1.) Where did you get that info? If not directly from the insurance co. then call them and check on it. My coordinator still tells me that I'll have to have 6 mos consecutive weights from my PCP. But when I called the insurance company, they said it was up to my Dr.s discretion.

2.) Anyplace where you have gone that could be construed as exercise, community center, bowling team, any place you have frequented where you would sign your name and then participate physically. I have heard of people using their playground aid employment as a weight loss attempt. Kinda smart if you ask me! Unless it is specified what your attempt must be, they will probly accept most anything physical.

Another tip, they don't check weight watchers, or OA. Food Addicts Anon, has also been around for 20 years ;) But they do accept them as attempts.

Of course it would be better if you had some documented stuff to go along with it. I have to admit, this was the hardest part of my whole letter!

I hope this will get you started, there are many things that can work for this. Once you get your head around it and quit the panic, it gets easier!
God Bless!

Janelle

Vicki what I did was think about the first diet I went on estimated how old I was and the year and wrote it down, you also need to write start weight end weight, how long you were on the diet, how much you lost and how much you gained back. Now do this for every diet you have ever been on. If you need any help thinking of diets let me know, I've tried them all. I never documented any of mine either. I just basically guessed the details. The thing is I never had a doctor put me on a diet, so I did'nt have a record of any doctor supervised records.

The other thing is to see if you have or can find receipts for any weight loss product you may have purchased (i.e. Richard Simmons, Tae Boe tapes, diet pills, etc.) You may be able to get proof of purchase even years later if you used a credit card.

I have a life time of attempts all of which would be undocumented. My general Practitioner wrote a letter of recomendation for me, as did my kidney doctor. These letters had great results with my insurance company. Ask your doc/docs to recomend that surgery for you, to yout provider.

What I did was made a log of all my weight loss attempts, by date.If you ever did anything at all in an attempt to lose weight, a journal even, will work.Just log it back two years or more, and itemize all your weight loss attempts, no matter how small.That should do the trick.

Wow! I've never heard of an ins company requiring more than 12 months of documentation!

First I'd call the ins company and see what they accept as documentation.

Perhaps your doc could write a letter documenting all the times you discussed weight loss during a medical visit for the past two years. This, along with documentation of your other medical problems, may just do the trick.

Good luck!

I dont remember what I needed, but I documented my trial with meridia, xenical, weight watchers, etc. My program here has a medical weight loss program that you are enrolled in for a least a year prior to post op. I agree wtih janelle, call and investigate.

I had to come up with documentation too. But I found out that really they wanted a history of weight loss attempts. So I wrote down every diet I could remember. It turned out to be quite a list covering 40 years of different attempts. The logic behind this is that they need to know that you have tried other ways to lose weight and have had successes and gained it back or couldn't get down enough. The best candidates are people who can follow a diet, at least for a while, and not someone who goes for surgery as their first option. You've heard this before, but the bypass surgery is just a tool. A tool that helps you control this evil weight monster, and the insurance company wants to know that you will know how to use your new tool.