Phase 1 Under Weigh!

and losing weight already!  On October 8th I started the Liver-Shrinking Diet.  Everyone in the program must go on this diet and we were told it would be from 2-4 weeks depending on the individual but most people go for 2 weeks.  Well, I was given 3 weeks by my surgeon and when I was in the waiting room one day, the largest man I've seen so far in the program, I overheard that he had been given 6 weeks.  So obviously this varies.  So what does the Liver-Shrinking Diet consist of?

Four packets of Optifast 900 meal replacement powdered drink.  Here in Ontario (maybe Canada?) this is available by prescription only and is a quick weight loss supplement.  Each packet is 250 calories, so my diet is a total of 1000 calories a day.  This comes in chocolate or vanilla, I chose vanilla so I can mix it with my flavoured waters and we are allowed to add Crystal Light to it also, though I haven't done so as I'm not fond of it but we'll see what happens as the 3 weeks progresses.  My drug plan does not cover this, so I had to pay out of pocket for the 6 cases which cost somewhere around $250 (my dh paid so I'm not sure of the exact).

Along with the 4 let's call them shakes, I must drink 2L of water, I am finding I am drinking about 3L, so no problem.  I'm also allowed sugar-free Popsicles, jell-o and decaf. coffee or tea with artificial sweetener (but without milk, yuck).  None of those things are appealing to me, in fact I hate jell-o and will never eat it.  Popsicles/freezies I would if it were summer but it's too cool now.  I like coffee with milk, no sug but I don't drink tea.

So how is it going?  Fabulous actually!!  Surprisingly way better than I thought.  The shakes are extremely filling.  I am hungry for my breakfast one but never feel any hunger pains all day long and actually feel stuffed after finishing one.  It's monotonous but I stay away from other people eating and especially mealtimes so I don't have to smell the food.  I'm drinking my water very easily.  2L of bottled water has been natural for me for years so not a problem and as I said above I'm drinking even more as I find the shakes make me thirsty.  The second evening of the diet I felt quite strange, as if I was drunk.  I felt wobbly, light-headed and was extremely talkative.  But felt myself again the next morning.  Yesterday I did a totally out of character thing, we went to Timmie's drive-through and I wasn't going to get anything of course but I thought why the heck not try some black tea with artificial sweeteners , de-caf of course with 4 packages of sweetener.  I thought if it was really sweet tasting I might be able to handle it and guess what, I loved it!  So I'm going to broaden my tea drinking experimentation's while on this journey.  This is just one of the things I had hoped to gain from this surgery, learning to like new & healthy foods.  Herbal tea, here I come!

So anyway, this morning I found my sister's scale.  (Oh btw, I flew to Edmonton to visit my sister and family on Saturday and am having a 2 week vacay to keep me occupied while I do this)  And I thought why not? I'll weight myself this one time, because I am not in the habit, nor am I going to get back into the habit of weighing myself all the time.  I got on the scales and am 7 lbs lighter than when the dr. weighed me a week before I came out here to write down all my beginning stats.  That blew me away!  I'll weigh myself again the day before I head back home.

One last thing, explaining why I'm undergoing this diet.  The main purpose is to shrink my liver.  All overweight people have enlarged livers and fatty deposits surrounding the liver.  This varies in degree from person to person.  Now because the surgeon will be operating on our stomach and the liver is right beside the stomach they want the liver as small as possible so that it is not getting in the way of the operation they are performing.  Also, this diet is obviously going to cause weight loss as well and the the less obese a person is the safer any surgery is going to be in any case. 

I'll be back later. probably as I reach the 2 week point of this diet to let you know if all is still going well.