My BMI is 34.97....
So I'm NO LONGER A CANDIDATE FOR WLS
A year ago September I had given up hope and decided that WLS was the ONLY way for me to lose weight-- even though a little voice in my head was telling me that it wasn't the right choice for me. At the time, my BMI was 42.
At the last second, the surgery was postponed due to insurance issues. They weren't happy with my diet history, which was sort of an ad hoc collection of me telling my GP how much I had dieted, which in fact, wasn't much. My previous diet attempts never lasted more than a week or two. I took that as proof that I "couldn't diet." My GP and surgeon were gung ho to have me do the surgery, so I guess I have the insurance company to thank. How odd is that?
My GP told me that since I was morbidly obese I'd never do better than to lose the same ten pounds over and over. Even a weight loss nutritionist suggested that 175 (BMI of 26) was an unreasonable goal and that I was too old and too fat to expect to ever reach onderland (without WLS).
When the surgery was cancelled, I decided not to reschedule.... and in the disappointed aftermath, gained another twenty pounds, peaking out at a BMI of 45.
To be eligible for WLS you have to have a BMI of greater than 40, or greater than 35 with "co-morbidities..." and of course my knees and hips hurt sometimes since I'm in my forties and was morbidly obese for twenty years.
But this morning, I have a BMI of less than 35!!!!
Six months of following a reasonable eating plan, exercising, and listening to the collective wisdom at 3FC was all I needed. And I would have had to change my eating habits with WLS too. I guess I knew deep down all along that it was my head, not my stomach, that needed readjusting. In fact, I'm hardly ever hungry, and when I am, I just eat an on plan snack.
I did not need a smaller stomach. I needed to learn to make better choices.
There may be people for whom it is the right choice, but I'm basically healthy and could get the weight off on my own. That tells me that the risks would not have been worth it in my case.
This is a HAPPY day for me.
I would love to walk into that surgeon's office right now and say LOOK AT ME. I'm kind of appalled in retrospect about how the medical community is not walking the walk. They tell us that WLS should be a last resort, but they treat it more like a first resort. At least the people I dealt with. The surgeon was oh so sympathetic and "understanding" but looking back it just played into my belief that dieting was impossible.
Thanks to my chickies at 3FC I learned differently. Anything is possible!
