I am in my 2nd week of puree's and I am so craving a CRUNCHY, tomatoee, baconee, lettuce sandwich! I have 1 week and 4 days till my soft food stage and I'm in serious need of REAL food. I get the head hunger thing but this is to hard. I find myself not eating anything during the day since it has to be puréed. I never realized this would be this hard. My nut told me for now she wants me to concentrate on getting my liquids in but that is even a problem. I have never had great strength with will power and diets so I am not sure what made me think I can do this. Sorry for the vent

Once you can eat normal food it gets soooo much easier. And once or 2 bites will fill you up and usually cure the craving.

I totally understand! My second week is when I had the few minutes of "regret". I just wanted something to chew and I couldn't! I thought "What the heck did I do to myself?!?! I'm never going to be able to eat normal again!!" But really, that was the whole reason I chose to do the surgery! I didn't want to be able to eat like I normally did, I wanted to eat healthy and be able to eat smaller portions and be content but eating after the surgery was not what I expected. You don't expect your head to play the tricks on you, people can tell you it's going to come but you don't expect it to happen the way it does. You don't expect to take 2 bites and be done, completely done! My head tells me "Good Lord! You haven't eaten even 3 oz of that, you have to eat it all!" and you get frustrated because you can't even get that small amount in. Well, enough of my rambling, I just wanted you to know that I feel your pain! I

Well you are in it now. Lettuce would be too darn hard and Bacon, who doesn't love Bacon, but seriously, I know what you mean by the craving, but I do have to tell you something.

Who thought you could do this? You did or you wouldn't have signed up to have 85% of your stomach taken out and stapled. Crunchy is going to have to wait until you are healed so you don't end up with a leak and back in the hospital.

I spent 5 weeks on full liquids after surgery and I'm on soft foods still and it's been 7 weeks since surgery on Monday.

I have a post on my facebook that says they should make bacon packages bigger so it's enough for two people, and I found the cutest little way to make bacon baskets that you fill with lettuce and tomato's.

It's going to be a long time until I enjoy the taste of a bacon again, but seriously you need to tell yourself a little more often that you can do this, you will do this and you need to put 100% effort into following your diet because you did put yourself through a surgery you can't undo. Why go through all this and set yourself up for failure by self-sabotaging yourself by saying you don't have great strength and will power. Tell yourself this is it, you are doing it and you are giving it 100% and the more you give yourself positive talks, the more apt you are to believe it and follow through.

If you tell yourself you can't do it enough, it will become a reality.

If you really feel you are not able to do this, think about some sort of therapy to deal with why you have a problem in the first place. It's something a lot of people that are successful do, because the sleeve is a tool and the issues you had that brought you here don't get fixed with the sleeve.

Best of Luck to you!

Sincerely,

I Love Bacon too