OT Rant - Pissed Off About Hearing People Need To Lose Weight To Have Surgery To Lose...

I removed "the section" of my post based on your comments so in case you would like to remove that from your post so as to not give others that idea. I had no malice intended in that post, but I can see that it could be bad. It was not something that I thought would make me feel better and not something I was seeking false compliments for. My profile information is 100% accurate without that idea in play.

I can't imagine that a liquid diet 2 weeks before surgery is anywhere near "learning eating habits" for after surgery though. My doctor told me to start chewing chew chew and chew some more, stop drinking half hour before and after meals and none during meals, small bites and learn control of portion sizes. It was not a diet, it was a method of eating. Those are the most valuable eating habits for surgery in my mind. Everything else after surgery is pretty much nothing like anything else I have ever done except the fact that it is high protein like Atkins and other similar diets.

I don't believe that having to lose weight before surgery whether with liquids or whatever would teach anyone not to eat a kit-kat to see if they would get sick. Bariatric education classes may have helped that, and I went to those. That's a big "may" too. Plenty of people, educated and not, try to push the limits of their surgery. I hope you can get through to your friend about that one. 

My surgeon was featured in the series "Big Medicine". I watched that show religiously. I remember him saying it was not safe for super-morbidly obese people to be put under anesthesia, so he would make them get under a certain weight before he would perform surgery. It was for the safety of the patient. No doctor wants his patients dying on the table.

I had to do the six month supervised diet thing to get insurance approval. I did not lose an ounce and probably gained a few. I remember at my pre-op appointment with my surgeon and actually reading through all of his requirements, it said if I gained 10 pounds since my initial appointment, he would not perform surgery. Holy crap, I panicked!! I had gained 3, I think. But the 6 month pre-op diet is a bunch of crap, in my not-so-humble opinion. I did horribly on it, yet still managed to get to goal and stay here for over 3 years now. Pre-op success or failure is not necessarily an indicator of how we will do post-op.

I agree that no surgeon wants someone dying on the table. I understand the super morbid obese thing. Most of what I am referring to are those that are well under 50BMI and some between 35-40BMI. 

I agree with your logic on the pre-op diet. How does that diet or a liquid diet really truly prepare you for what's about to happen and how you have to eat for the rest of your life. And I agree pre-op success or failure is not an indicator of how we will do post-op. If that's the case, those of us who had no requirements pre-op did AWESOME and we will be 100% perfect afterwards!!! Hey, maybe I do like that way of thinking.

In my pre-op class they stated that some people must lose because of the tools they use for laparoscopic surgery. Some may not be long enough to do the job dependent on abdomen size.

I did have to lose a certain number of lbs. it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things (10 lbs) which isn't very hard to lose yet it helped make surgery easier to perform laporscopically and showed my surgeon I was committed to post-op rules to be as successful as possible.

After reading your and other responses I will add I had to lose and keep it off AND I signed a contract that if I gained between my last doc appt and surgery morning my surgery would be cancelled. Yes I was weighed at the hospital surgery morning. I also don't know why it makes you angry....it didn't or doesn't make me angry that it was a requirement for surgery. It made me really focus on what life would be like AFTER WLS. I wasn't on a liquid diet, my plan was 3 meals a day of lean meats and green leafy veggies only. It actually wasn't difficult to do at all.

Very early on I realized I probably used my words badly with the title, but you can't change titles unfortunately. Frustrated is more of the word.

Your diet sounds more in line with what goes on for the rest of our lives after RNY. It just makes my head spin when I hear so many different variations of pre and post requisites from surgeons. It's like a bad joke or something. No wonder there are so many questions asking about what people should be eating and when. The typical response of listen to your surgeon can only go so far. It should carry more weight, I agree, but when there are so many variations out there I can understand why people get so confused. Anyway, that's not the gist of my original post but it's part of the frustration I'm going through. I guess I'm just having a bad day and read a post or two that just set me off.

I'm at a much calmer place right now. :-)

My surgeon told me to try and lose about 25-30 pounds pre-op for 2 reasons, it would give us the best chances of having a much safer surgery and also, the more you lose pre-op the less you have to lose post op. I also had to do a 2 week liquid diet and I actually do think it helped prepare me for early on post-op eating. My plan had me on Full Liquids for 3 weeks. If I had not been on the liquid diet before I think that it would have been harder to stick with. I would have stuck with it either way but I think that it would have been harder on me having to do something brand new right out of surgery. I also lost about 30 pounds from it (I actually started the pre-op diet early). I also think it helped me detox from some of the less than healthy things I was taking in prior to surgery and helped with my blood sugars/blood pressure prior to surgery. But I feel that the bottom line is this, it's not going to kill us to do our very best to meet the expectations our surgeons give us pre-op. Now for the surgeons that would cancel a surgery for being off by 1 pound, I don't think I'd want them as my surgeon anyway. When I saw all the differences in progression for post op eating, I started to wonder why my plan was so drawn our but then I remembered, those other people's surgeons didn't do my surgery...my surgeon did. So I went with what she told me was best based on the work she performed.