I am day 5 pre-op diet and I am wondering when does your energy level come back? I feel more sluggish than I did before? Finally made it through the Caffeine withdrawl/no food headaches. That was not fun! But I have my eye on the prize and just keep plugging along....10 days to go. I am down 11 pounds already which makes it all worth it.

Hi there.

After about day 5 I started feeling human again...It will get better, I promise!

You're going to do great!

I don't know how to put the link here. But this is a good analogy about the first 4 weeks. By HumanMerelyBeing. That's about when you feel somewhat normal again.

Hello all - I know several of us are hitting our 1 month mark this week. Mine is today. The body is an incredible thing, truly. It's a healing machine quite frankly.

At one and two weeks out: -you wonder what you have done to yourself and you are pretty sure you will never feel quite normal again -you can't imagine yourself ever sleeping anywhere but the living room recliner -the thought of driving or going back to work seems like an unrealistic commitment you made Way Back Before Surgery -you can get in so little Water and Protein that it dawns on you that THESE are the weeks that will cause hair loss several months from now -you learn what "sliming" is (ewwww) -MyFitnessPal tells you repeatedly: "You are getting too few calories. If every day were like today, you would be DEAD in 5 weeks."

At three weeks out: -you feel better but not really there yet -you need extra naps on the weekend -getting in your water and protein can be done with the effort of a full time job -you have a strange painful stitch in your side that you've resigned yourself to bravely live with the rest of your life -you accidentally sleep all night with the heating pad on your largest incision site on its highest setting -you walk 20 minutes on the treadmill and then come onto this site and disbelievingly post, "WHEN did they say I should start exercising????" -your body decides you must be on a grueling episode of Survivor and goes into starvation mode yielding the world's most devastating weight loss stall prompting you to decide that you are a failure and did this all for NOTHING

At four weeks out: -you sleep in your own bed in whatever position you want -the fire-hazardous heating pad gets put away -you walk 2+ miles at lunch and think maybe you could have done more -you have enough energy to really start cleaning the house again and get totally aggravated at hubby and kids for how little they managed to do for the past month -you randomly feel happy, mad, silly, sad as hormones and emotions take their toll -you have to pack up the first set of clothes which are now too big -you feel healthy....dare I say...normal? Yep, the first month is kind of amazing.