3 years of WL attempts documentation question - Need Advice!

I am new-ish to this site and this is my first post. I have a question that I hope can be answered.  I have had my first consult with my WL doctor a month ago and today, I talked with the insurance person in their office to see what hoops I need to jump through to be approved.  Among other things required by my insurance, she mentioned that I needed to have documentation of WL attempts for three years. I have done both healthy and unhealthy weight loss programs (weigh****chers, nutisystem, medication, both from my physician and the internet L). My question is this, how do I document that for insurance purposes with the intent to help in the approval? I may have some of my weigh****chers cards but not all (three different attempts/three different locations), a receipt from nutisystem, and records from my past physician but that is about it.  The insurance person suggested I write a letter as only I know what I have attempted. Has anyone else had to do this and if so, how compelling and detailed should it be? After all, it will basically just be a “my word” documentation.

Thanks! Michelle

This is a hard one to answer because so much depends on each insurance company and what they will accept. For me, I had kept food diaries and I also had the print out from my NutriSystem automatic shipments from their web site. The insurance company gave me credit for 3 months attempt and then I did 3 months with my surgeons office. I think you just need to do the best you can so it can be submitted as soon as possible to see what the insurance company says.

I had prepared a "Diet History Form" because I anticipated that my insurance company would require it, but found it wasn't part of their requirements, and didn't need it after all. Anyway, what I did was a detailed Excel spreadsheet that had 7 columns on it: (1) Name of the diet program (whether it was Weigh****chers, SlimFast, Generl Dieting, Adkins, etc.) (2) A description of the diet (ex. drank a shake for lunch & ate a small salad for dinner; reduced caloric intake; phentermine, etc.) (3) Name and adddress of Doctor I saw during the weight loss program:  (most of the time it was my PCF, but sometimes it was "without physician's care" if I was just trying to eat healthier) (4)  Date started and Start Weight:  pretty self-explanatory (5)  Date of greatest weight loss and weight:  sellf-explanatory (6)  Date of failure of weight regained, and the amount of weight regained:  self explanatory. (7)  Comments.  (ex. how I felt about the diet and the process....whether the medicine made me sick....whether I felt weak on such a low calorie intake.....if there were extenuating cir****tances that made me an emotional eater, etc.) If you want, I can e-mail you my chart and you can use it as an EXAMPLE. You can do this spreadsheet just on a sheet of paper....you don't need to put it on a computer for it to be an effective tool to meet this requirement.

Thank you so much! Having an example would be great as I am a visual person! Please do emailit and thanks once again!

PM me with your e-mail address, and I'll send my examples to you. Sometimes my work e-mail has difficulty being read by other people.  If you experience problems, let me know and I'll send it from my home computer. Tracey

i also have a suggestion. you can get a letter from whatever doctors you've seen who have documented  your weight and their suggestions to you. that would also help. the more you can get from people other than yourself the better. and weigh****chers may have electronic records. jsut give them a call and see what they say. good luck!!!

WW and electronic records.........my mind is so fogged I had not thought of that! Thanks!