Here's my stats.

Current Weight: 203 pounds

Height: 5’2”, small build

BMI: 37.1

To get to my goal weight of 125lbs I've got to loose 78lbs. I feel I should have been able to do it with diet but I just don't have the will power or something. I feel that my need isn't really great enough. I've been struggling with my weight since I was 16 (now 27) and it's just getting worse. Is wanting lap band now wrong?

Dear Nathan, certianly wanting to keep your weight down is commendable and healthy for you but not unless you have some serious health issues like high blood pressure, Diabetes and a BMI over 40 no doctor is going to recommend that procedure for you. Perhaps there are some other avenues you can embark upon that will yield the desired weight and looks. This is the bottom line. It's not fashionable but a life and death thing for many like myself.

Dear Nathan, certianly wanting to keep your weight down is commendable and healthy for you but not unless you have some serious health issues like high blood pressure, Diabetes and a BMI over 40 no doctor is going to recommend that procedure for you. Perhaps there are some other avenues you can embark upon that will yield the desired weight and looks. This is the bottom line. It's not fashionable but a life and death thing for many like myself.

Doctor's do recommend lap band for patients with BMI under 40 and no co-morbidities. Many on LBT fit in that category including myself. I don't consider it fashionable at all. I choose not to tell people that I had LBS. I chose to do it before it became a life and death situation.

Good luck on your journey.

I had FEP BCBS pay for my surgery last October. My BMI was 35, and I had slightly elevated blood pressure, hiatal hernia and gastric reflux, slightly elevated blood sugar levels, and a congenital knee problem. My PCP wrote them all up as co-morbidities, and BCBS paid for my surgery in Mexico ($7100 out of $8000 surgery cost).

No. Absolutely not.

Here's a little something to think about too. I was chatting to my surgeon outside of an actual medical appointment as I was involved in a lap band seminar last night. I was saying I dont feel really qualified to talk at these seminars because I feel like I wasnt truly that much of a "fat person". Meaning I did not struggle with obesity all through my childhood or teens, or even early adulthood. Oh, I was always well padded, probably always had a BMI of about 28, never the thin one, never felt great about myself, but I was not really fat. I got fatter very quickly in those few years after having babies and felt I'd gone too far to rectify it without surgical help, which I'm ever grateful for having been able to get. So I was severely obese for a period of about six years. In that time, I was in my 30's. When I got banded I had not lost my physical fitness, I was for sure beginning to feel the drag of being obese, I felt crap actually, but no real comorbidities had set in, although I was getting borderline for things like cholesterol and hypertension.

So when I was banded, with a BMI of 36, and reasonable fitness, I was able to get straight into the running. But I said to him that I felt like I couldnt really understand the plight of the morbidly obese, I dont know what its like to be that overweight, I dont know what its like to not have the fitness to do whatever you want to do, not be able to buy clothes anywhere, not to fit in seats etc, and I found my weight literally melted off, and all the exercise has totally changed my body composition, it was just so darn easy basically. And now I've maintained absolutely effortlessly for six months, not to mention I lost weight on a relatively large 1500 to 1800 calories a day.

My surgeon's feeling on this, and why he will band people of a BMI of even as low as 30 but most usually 35 and up, is that the longer and more overweight you have been, the more it damages your body in some way, that very obese people really do NOT often hit a "normal" BMI because they would have to starve to do it. Their metabolisms are forever altered, so had I ever hit a BMI of say 45, I would probably have to eat HALF what I eat now to maintain my weight.

His experience has been that all his lower BMI patients like myself have lost weight easily, without nearly as many head issues, fill issues and plateau issues, have all without exception reached a NORMAL BMI of under 25 and have all so far maintained that loss. For the majority of his patients, who fall within the morbidly obese category, the depressing stats are the 50 to 60% of excess weight lost in 2 years that you read about all the time, with a lot more issues and difficulty along the way.

Really a GREAT reason to do this NOW before you are morbidly obese.

Plus, I really have no excess skin to speak off. The most you can say is I"m a bit more jiggly than I may otherwise have been.

the depressing stats are the 50 to 60% of excess weight lost in 2 years

Just want to say that to some of us, that stat is not the least bit depressing! Especially when you compare it to traditional dieting, which has a success rate that is only a fraction of that.

Anyway, pisses me off that insurance often won't pay if your BMI is slight under 40 unless you have a very specific set of co-morbidities. First of all, BMI is only an approximation of what you should weigh -- it takes into account no individual factors such as muscle to fat ratio or frame size. Secondly, a BMI of 35-39 is still pretty damn high!

I think as the surgery gets safer and safer, the protocols will change. At least I can hope!

Yes, true. Especially when you ARE starting out with a relatively low BMI, 60% of your excess weight will have you looking pretty darn normal wont it?