Before your surgery, we might ask you to follow a special diet, which includes drinking protein shakes and eating vegetables throughout the day. This isn’t about losing weight before your procedure—the surgery itself will take care of the weight loss. The main goal here is to prepare your body, specifically to make sure your liver is just the right size for the surgery. When we carry extra weight, sometimes our liver can grow a bit too big, which can make it challenging to perform the surgery since the liver sits right above the stomach. By following this diet, your liver shrinks to a more manageable size, allowing us to operate more smoothly. For most people, the diet lasts about two weeks. Sometimes, we might ask you to keep going for a bit longer if we think your liver is larger than usual.Most patients find that after the initial couple of days, they actually start to enjoy the diet. It helps you mentally prepare for your surgery and might even lead to a little unexpected weight loss as a welcome side effect.