Hello Marlen,

Please let me know if you would be interested to get your surgery done overseas.
The surgeon has many international distinctions and more than 15 years of experience.
You will get your surgery done for much less than the price in North America.


Best Regards,

Hi there!

Well, if you plan to use your insurance, you need to find out what procedure it covers and what they requires such as a record of past diet attempts, etc.  Each insurance company has their own pre-authorization requirements.  Find a good personal care physician who is experienced in working with bariatric patients.  Then, research a good surgeon who has a great track record and has lots of bariatric experience.    Your doctor may have some recommendations but the final choice is yours.  I think this will keep you busy for awhile.  The MGB, at present, is not covered by insurance.  If you want to research it, however, the website to visit is http://clos.net. 

Good luck!

Man, I feel your pain.     I can't pretend I have been getting the excercise you do.  One of the reasons I would rather not work my ass off is because I I know that it would not speed up my weight loss any faster.   You're right, the body gets used to all that excersice then once you slack off,  BOOM,   the weigh comes on fast and furious.   Don't get me wrong, I do go to the GYM but I do the minimum just to keep myself limber.      Excersise helps allot of people to shed weight;  I'm not one of them.  Believe me, I have had personal trainers for extended periods of time and all I got from it was being a solid fat girl instead of a flabbly fat girl.  Big Deal!    How does one maintain their motivation when there is no pay off????

Did you get MGB with Dr Rutledge?     Dr R bypassed 5.5 ft on me.  Sometimes I wish I would have pressed for at least 6 ft because I knew it would be hard to get the weight off even with the surgery.   I understand he wants to stay conservative.  From his experience, best to stay safe as not to risk too much weight loss which can lead to malnutrition in his patients.  He always says  God didn't give him the luxury of a yardstick of just how much to bypass on each individual.   

Anyway, I haven't weighed in 3 weeks.  Too afraid the plateau has reached me after only 4 months.  I don't want to have surgery to bypass anymore either.   I guess I'm just going to have to try not to eat anything.     Gees    Life can be cruel!!!

I agree on the looking at things different ways, and I am constantly trying to do that....I've been only weighing myself 1 time a week at my weekly training session at the gym with my trainer....that's just to keep track of things for my docs....we also take my measurements 1 time each month to measure inches lost....I have lost a significant amount of overall inches, but not near enough.....

I had a fabulous childhood and young adulthood so there was not really any significant issues to address...I do have ADHD (a pretty bad case of it) so I get behavioral counseling on that,, but no other conditions....i really don't have any 'demons' to deal with (and i'm not in denial!).....

I seriously think my issue is that I was a competitive swimmer for 23 years (I swam with Olympic champion Dara Torres) and one day, just stopped cold turkey...I had been swimming 15 MILES a day, up to 7 hours of swimming plus weights and eating enough calories to sustain that and I was always muscular and thin/lean (though I had the shoulders of a linebacker!)......from what I understand, my metabolism was set at such a ridiculously high-efficiency level that stopping caused great confusion....that, coupled with being a female with hypothyroid issues, I pretty much had no chance to have a 'regular' metabolism and that has definitely been proved over the last 15 years when I gained all that weight.....

So....unfortunately I didn't even have a 'honeymoon period' of losing weight...I have been eating a measured amount of food and exercising regularly....I just am a wacked out metabolic mess.....

Hi all,

I know this is just what I did and I may be weird but I never weighed unless I had to.  I used my clothes as my guide.  I have no idea if I was a fast loser or slow loser and I never compared myself nor did I worry about the days going by.  I just enjoyed my journey and did my best with the food and exercise.  I am sooooo glad I did that!  I still don't own a scale.  Just a thought.

Also, one thing I have noticed over the years is that for many of us, the surgery isn't enough. It wasn't just the putting wrong food in our mouths that put us in our situation but it was past trauma or crises or hurt or something that triggered the obesity path like eating disorders, food addictions, OCD and other symptoms related to emotional issues.  Many surgeons don't address the possibility that there are other issues and reasons why we ended up the way we are.  So, when the "honeymoon" stage is over, all those "demons" so to speak pop up their ugly heads and we end up unprepared to battle them. 

Ok Ok, I will get off my soap box.  Sometimes, we just need to step back and look at all this in another way.  Huuugzzz.  hang in there!