical coordinator at my surgeons office basically gave me a timeline of things required by my insurance and set everything up for me. I had 3 (maybe 4?) nutritionist visits, 3 visits with my surgeon, an endoscopy (surgeon requirement, not insurance), blood work, and a psych eval. With the 6 month diet there's nothing really for your primary to do other than make suggestions on losing weight and have you come in regularly for weigh ins to make sure you're actually losing.

Edited by tmcx28

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I had to document my weight, diet I was trying and physical regimen. Make sure your physician is writing this in your chart.

Diet types included: Low calorie, low carb, jenny Craig, weight watchers, etc

Physical regimen: Work out DVDs, personal trainer or gym..make sure you write how many times per week in your chart

I was attending weight watchers all year so my insurance included that as part of the 6 month...they only required me to see the doc 2x because of that.

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I am doing mine through my surgeons office and I meet once a month with the nutritionist and she goes over my food and exercise logs and talks about what life will be like after surgery

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Thanks!

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I met once a month for 6 visits with my WLS surgeon who weighed me and discussed all I had done in the past to try to lose weight and keep it off. We spoke about my co-morbidities, the type of surgery I wanted and what exercise I was currently doing. I had been following Nutrisystem before I met him so for the first month he told me to continue to follow it and document on another site what I ate. After the first month he told me to get off of that program and follow a high Protein low carb diet. I was given a blue folder of all that will happen at the hospital and the diet plan to follow after surgery and his 4 rules I must follow.The blue book explained all about the surgery as did the Dr. I was given a check list of all the tests I had to go to as well as meet with the NUT once and get a mental health clearance. Additional testing was added after certain Drs met with me. When the Cardic Dr saw the EKG he asked for a stress test. When the Pulmonary Dr saw me he also asked me to do a breathing test.

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Where do we get the Surgery Countdown and/or Body Weight Ticker?

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You might want to doublecheck with your insurance. The ones with this requirement usually do not require any weight loss, just a medically supervised diet.

My surgeon's office gave me a list of things my doctor needed to document at every visit. You might want to check with your surgeon to see if they have that.

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If you've been seeing a doctor (primary care) about weight loss, they may be able to go back a few months and enter data on the worksheet that your insurance requires (your surgeons office can get you that paper). In the meantime, things that would help your supervised diet requirement is using a food tracker or diary (I used myfitnesspal, but there are other apps too) to show your efforts in maintaining a healthy diet, even if you don't manage to lose weight on it.

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Where do we get the Surgery Countdown and/or Body Weight Ticker?

Go to the top of the page to the little wheel in the upper right hand corner by your name. When you do a left click on it you will see in the right hand list my tickers.

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It's a good question to ask your insurance company. I may just be lucky, but I called mine a few times to ask variations on this question. My PCP ended up writing a letter with monthly weights over 6 months, giving information about things I've tried to lose weight.

My insurance waives that 6 months if you have comorbidities such as heart issues, diabetes, sleep apnea etc, so it's worth you checking.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

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I had to meet with my PCP 3x in a 6 month period. Insurance gave me paperwork for my PCP to fill out with questions like what diet am I doing, how much exercise am I getting, and a list of things to discuss like eating without distractions, stopping soda, etc. Very easy!

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      On day 4 of the 2 week liquid pre-op diet. Surgery scheduled for June 11th.
      Soooo I am coming to a realization
      of something and I'm not sure what to do about it. For years the only thing I've enjoyed is eating. We rarely do anything or go anywhere and if we do it always includes food. Family comes over? Big family dinner! Go camping? Food! Take a short ride or trip? Food! Holiday? Food! Go out of town for a Dr appointment? Food! When we go to a new town we don't look for any attractions, we look for restaurants we haven't been to. Heck, I look forward to getting off work because that means it's almost supper time. Now that I'm drinking these pre-op shakes for breakfast, lunch, and supper I have nothing to look forward to.  And once I have surgery on June 11th it'll be more of the same shakes. Even after pureed stage, soft food stage, and finally regular food stage, it's going to be a drastic change for the rest of my life. I'm giving up the one thing that really brings me joy. Eating. How do you cope with that? What do you do to fill that void? Wow. Now I'm sad.
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      1. LeighaTR

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    • Alisa_S

      On day 4 of the 2 week liquid pre-op diet. Surgery scheduled for June 11th.
      Soooo I am coming to a realization
      of something and I'm not sure what to do about it. For years the only thing I've enjoyed is eating. We rarely do anything or go anywhere and if we do it always includes food. Family comes over? Big family dinner! Go camping? Food! Take a short ride or trip? Food! Holiday? Food! Go out of town for a Dr appointment? Food! When we go to a new town we don't look for any attractions, we look for restaurants we haven't been to. Heck, I look forward to getting off work because that means it's almost supper time. Now that I'm drinking these pre-op shakes for breakfast, lunch, and supper I have nothing to look forward to.  And once I have surgery on June 11th it'll be more of the same shakes. Even after pureed stage, soft food stage, and finally regular food stage, it's going to be a drastic change for the rest of my life. I'm giving up the one thing that really brings me joy. Eating. How do you cope with that? What do you do to fill that void? Wow. Now I'm sad.
      · 1 reply
      1. summerseeker

        Life as a big person had limited my life to what I knew I could manage to do each day. That was eat. I hadn't anything else to look forward to. So my eating choices were the best I could dream up. I planned the cooking in managable lots in my head and filled my day with and around it.

        Now I have a whole new big, bigger, biggest, best days ever. I am out there with those skinny people doing stuff i could never have dreamt of. Food is now an after thought. It doesn't consume my day. I still enjoy the good home cooked food but I eat smaller portions. I leave food on my plate when I am full. I can no longer hear my mother's voice saying eat it all up, ther are starving children in Africa who would want that!

        I still cook for family feasts, I love cooking. I still do holidays but I have changed from the All inclusive drinking and eating everything everyday kind to Self catering accommodation. This gives me the choice of cooking or eating out as I choose. I rarely drink anymore as I usually travel alone now and I feel I need to keep aware of my surroundings.

        I don't know at what point my life expanded, was it when I lost 100 pounds? Was it when I left my walking stick at home ? Was it when I said yes to an outing instead of finding an excuse to stay home ? i look back at my last five years and wonder how loosing weight has made such a difference. Be ready to amaze yourself.

        BTW, the liquid diet sucks, one more day and you are over the worst. You can do it.

    • CaseyP1011

      Officially here for a long time, not just a good time💪
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