Roller Coaster

Well, the next milestone is in view.  I have a consult with my Kaiser surgeon March 3.  I am not sure what the Kaiser program is but I think this will be where he/she says what my target weight should be for surgery and what other tests will be required of me.  If anyone out there can offer up what they may order please feel free to pipe in.

From my ticker you can see I am down about 10 pounds from my "official" starting weight.  I plan on a slow and steady loss to avoid a long stretch before a surgery date.  I totally know how to drop a quick 30 pounds in 30 days, but it would suck to have to maintain that for a few weeks until surgery.

Thanks for everyone here and their great advice and motivational posts.  I love to hear the newest FARTS and it makes me keep my eye on the prize.  I can't wait for my turn to put up my "Guess what pant size I'm wearing now!" post.

Thanks and good luck to all of you.

From what I have seen, and talking with other Kaiser patients, each hospital varies a bit. Here is what I had to do from Kaiser Richmond. 14 week class or 6 months supervised diet. Official weigh in, they said that only weights taken at their hospital would count.  I lived about an hour away and any done by my local physician wouldn't count.  They even said don't start losing weight until we give you your official starting weight.  It won't count. Several sessions of classes/appointments with them ranging from nutrition to explanation of surgery etc.  Lab work, EKG, Psychiatric evaluation, 2 meetings with the surgeon, 1 meeting with nurse practitioner for pre surgery history and physical, 1 meeting with my case worker where she gave me my surgery date once the rest of the stuff was completed. Kaiser Richmond has a 10% weight loss "goal" before surgery, may be more, may be less.  My doc asked me for 20% loss. They seem to be very serious about your goal weight, whatever it is.  On the day of my surgery, the first thing the nurse said to me after hello, was that I better not be above my goal weight or I wasn't getting the surgery. They also seem to differ on the diets that they tell you to follow both pre and post op. I started their process in April of 07, and I got my surgery in January of 08.  I was the first person out of my group to get the surgery too.  I busted ass and had my weight loss done before the doctor gave me my goal weight. Good luck with the process! Scott

I have heard that story before from other Kaiser patients. I am going to Kaiser Fremont. On the orientation day the surgeon said that they didn't have a rule that 10% would be a magic number. He said they wanted to look at you and decide based on factors such as past weight lost, diet, exercise etc what the goal weight would be. He explained that the goal for losing weight was as much for physiological reasons as they were for patient goals. He said a lot happens to internal organs when you lose weight that aides in the surgery. He also said they would use the highest recorded weight to base the starting weight. He said even if it isn't from Kaiser, if you have proof of a higher weight from another practioner they would count that. I see there are a lot of differences even within Kaiser, but the one thing that is constant, in my mind, is that they are pretty pro-surgery. I didn't get the impression that they were looking to weed people out. They seemed to want everyone to follow their recomendations and get qualified. They were very upbeat and optimistic about getting it for those who need it and follow their pretty simple instructions. The biggest obstacle I noticed them talking about was people needing to quit smoking. He spent more time on that than anything.
Thanks for sharing your info. As get the whole picture myself I will fill you guys in.
Paul