Well its day 6 on the optifast it going well doing all the right things.But I was watching my son eat lunch today and I started to cry I miss food I feel so silly

I know exactly how you feel . . . I have been dieting since Monday, and though I know I'm eating better, I miss food too!!! It's really hard when no one else is dieting and they eat everything I want to eat!! I keep praying that I can do this!!!

Preop diet was definitely much harder than what it will be like postop, or at least it was for me. I still have very little hunger and while I miss certain foods, I was not only hungry but had thoughts of "I'll never be able to eat this again," which definitely wasn't helpful. (By the way, you will be able to eat most foods again postop, and I knew that, but I still had that mindset.) More than once I was snarky with strangers on here, for what I perceived to be their ignorance. More likely, it was my anxiety and hunger that was driving my frustrations.

If you are on day 6, does that mean you are 8 days away from surgery?

I did 3 weeks of optifast pre-op and I loved it! I loved not having to make choices about what to eat. It was hard cooking for my family, not because I couldn't eat it but because I had no interest in food. It'll get better once you are through the carb craving phase.

Thank you guys all very helpful
This time next week it will be all done ( Monday we are a day ahead)

Hey hey! Kia ora..
At least you lasted on optifast for 6 days...I did it one day and gave it up shakes didnt do it for me lol

Please excuse my ignorance and educate me. Some doctors insist on a pre-surgery fast while others don't. It would seem to me that post-op one would be recovering first and foremost and wouldn't be so hungry and, such, it would be easier than battling the demon pre-op without anything but [forced] determination.

I can't imagine going for the procedure and having the doctor prerequesite me with having to fast beforehand "to get used to it" afterwards.

As an aside, my daughter dated a boy who she met when he weighed 160 post-op. He was 400 pre-op. I saw him eat badly tho, so I didn't realize all of the restrictions. Mostly tho, he hardly drank anything.

A lot of surgeons require a pre-surgery diet in order to shrink the liver so that the surgery is safer. There is some debate on whether or not this strategy has any effectiveness, though. It was most definitely easier postop to follow a liquid diet then it was preop.

The primary purpose is not "to get used to it." Nearly 100% of morbidly obese patients have an enlarged fatty liver, and these strict pre-op diets are used by many surgeons in an effort to shrink the liver down before surgery. This makes maneuvering inside the abdomen easier, especially for laparoscopic procedures. These diets often also lead to some abdominal fat loss, which also makes the surgery easier.

Now, as zeit mentioned, it's a bit up in the air as to whether these diets really work to yeild the intended results since they can't very well go in and measure the liver before and after the diet, but many surgeons seem to think they are helpful. Mine didn't - I had no prescribed pre-op diet other than not to eat anything after midnight the night before my morning surgery. My surgeon was known to have actually said at one time that if a surgeon can't work around a fatty liver, then they shouldn't be performing bariatric surgery!