I was huge. I weighed in at 431 pounds (and was probably lighter by about 20lbs than I had been in a while). I knew that the Doctor would want me to lose some weight before surgery as a 2 week pre-op diet was part of my particular surgeon's best practices. At my initial consult, the Doc weighed me in and after some review, assigned me a 14 pound loss target (Go/No Go). I was self pay, so my timeline was accelerated. I was to drink two shakes per day and have one sensible meal (yea, I enjoyed the irony of that as well).

First off, the shakes were to be mixed in water. I suspected that might suck and wouldn't you know it, it did. But I reckoned that I could do ANYTHING for two weeks. So my Magic Bullet (the BLENDER!) and I became fast friends.

What I noticed was after the first week, the meals were not as critical. The weight was coming off (funny what a 1200 calorie diet will do to you) and my energy level was acceptable given the duration I had to endure. I stayed with basic, low calorie proteins and vegetables at dinner and was all in all, a damn good patient.

At the end of the 2 weeks I had lost in excess of the target and was greenlit for surgery. While that was the goal, the reason for the post is as follows:

1. The pre-op diet is not as hard as you may believe. You are simply angry that your lifestyle is being changed in exactly the ways that have never worked for you over the long haul before. Suck it up and count down the days. There is no easy way to tackle it and to cover it in candy and flowers is not empowering but condescending.

2. It is medically necessary and jump starts your new journey. You have work to do. The band is a tool but you have to learn skills like portion control (which it will help with) so doing this for a short duration is a great boot camp and when combined with the the first few weeks post involving fluids does a great job of de-emphasizing food as a pleasure center or reward and re centering you on using it as energy.

3. The psychological battle, for me, is the toughest part. The social interactions. The expectations of your social network around consumption that you may not even be aware of. Using this time to strategize your next phases was critical for me to get into the interactions that life offers.

So, while a pain in the ass, I think the pre-op diet is a GREAT tool and not something to be worked around over or through to minimize change. If you are taking this step, embrace it and use all of the aspects of the process toward your end goal.