The Gastric Sleeve Guide

Whether it's right for you, how the surgery works, what it costs, and how life changes.

The gastric sleeve, start to finish, by someone who's had it.

Getting to surgery day

Reader forum · 1 thread

Pre-op diets, last-minute nerves, and the final stretch before the operation.

The weeks before a sleeve have their own weather: the pre-op liver-shrink diet that everyone dreads and everyone survives, the paperwork, and the strange countdown feeling of knowing exactly when your eating life changes forever. These threads are for that stretch, moaning very much included.

Why the miserable bit matters

The liver-shrink diet dominates this section for a reason: it is usually the hardest thing anyone has done up to that point, and it arrives exactly when nerves are worst. The threads keep reaching the same two conclusions. First, it gets easier after the first few days for most people, once the body settles into the new routine. Second, moaning about it loudly in good company does not mean you're failing at it; every finished thread here belongs to someone who complained their way to the operating theatre and got there fine.

One pattern to notice: every version of the diet described in these threads is slightly different, because surgical teams set their own, and the only version that matters is the sheet with your name on it. For the wider run-up, the checklists and the last-supper feelings included, the site's guide to preparing for gastric sleeve surgery covers the full final stretch, and the diet stages shows what comes on the other side of surgery day.