In a previous post about nutrition, I realized this single visit was a huge amount of information. I covered vitamins previously with the promise to cover nutrition.
I feel now is an appropriate time to again remind readers that I'm a patient, not a doctor or dietician. I have a history degree, not a medical degree. I do however read everything put in front of me, which I highly recommend, and I take advice from outside of my surgical program with a big grain of salt.
I'm going to break up the nutrition by day and week and only until the point I'm at now. I'm sure I'll have nutrition updates as my diet expands.
Two weeks prior (really thirteen days, see below): Pre-surgical "Liver Shrink" Diet
A little known fact about most obese individuals is that their livers are swollen with fatty liver disease. It's a medical fact of life.
In order to perform a successful laparoscopic surgery, the liver must be as small as it possibly can be. In order to do this, surgeons assigns a special pre-surgical diet.
Starting two weeks out, my diet looked like this:
Breakfast:
Protein Shake
Mid morning snack:
Fat free yogurt or fruit
Lunch:
Protein Shake
Snack:
Fat free yogurt or fruit (usually whatever I didn't have earlier)
Dinner:
3-4oz of lean meat/fish with 1c. steamed veggies OR 1c. salad with 1 TBSP of low fat dressing
It was hard at first, I'm not going to lie. But I knew that this was still A LOT of food compared to what my life was going to look like post op. Also, I knew following this diet to the letter was the difference between a laparoscopic surgery and an open surgery. Open surgeries require a much longer recovery time.
One day prior: Full Liquid Diet
One day before it's time to make sure you have as little in your digestive system as possible. This day looked very similar to the previous two weeks, but just yogurt twice instead of fruit, and dinner was also a protein shake.
One week after: Full liquid diet
For the full liquid diet, there were more options that one would think. I was able to have yogurt, ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, pudding, jello, and frozen treats such as sugar free popsicles and fudge pops.
The most important parts of this week is to get the 60-80g of protein in daily and to get at least 64oz of water daily. This would become quite the challenge, but it should literally be the only two things your focusing on.
Weeks two, three, and four: Puree
This was an annoying part of the diet. Honestly I just bought baby food for the most part to get veggies and fruit in. There were also little baby food treats that I treated myself to. For meat, I discovered that chicken did not work for me, but ground beef that was then put into a food processor worked great. Tuna (pureed) also worked great.
Weeks five, six, seven, eight: Soft foods
This is my current place. I can basically eat anything except for the skins of vegetables and fruits, rice, and some other stuff that doesn't come to mind but I don't miss it. Take a look at any of my food journals to get an idea of what I'm doing these days.
I will say this, through this whole process, foods should be fat free or low fat as much as you can. A little fat is healthy to get into a diet daily, but do look for the lower fat items when given options.
Next up: Pre-op
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