Let's Catch Up...it's been 2 weeks

So sorry for the delay. My sincerest apologies.  It's been 2 weeks since I lost wrote and that's entirely too long. So let me fill you in on some things. The last time I blogged was Dec 13th.  Since then ALOT has happened. 

First let's talk about my pre-op all liquid diet.  For the 2 weeks preceding my surgery my doctor had me do a modified Atkins diet which basically consisted of liquids.  For 2 weeks I could only have 4 protein shakes, 1 protein bar, and 1 soup a day all from a company specializing in meal replacement food called Optifast. Boy was this hard. No real food for 2 weeks???? WTH??? are they crazy? I must admit it was really, really tough.  You guys out there in blog world reading this may think you know what hunger is but YOU DON'T!!! I promise you, you have most likely never experienced true hunger. I can say I physically know what hunger feels like. What most of us call being hungry is more psychological and is us desiring food; it is not our body saying it needs fuel. And that's what food is supposed to be-fuel for the body. But we, and that we includes me, look at food as comfort, a friend, something to do, something that tastes good etc but that's not what it's supposed to be.

So for 2 weeks I was basically hungry. I did a pretty good job sticking to the diet but I did cheat a couple of times. Shoutout to Amy and Eryn and their olive garden trip and Gerri for the Red Robin. heheheh I put them on blast didn't I? lol well don't worry it wasn't their fault; it was my decision to cheat and I take responsibility for that.

So what was the purpose of this crazy liquid diet? Well in order to preform the gastric bypass the doctors have to cut away most of your stomach and create a new "pouch size" stomach (about the size of an adult thumb). Well in order to work on the stomach you have to be able to get to it (pretty simple concept right??)  Well the liver sits in front of the stomach so they have to pull your liver over to operate on the stomach. And if your obese (aka me) you have a fatty liver. And if your liver is too fatty the surgeons won't be able to move it to even get to your stomach. So long story short, the doctor has patients do this liquid diet to quickly lose weight and shrink their liver size. 

And guess what???? IT WORKS!!! Even with the cheating I was able to lose 19 pounds on the diet. Prior to the liquid diet I was 384 and the day of surgery I weighed in at 365!!!! I was so happy to see that although it was tough, and although I cheated I still lost pretty much damn near 20 pounds. GO ME, GO ME!!

In addition to the Optifast diet the last week leading up to surgery I had a ton of appointments. I had doctors appointments, I had nutritionist appointments and I had a 3 hour nutrition class. So you can see I was busy. On top of all that I was trying to wrap up any work I had at the job because as of Dec 17th I was on vaca for 3 weeks.

So this brings us to D day. December 20, 2010. The date of my surgery. Oh boy!!! details to come on the next blog entry. Stay tuned.

Thank you for taking this journey with me!

Jenny D