I was over 350 lbs when I started using DVD's to exercise at home. Leslie Sansone does great dvd's that are extremely low impact and easy to follow -- especially for a uncoordinated klutz who can't dance a step like me! She has a great variety and some of them do involve using hand weights and stretchy bands for resistance/strength training. They were a really good starting point for me.
A lot of people, myself included, have a sort of food funeral before the preop diet. It's perfectly normal to be aware that there are foods you won't be able to eat for a long time after surgery or ever again and to want to eat those foods as one last hurrah but believe me, you'll want to take it easy. The more crap you put into your body right before you "de-junk" on the preop diet the harder it's going to be and the worse you're going to feel. Especially if these are very carby or surgery. Caffeine is another thing to be careful for. The withdrawal has been awful for some people who drank it regularly and then had to stop. Not to mention, the whole point of the preop diet is to prepare your body for surgery.
So depending on what you want to be pigging out on, just be careful. Most likely maintaining discipline now would help you a lot when the real hard part comes. Honestly sometimes I wish I had eaten a whole 6 pack of ramen noodles by myself before surgery, but looking back now I'm really glad I didn't. Dealing with the changes that come with surgery takes mental fortitude and stamina, and putting an addictive substance into my body in large amounts right before having to give it up forever would have just been unnecessarily cruel to my body and my mind. My "last meal" was a bourbon street chicken and onions with red skin potatoes at Applebee's.
Hey all! Wondering if anyone else has a 12/28 surgery date? Would you like to support one another -- and extending to whomever reads this.
Super excited to be healthy for the first time in my life!!
