Consult/6 mo diet?

Hello

I have been on here before about 2 months ago, but was having some other serious health issues happening.

I have a lot going on as I will be having brain surgery coming up because of a chronic illness that i have.

I still wanted to persue WLS and so I have my bariatric consult coming up on May 5.

I was suprised but also relieved to see that my ins will only cover the surgery if i do a dr supervised 6 month diet prior. Has anyone else ever heard of this or done this?

Im a little nervous about having so much surgery in less than a year... and so im also getting scared about wls again... hopefully im doing the right thing.

Supervised diets are VERY common. If I had to guess, I'd say over 3/4 of the people on the board had to do one.

The process is fairly easy for most folks. Rather than follow a commercial plan, you watch what you eat (sometimes per doctor's guidelines) and check in with the doctor once each month. I did mine with my GP, logging my food and being weighed at each month's visit.

Yep, I dropped my high deductible plan through my work for my husband's ridiculously cheap insurance. Unfortunately, I had an epiphany 3 months later that I need WLS. Doing a little digging into my previous plan (which I can re enroll in come October for 2018) I found that while they cover WLS, they require a 6 month supervised diet documented within 2 years of the bariatric constitution. So, I'm doing that now to save time. If your plan covers it, it's very likely they'll require the 6 month diet.

I had to do a 3-month doctor supervised diet. As Kat said, mine was jus****ch what I ate, check in once a month, and make sure I didn't GAIN any weight. Once done, my PCP faxed the info to my surgeon (I didn't do it with my surgeon because he is 2 hours away), and that was that.

I had a 6 month supervised diet required - it actually started 2 months prior to my first WLS visit because I saw my PCP once each month for weight related concerns while I was researching WLS. The 6 months gave me a great head start and I felt very prepared by the time of surgery. See my stats for pre-op weight loss.

I had a 6 month program of support and education but was not required to lose weight. People in the program who over a certain weight were required to get to a weight that would lower their surgery risks. I also didn't do the intensive two week pre op diet because I didn't have significant abdominal fat.

Bottom line is that there are so many factors to consider that no one here can predict what your surgeon's program will require.

My insurance did not have that requirement but my surgical group required a 3 month supervised weight loss. I checked in with my nurse practitioner and registered dietitian 1x month, attended support group meetings and followed a high protein/low carb diet. I was 271.6 at consultation and 246.9 on day of surgery.

Please make sure your bariatric team knows of your upcoming brain surgery - that may impact the timing of what they want to do for you. It is really important that you are 100% honest with them.

Best of luck.

Thank you so much for the info.

I will definatly let them know about my other surgery. Im thinking it will work out perfectly with the 6 month diet because that should give me plenty of recovery time assuming everything goes well fingers crossed!