I have a surgery date of March 26, 2010 and have just made my appointment to see my nutritionist on March 1, 2010

I believe the purpose of seeing the Nutritionist before hand is for the pre op diet.

Can anyone explain what is the purpose of the pre op diet, what is it and how long do you need to be on it prior to your surgery?

Thanks

I also have a surgery date of April 2nd:thumbup:. From my understanding the Pre-Op diet is supposed to shrink your liver before the surgery. This allows them to be able to manuever around while doing the procedure laproscopically ( probably wrong spelling). Also, I was told that the pre-op helps put you in the frame of mind for the right way to eat after the surgery.

From the posts I have been reading here, people who actually did the pre-op diet tend to do better than those who do not. This is not a known fact; it is just my personal observation

My surgeon does a 800 calorie a day pre-op diet for two weeks before. It is to shrink your liver to enable visualization during the lap.

Pre-op diets have a few purposes.

1- Prove to your doc that you're prepared to lose weight and stick with the program

2-Shrink the liver so the blind pass is manageable during surgery... you don't want them poking your heart or something.

3- Less abdominal fat means more room for tools to move too.

My first meeting with the nutritionist is next week; my surgery is 3/10. Last week the "Medifast" nurse reviewed the pre-surgical diet (basically 4 Medifast Shakes & one meal of 5 oz of protein plus a cup and a half of veggies for about 500 calories a day) with me and told me to start. Since I'm 8 pounds from the weight my surgeon wants it's a bit of overkill. Nevertheless the reason for the pre-surgical diet is to help shrink the liver to make it easy to manipulate the laproscopic tools and because the less you weigh before any surgery the safer it is. Every doctor is different but I think most limit this to a two week period prior to the surgery.:thumbup:

You very likely will also receive important post-op eating information.

The other posters are correct; a preop diet high in Protein and low in carbohydrates shrinks the liver, which stores carbohydrate in the form of glycogen. When carbohydrate is restricted, the liver releases its store (for the body to use as energy), making the liver smaller & easier to navigate around during surgery.

Hello.... My surgery date is 2/22/10 im excited however, I am on a 2week liquid diet and it is VERY HARD! I did good for the first 2 days and I broke down and had a small order of fries from mcdonalds. Do you think that's going to harm me?

Hello.... My surgery date is 2/22/10 im excited however, I am on a 2week liquid diet and it is VERY HARD! I did good for the first 2 days and I broke down and had a small order of fries from mcdonalds. Do you think that's going to harm me?

As my doc's nurse put it before I started my pre-op (which was a horrible 2 weeks but I survived and it did what it needed to) was that if you screw up, don't give up, get up the next day and do it right...1 bad meal likely won't mess up the whole thing, but do your best to get back with the program. I know it's hard but it is so worth it in the long run!:thumbup: