I've told my primary doctor that I wanted to do supervised weight loss with him prior to asking my insurance. I'm concerned that if my insurance is one of the rare ones that does not care if you show evidence BEFORE surgery that you have the willpower/determination/etc. to loose weight on your own BEFORE surgery.

I've heard some various input about being on a 'liver shrink diet'...some I've heard they are doing low carb. Was wondering if y'all were willing to share specifically what you were asked to do as part of a pre-op protocol. I totally realize that I may end up doing this twice if I do get approved for surgery.

Hope this makes sense. I'm pretty tired...

While i have not started it yet i know what is coming.

Currently i am on a carb restricted, low calorie high protein diet. Im taking in about 1400-1600 calories a day and im losing about 0.5 - 0.75lbs per day.Once my approval is obtained then i will have a month long pre-op diet. it is the optifast 800 diet that is super high protein and consists of 5 supplements per day of either 1 protein bar and 4 shake or 5 shakes and then one balanced meal per day. All up it will drop my calorie intake to about 1200 calories per day comprised mostly of protein.

Thanks for the reply. It's ironic that you mentioned Optifast...I'm not sure if you know it but back in the days of Oprah's talk show, that was the first major diet she did where she basically hid her weight loss under baggy clothing until they did the 'reveal show'. This was back in the late 80's or maybe early 90's I think. I did the same diet for 3 months. The only difference was we only got 5 shakes per day and broth if they felt it was required based on our blood tests The main goal was staying within the 800 calories of the 5 packs of protein shakes...I think this was 800 calories (if you drank 5 shakes)...is this right? So if you get a meal on top of that, is that where the additional 400 would be used to get you up to round 1200 calories?

Thanks so much already for your time and help!