BMI @ 80% and feeling hopeless

My BMI is so high that I feel like I am unable to do anything. Surgery is an insurance exclusion and self pay is sooo expensive. I have had two consults and both want me to lose weight first, at least 50 pounds. I just feel so stuck. How can I just drop 50 pounds? I am so tired of this fight!

Does anyone else out there struggle with a super high BMI?

Hi Salem56,
I know how you are feeling about the weight loss before surgery.  I first saw my surgeon August 2008.  I had a BMI at about 71.  I finally got my date confirmed for Sept 29.  My surgeon told me basically to go away and come back when I had lost at least 60 pounds.  I immediately went to thoughts of "great I'm too fat to get fat people surgery, UGH!!!"  But you know what when you want something badly enough sometimes you got to just dig in and just do it.  As of last week I am down 50, I had to promise my surgeon I would keep losing as much as I possibly can up until the surgery.  She would still prefer I was down 60, 70, 80, but she knows how hard it has been for me to keep losing and so far reach the 50.  I promised her I could definitely lose another 10 maybe 15 but probably not the extra 20.  Jeez what is she thinking it is only 3 1/2 weeks!  But anyway this is what I did, I started first with a partial fast, protein shake for breakfast, eating healthier the rest of the day, tracking my cals, getting my water, and eventhough I have degenerative arthritis of the knees I bought a thing called a rollator which kind of like a wheeled walker with a seat and in the last 4 months I started taking walks again.  And ya theres pain involved.  But I just plod along walk 5 to 10 minutes, sit on my bench, walk some more, sit some more, etc.  Whatever it takes.  Then, I decided I wanted to revamp my diet several months ago and I went to only protein shakes and fruits and vegtables.  And now that I made all those promises yesterday, I will have to go to full shakes to be able to lose probably 15 over the next 3 weeks or so.  But you know, I am just gonna do it.  No it aint easy and no I dont want to do it but I am determined I will do whatever I have to. 

And I am nothing special, had many failed diet attempts in my life, If you make up your mind you really, really want it you will find it in you to do it.  If I can do it from a starting weight of 491 so can you! 

As far as the insurance, look into your state Medicaid see if you could get that.  If not, there are many ways to go.  Set up a payment plan with the hospital, give them 50 bucks every month for the next 30 years or whatever the math is.  As long as your making effort to pay, I think the hospital would be okay with that.  Research your state, is there any assitance whatsoever you could get to help you out.  Talk to the financial people at the hospital about maybe being able to write off some stuff.  The year it takes you to lose the 50 pounds is VALUABLE TIME to get all your ducks in a row.  I know I just spent the last year in your predicament. 

What you can believe, you can achieve.!

 

There is hope hang in there! I started out at a bmi of 67, and. Weighing 467 I found a diet online that is free called the insulin resistance diet, related to pcos. Anywho I roade a stationary bike 30 mins a day 10 mins at a time and lost 40lbs in 6 weeks. It does take a lot of comitment and just sticking to it! I can't gareentee that it will work for you or that it isa the perfect weight loss tool but its an idea to look into. Good luck and keep the faith! Melissa

I lost 68 pounds in the 4 months pre-op-- it was that important to me. Can be done, if it's what you want.

A huge help for me has been Water aerobics. I can't walk much because of a back injury and most other exercise only makes it worse. In the pool I'm able to move without much pain or discomfort at all! I've cut sugar and a lot of fat from my diet and it helps. Just keep moving as much as you can when you can!

I started out around 450 and maybe more and felt  your same struggle.  I am now 388.    I felt I couldn't do anything about it but I took baby steps.  I started to move little more , you can just move around in the house for few minutes several times a day and slowly increase walking over  time.  Start some resistance training with weights.  You can do that sitting down with your arms.  This will help increase metabolism.  A must for you and me and I have to remind myself is to reduce carbs, reduce carbs, reduce carbs and watch your portion.  Just like the ones with wt loss eat your protein first and then our veggies which are mostly low in carbs.

Check your emotional side too.  I try to ask myself daily these 4 questions. Am I mad, sad, glad or scared ??  It is like a game.  I journal my thoughts and how I handled each situation and if I could handle it differently.  Before I eat I also ask myself these 4 questions to make sure I really am hungry.  Most emotions should fit in one of these categories. I am struggling daily but I will hold on and hope to have surgery soon.  Good Luck and God Bless!    Donna

You've already gotten some excellent advice. I've lost 80 lbs from my high of 450 doing Medifast, swimming and water aerobics. I lost most of it from May to Sept of 2008, but have maintained for a year by doing Medifast most of the time but cheating too often.

Right now I'm committing to up the exercise and to cheat less - or if I do cheat, to cheat with protein.

I stopped smoking 28 hours ago. Doing OK - had extra Medifast Chocolate pudding, but it's protein, so no worries. Once I'm solidly a non-smoker, I'm ready to move foreward with surgery.

You can do it. Something like Medifast, Optifast, South Beach or Jenny Craig can get you moving in the right direction. If you can't do standing exercise, there are some DVDs for chair exercises.

Hang in there!

Which surgery do you want? Have you looked into other options then the RNY? The RNY is not the best option for some with a BMI over 50 - the results of the DS are way better, especially longterm (which is what really matters). The RNY has a failure rate of 35-over 50 % (depending which study you want to believe) for patients with a BMI over 50, and it gets worse the higher the BMI is. The really good thing is because you are self-pay, you can freely pick your surgery type without worrying about insurence. There are excellent, very, very experienced DS surgeons in Mexico and Brasil (Dr. Ungson and Dr. Marchesini) which offer great self-pay prices and I think at least Dr. Marchesini (Brasil) doesn`t require pre-op weight loss. There are US surgeons who do the DS and have good self-pay rates too. You can get more information on the DS board if you want..

There is help, don`t give up!!!

Thanks for your response. My surgeon suggested the gastric sleeve but I have never heard of the DS until just recently. Actually, I was looking at going to Mexico for the sleeve but decided to weight until I lost a few pounds. Does insurance ever pay for DS?

Yes, many insurence companies now pay for the DS without problems, because Medicare is covering it too. Some insurences still refuse to pay and claim it would be "experimental" (which is not true, there are 15-year-studies out there proving it is the most effective surgery and safe too). But it is almost always possible to appeal and force the insurence to cover the DS. If you are willingly to fight for your health, insurence is no reason not to get a DS.

The gastric sleeve is a pretty new surgery as stand-alone procedure (it`s actually the first part of the DS). The problem is that there is no longterm data yet. Initial results look promising for those with a lower BMI (not much more then 40). I do not think that that with a BMI of 80, you have a chance to loose anywhere near the weight you need to loose with a restrictive-only procedure - you`ll need malabsorbation to loose enough weight avoid regain. But some surgeons prefer to do the DS in 2 steps to reduce the risks of the surgery in high-risk patients - they do the sleeve first and then add the intestines part about a year later after the patient has lost a lot of weight. However, there are surgeons who do the DS in one part even on very high BMI patients safely. For you as a self-pay surgery, getting the sleeve first means you would have to pay for 2 surgeries instead of just one.

Since you are already looking into surgery in Mexico, please research Dr Ungson (Mexico) and Dr. Marchesini (Brasil), they are both among the most experienced DS surgeons worldwide with an excellent reputation and they can give you the DS for a very reasonable price (around 15.000 Dollars, I think - but not sure). They have a lot of happy patients which are posting on the DS board, one young woman named Jessy just recently got the DS from Dr. Marchesini and she also had a BMI of nearly 80 if I remember right.