Is it okay to skip an opti shake?

I'm on day 4 of opti and am wondering if it's okay to just skip the last one for the day.
Not sure if there's special ingredients in it that help reduce the fat on your liver or not, so I thought I'd ask on here.

 Seriously!?!  No. 

 i 2nd the NO

It was explained to me that they don't want you to skip one because it tells your body to go into starvation mode and not release the fat from your liver.

The whole point of opti is to shrink your liver to make it safer to move around in your belly with the instruments.

you should email your nutritionist and speak to them. I had issues the first week and would gag and vomit on opti. so getting a 4th down was near impossible. She told me to do the best I could with the three at the very least and make sure I got lots of water in me also.

there is no advantage to skipping any, however always best to speak to your medical support team about it no matter what.


I can't stress enough how important your water is during this time.


I did opti for 3 weeks. Averaged half the recommended water and ended up with a fecal impaction 4 days post op. I wanted to die!

after it was all over, we (medical team and I) concluded that better water intake would have resulted in better bowel movements while on opti and could have possibly avoided having the emergency I had!

food for thought...or water for thought rather!

Do your best to get them all in.

There is no magic ingredient in them.

I also say no. Not so much for the liver-shrinking as for the body needing ALL the opti to ensure that your body is receiving all of the nutrients it needs to make sure you will be healthy for surgery AND for recovery afterwards. If you go into the surgery deficient in any way it will be that much harder to recover.

Try your best!!! And, yes, talk to your clinic. I know it's hard to knock that last one back sometimes...

Good luck!!

OMG......I was going to ask to have an extra 2 during the day. Your not like starving to death, I am.

Each Optifast has approx 225 calories.  When you have all 4 that is 900 calories.  So if you have only three you are having only 675 calories per day.  Each Optifast has nutritional supplement to give your body what you need (read the box or package for info.)  You want to be healthy prior to surgery - not starting to slide with the nutrition.

Judy

Duh! Boy, do I feel dumb!   Thanks for pointing that out, Judy! I thought that EACH packet of Optifast was 900 calories, so 4 packets was 3600 calories per day & I couldn't figure out why they wanted us to take in so many calories! 

I was at TWH yesterday for my PATTS & I didn't get my "dinnertime" Opti in me & then it took us 6 hours to drive home (normally a 4 hr drive) but I managed to chug one down at 11:00pm before I went to bed. So, I only managed 3 yesterday but I'm back on track today!

Deb