Hello,

I was pretty set and OK with spending like $100 a month for vitamins that are specifically for bariatric patients until I wrecked my car. I have to make car payments on the totaled car, and the new car until the GAP insurance goes through and pays for the remainder of the loan. So basically I'm hard up. What is the cheapest way to do vitamins? My understanding is that I will need:

complete multivitamin

Vitamin B12

Calcium with Vitamin D

Iron with Vitamin C

What can I do to keep costs down, maybe for just three or four months until I'm no longer shelling out an extra $420 a month for a car I no longer have?

Thank you for your help, and for listening to me complain.

I’m on Bariatric Advantage, for the dose I need to take, the multi is only $23.75 USD for 45 days. The chewable calcium is a bit pricey, but the non-chewable isn’t much.

Check out this thread. ProCare multivitamin was approved by my team and it’s like $11.99 a month (45mg of iron option) and the calcium citrate a lot of veterans recommended off brands and generics. Century 21 was one that I recall. But generic from Walmart and CVS were also mentioned.

Edited August 17, 20215 yr by ShoppGirl

What vitamins did your surgeon &/or nutritionalist advise you will need? Don’t go rushing out buying heaps of vitamins you don’t need. Everyone has different needs so find out what you need first.

I was told to take a multivitamin & vitamin D with magnesium. I only took the vitamin D & magnesium really briefly because my blood work showed I had more then enough & didn’t need for it to be supplemented. I then had two large expensive bottles I didn’t need. I’m menopausal so you’d expect I’d be told to take calcium but my bone density is excellent (rock hard bones) & again my bloods showed I had more than I needed. Same with iron. I had very regular blood tests for the first year - every 2 months (3 months in my 2nd year & 4 months now in my 3rd) - so if anything got low my medical team knew about it but everything was fine & still is (fingers crossed) & I haven’t even taken a multi vitamin since month 8.

Sorry about your car wreck. Hope you weren’t injured in any way.

Edited August 17, 20215 yr by Arabesque

12 hours ago, MistySkye said:

I’m on Bariatric Advantage, for the dose I need to take, the multi is only $23.75 USD for 45 days. The chewable Calcium is a bit pricey, but the non-chewable isn’t much.

Does that mean you were told you only

need one of those a day? I was told I needed to take two. Weird how different the doctors are with where they start us off. Or did you just find it cheaper. I pay $37.95 for 60 (30’ day supply)I take the chewable ones with iron.

I don't pay anywhere near that for vitamins. For multis, I get the generic equivalent to Centrum at Walgreens or CVS (they may have them at other places, too). It seems like they have buy one/get the second half-off sales at least once a month, so I stock up during sales if I'm starting to run low.

I take one megadose of B12 every other week, so even if it's semi-expensive, a bottle lasts me forever.

Calcium - Walgreens and CVS have generic calcium citrate, too.

Iron with vitamin C -- I take Vitron C, which is pretty cheap - but I noticed the other day that CVS has a generic of that, too, so i bought some for when I run out of Vitron C (if you take that, keep in mind it's 100% elemental iron, so depending on your labs, you may only need to take one tablet (65 mg) of it, as opposed to the 300+ mg you have to take of some of the Ferrous <whatever> tablets that are only like 20% elemental iron (elemental iron is the part of the tablet that your body actually absorbs. Vitron C (and other brands of carbonyl iron) is 100% elemental).

Okay so I just learned with the ProCare there is. 4.99 shipping fee but if you spend $75 it’s waived. They also have free samples you can request on their site.

@ShoppGirl I take 2 per day. I was only on the more expensive chewable for 45 days, then switched to the cheaper capsule.