35yrs, 6 Children, Highest Weight 266lbs Excited About Surgery on 5th July 2016! - New Zealand, NZ

Hi everyone, I love this website as I prepare for my gastric sleeve in just over 2 weeks. I am on day 6 of my pre-op liquid diet and I am still excited and still going. I am allowed to have any 1 of the Optifast range of foods/shakes 3x per day and 1 small fruit and 2C of veges per day. Plus I am allowed atleast 2Litres of liquids including water, broth or diet drinks. Luckily I love to cook so I have tons of different ways of changing up my meals. My sister inspired me to have gastric sleeve after she got it last year. Her surgery weight was 222lbs and now she is 143lbs and living life to the fullest! I can't borrow her clothes anymore so I thought, why don't I just join her? lol I am paying for it myself and my sister will help me and we don't have compulsory medical insurance in NZ as we have a public health system. It is free under the public health system but you have to be severely obese and with very serious health issues which I do not have. Otherwise, I am very very excited. It's very hard to be restricted on the liquid diet but after much research and reading on the different websites, I have realised it is really for my own good. I have a wonderful husband who I want to get the surgery, but he is going to try his best to support me by losing weight himself. Not long to go! Good luck to all of you and thank you to all the contributors to this site, it has helped me alot!

So last night I went to bed thinking about all of the yummy foods there are. Meat pies, desserts and my favourite pork roast! I did cheat on day 3 but I was silly to have the food ready at my meal time. I have to make sure I drink my shake before my cooking is ready! I also went back and read some reviews and did some research on how important this pre-op diet is and decided I wanted to exercise some discipline and make sure my liver was ready! So the last 4 days have been fine, I eat every 3 hours, 8am shake, 11am shake, 2pm fruit or soup broth, 5pm shake. It works for me since I'm at home and water in between. I get the mild headache in the morning which goes away when I eat breakfast. I go to the gym still, I walk for 20mins and bike for 10mins and then do a few weights for my worst areas like my thighs and upper arms. Not too much because I don't have much energy on this low calorie diet. I lost 11lbs in one week on this diet. Pretty awesome and a good reward for the sacrifice!

Honestly, the pre-op diet hasn't been too bad. Mixing my shakes with ice, has been a heaven send. I only bought the vanilla flavour and then got a bunch of different flavoured essences/extracts. My favourite flavour is strawberry with a few added frozen berries and then blended. Banana extract is my other favourite. I also have peppermint when i have those days where I feel like a bit of a cleanse. I have made it through though, but I really need to work on drinking more water because, it's not always easy to remember. to combat this, I am going to buy a case of water bottles and leave them next to the front door so I never forget when Im doing my errands! I also have to pack for surgery and I have a fair idea of what I am going to take but I still have to pre-pack kids lunches, do all of our washing so that my family have everything they need while I am in hospital for 2 days. At the moment, Im thinking, lipbalm, pads, pillow, slippers, some of my very baggy clothes, an extension cord and charger to charge my phone, a book and some breath mints. I have also been on all of the sites to try and decide on the best way to take this journey. I will probably be focusing on a low carb diet as well as not too much cardio and lots of weight training. Im not 100% sure but I will see how I go! Otherwise, my current weight is probably 114kgs. I started this journey at 120kgs so a 6 kilo loss in three weeks is what the surgeon asked of me and Im happy I achieved it! Yay me! Im super duper excited!