Starting Optifast today

Hey everyone. Today I start taking Optifast (my surgery is on June 11) and I have a couple of questions:

-From the people I have spoken to, the vanilla shake is not very good. Is there anything I can do to make them taste a little better? The printout I have says instant coffee granules, crystal light and food colouring. Is there anything else that works that makes vanilla taste good?

-I'm on Optifast for 4 weeks - what can I expect as far as mood, hunger, etc?

I found your pose and saw that no one responded here......so I will.

Vanilla is gross all on it's own in my opinion.  I added coconut extract, a sweetener and lots of ice (use a hand blender to cru**** up and make it thick) - I used straws (the big slushie kind of straws).  I also would sometimes add some cocoa powder and coffee granules to make it "mocha".  There are sugar free syrups you can get at Starbucks, etc, that you could try to change the flavour of vanilla. 

My mood was "irritable" and "off" the entire two weeks of shakes.  First few days were the worst, however, I blew my stack at about 9 days and ate a few things I wasn't supposed to - but went right back on the next day.  You will feel alienated from everyone else "normal" and who are eating "normal" foods.  I had to write down several things regarding why I was taking the WLS route, and would read to myself daily.......

This is ONE of the hard parts of this "journey" (thought you'd like that) and there are other hard things that will come along in time.  I ended up losing about 22 pounds in two weeks on those gross shakes...which was a nice head start to things.

Good luck - you will get through this, and your life will be very different very soon - not EASY, but better in so many ways.  This is your time to re-set.

Kerry

Thanks Kerry, this was helpful. Gives me a pretty good idea of what I can expect over the next month. See you around