[hrkgb1003]

Hi, I am new here. I am taking the first step to hopefully having roux-en-y surgery. This Thursday pm I am going to a seminar at the surgeon's office and I guess I will go from there. I am wondering about my BMI though. My BMI is 37.5, I am 5'8 and 244. I have been slightly overweight my whole life but obese for the last 6 years, since I had my son. I have tried numerous diets and exercise plans and have been able to get down to 198lbs. but then ended up gaining the weight back plus some. Last fall my friend and I were running 7 miles per day and that is when I got down to 198 and I felt great. Then the time changed and it was getting dark too early for us to run, then the holidays and so on and so on. So earlier this summer I started walking and jogging again, I got up to jogging 3.5 miles and injured my knee, which killed my motivation! I love running, it makes me feel so accomplished when I am done, but I have to lose weight in order to run. My life is super hectic so it is really hard to find time to exercise. I work 12am-8am, take my son to school, go to sleep from 9am-3pm, then pick my son up from school, do homework, go to karate, cook dinner, get my son in the bathtub and then into bed and then I go back to sleep for a couple of hours before going back to work. So I have thought and thought and the only time that i think that I can fit exercise in is if I get up a little earlier in the afternoon and go for a walk before I pick my son up from school. (We walk to and from school everyday anyway but it is only maybe a quarter of a mile). I just worry then about not getting enough sleep. My other concern is if I do get approved for surgery that I will have trouble eating every hour or so because of my schedule and my job. I am an emergency technician at an animal hospital and it seems that most of us in this profession scarf our food down and eat whenever possible even if it is only every 8-10 hours! We sometimes work very long shifts and if we are busy there isn't time to stop and go get something to eat. Well I could go on and on but my initial reason for posting was wondering whether or not i really have a chance at getting approved for surgery. My bmi is 37.5 and I am healthy other than joint problems and back pain. Thank you for listening to my life story here and any comments would be appreciated. =)
Thank you and have a great day!

[DocSanae]

Welcome to the board, thank you for joining us.
Do a lot of search and research, knowledge is power.
((((((HUGS)))))) May your journey go well.

Here's the thread for the criteria for weight loss surgery as set by NIH.
http://www.renewedreflections.com/fo...s-surgery.html
This is the starting point, and the basic requirement that insurance companies refer to. The individual insurance companies and policies will have added requirements to this. The best thing to do is to check out the requirement of YOUR policy.
To be honest, 37.5 is iffy--if you have a couple of comorbidities, like sleep apnea (which by the way, a lot of overweight people don't know they have, but turns out they do with a sleep test), diabetes, high cholesterols and triglycerides, high blood pressure, and osteoarthritis--you do qualify according to the NIH criteria, but as I said, insurance companies often add to that.
Another thing, make sure that you have records of your past weight, preferably documented in your medical charts, for at least the past 2 years, sometimes, the past 5 years, that shows that you are obese, as that is required by most insurances. If you don't have medical records, sometimes, dated photographs showing how large you are, can help.

[hrkgb1003]

Thank you for your reply. I don't have medical records but I do have pictures, and I am trying to get in touch with beachbody.com to get my records from them. I had a webpage with them documenting my weight loss journey about 6 years ago(all their members had one). I think that I do have high cholesterol and high normal blood glucose levels, but joint pain was listed as one of the comorbidities on my policy. I am not sure about sleep apnea because I have never had a sleep study done. I will keep my fingers crossed and I will have to wait and see. Thank you again.

[decker1976]

You may need to have a sleep study done if the insurance turns you down. All you can do is see what the insurance says then move forward from there. Good luck.