Ok I know that might sound like a really dumb question but.......today has been 2 weeks since my surgery. I'm still in the "liquid" phase although I get to have blended soups. My instructions were to start with 4-6 oz an hour and increase to 8 oz as tolerable. I can drink a 16 oz water over the course of about 1 - 1 1/2 hrs so of course that's more than 8 oz in an hour. I also hear others on here talking about how they can only hold 1 - 2 oz of food per meal. So how is it that I can take in so much more fluids? Do they pass straight through my sleeve and don't really fill me?? Where solids actually sit in your stomach? Just wondering! I didn't know if I'm stretching my sleeve by drinking that many fluids in an hour. Does anyone know?

Yes, your stomach can take more fluids than solid foods. As you drink fluids, the fluid can go through the pyloric valve into the lower intestine. Food has a tendency to remain in the stomach until digested. I can drink 11oz of protein shake but only eat about 2 to 4oz of dense protein. There are times when the food can be pushed through the pyloric valve by drinking fluids.

Yeah, the sleeve can tolerate more liquids than solids, although liquids aren't held in the sleeve. They pass through.

Dense Protein will show you how little your sleeve can actually hold.

Lissa

Dorrie is absolutely correct! I can drink up to 20 ounces of liquids at any given time but I can only eat about 6 oz of solids. I seem to be able to eat more solids than most people on here which has always concerned me but I am still losing at a good rate so it just goes to show that everyone is different.

Think of your stomach as a food grinder. That's its principle job - to break up foods (digestion occurs mostly in the small intestine.)

Yoiur stomach grinds food up by contracting food downward toward the pylorus/duodenum. Contractions occur about every 20 seconds on a normal stomach. Something like Water doesn't need to be broken up, so it can pretty much go right through , the water is pushed down/through. More dense foods and drinks might need to be ground up, so they are pushed down more slowly. That's generally the "what's really happening" behind whydense foods are so much more filling, and keep you full for so much longer. (That's a really simplified version, but is a good basic idea).

Technically you're not holding more water (capacity wise), I wouldn't think, it's just able to pass through almost immediately. Think of a funnel wide open, and a funnel only letting a trickle through. When the funnel is full, it's full -- no more or less capacity between the two. But it will seem like the wide open funnel can hold more since it has constant capacity.

HTH

3oz of tuna is all I can hold. If I add mayo, some of it slides out of my stomach and I can eat 5-6oz... if I drink while I eat, it pushes the food out of my stomach and I can eat 6-12oz.

Be careful, prematurely introducing foods through the pyloric sphincter (as can happen when you eat & drink at the same time) can cause some pretty bad dumping. I'm not a "drink police" by any means, and don't care personally -- but -- just know it's a potential consequence so you aren't surprised some day if it happens & you can't figure out what's going on. Yeouch!

Thank you all so much! I was starting to get worried something was wrong with me.

Anakin, why would you do that? Drink while eating and have the food pushed through your stomach? I avoid this at all cost.

I don't feel like drinking while eating gets me less full faster, personally. I typically find that if I try to take a sip or two while eating (like if I'm eating something spicy and need to get rid of the burn), it is very uncomfortable and feels like the liquid is just pooling on top of my stomach on all that food.

For those of you still on the liquids phase, you'll be pleasantly surprised the first time you eat "real" food (as in dense Protein like chicken, cheese, eggs, etc.). It's so weird to eat 3-4 bites of something and be almost uncomfortably full. Especially for those of us who were "power eaters" in our former lives.