interesting calculator

Hey everyone, I stumbled on this where someone asked about it on the main board and I wanted to add it here.  I never knew they had this.  Basically, you put in your weight and height and % of weight like 65 to 80 % that you expect to lose from the surgery and it graphs month by month how much you might be able to lose after the surgery and where you may end up.  Everyone loses different but I thought it was a very interesting tool.  I see my surgeon on 9/3 and that is when she will "reassess" my weight to see if I can have the surgery yet.  Haven't seen her since 8/2008 since I had to go away and loss at least 60 pounds before the surgery, but I was at - 50 last week at the nutritionist visit and so hope it will be enough to get my 9/29 date, which I have subsequently been told is tentative until I see the surgeon again, set in stone.  Please everyone keep your fingers crossed.  I feel like I just NEED to get this done now.  Had enough of this trying to lose weight before the surgery.  If it were so easy, I would already of done it myself!  Wish me luck.


http://www.obesityhelp.com/morbidobesity/information/post+op +planner.php

Good luck with the surgeon decision. Seems like you came CLOSE to the goal. I hope there is some leniency in their thinking.

I agree that it's pretty harsh to have us document all our failed attempts at weight loss and then have to try it AGAIN on our own. I was searching in my desk drawers for the failed Weigh****cher booklets and the failed Medifast program. Sheesh. I am doing OK with the pre op loss as I've told so many people about this and they are all asking me how soon I can have surgery. The sheer embarrassment of it all is making me avoid certain foods.

I hear ya RubyEllen and if I ever thought the surgeon's attitude would be "go away, your'e too fat to have fat people surgery" last year I would have kept my mouth shut and not told anyone about it.  Is so much pressure from everyone about "when are you having it?"  Sometimes I just feel like yelling Give me a freakin break.  I'm doing the best I possibly can.  And forget about the food police if they see you eat ANYTHING they think you shouldn't.  I'm just human, ya know. 

Right now I'm just feeling years of doctors trying to get me to do WLS and now I finally said fine, I'll do it, okay  and now it seems it is just as torturous to try to get it as it ever was to have everyone on my case about how I was so fat I should do it.  Just been feeling lately Damned if you do, damned if you dont.

Wow!  I'm so impressed with you losing that 50 pounds.  It is so hard.  I was at 427, a couple of years ago and got down to 375 with optifast.  I got back up a little over 400 and kept that off until my meeting with the surgeon.  The surgeon congratulated me for maintaining my weight!  He gets it.  It is so HARD when our bodies are this big and they cry out for food.    I am going to weigh soon - a couple of weeks - and intend to be at least 10 pounds below 400.  My surgery is scheduled for Oct. 7.
  We are going to make it!  I sure hope they'll do it for you.  All the best.

Insurance companies do not want to have to pay for this surgery because they are mired in viewing obesity as a "choice to overeat" rather than a complex and shifting mental cycle which develops over many years as a result of societal, familial and psychological factors. They don't want to shell out $30,000 or so, especially since WLS only helps you get the weight off quickly--it doesn't unravel the compulsive overeating problem that many of us have.

BUT the first year and a half to 2 years after WLS represents the optimal time to tackle those problems and issues, and to be unafraid of the bugs we find under the rock of our psyches. As time passes and our pouches relax and absorption improves, it can be ALL TOO EASY to fall back on food as love, food as comfort, food as joy, reward, etc. rather than just a way to fuel the body in as pleasant a way as possible. I have seen many people on the "Failed WLS" board complaining about the weight coming back, as if they had absolutely nothing to do with it. It's sad to see people so divorced from their bodies that they don't make the connection between mindless eating and the numbers going up on the scale. Of course, I am far from perfect, but I believe I have the power to untangle this problem, over time and with effort.

I was lucky in that Blue Cross/Blue Shield, though requiring a multi-page document detailing all of my weight loss efforts over the years, was not one to put up excessive barriers. Especially helpful was the fact that I worked for the very hospital that was the Center for Excellence for Bariatric Surgery, and that my surgery was through their PPO. Plus, as a nurse, I was used to documenting up the wazoo!

Thanks for the calculator!