How soon after surgery can I have a good salad? And with what components?

Each surgeon and nutritionist may have a different answer for you on this one - What did yours say?

Depends on your doctor and nutritionist. Mine has just allowed me to have "soft" vegetables and fruit at 6 weeks in small portions. Most of us can't manage to fit anything other than protein in at this point. A lot of people have said they are several months out before they can tolerate lettuce and some never can. It's very hard on the system.

My husband and I just added in salads and we are doing well with it. We aren't able to eat a whole lot of it after we have eaten our protein. I'm very thankful out sleeves like salad.

2 months and I added other veggies cheese nuts and LF dressing.

my surgeon was against it until Month 3 because it is raw and hardest for our tummies to digest....

Im a little over 2 months and im doing ok with lettuce but haven't tried fruit. I barely get a few pieces because I get full from the protein.

I don't know about salad but my doc said I could start eating apples next week. I will be 4 weeks out.

i was told the reason salad wasnt so good was because of bulk. it tends to make us feel full faster and we may not get much protein during that meal. aside from that, if you tolerate it well then enjoy some now and then :-)

i was told the reason salad wasnt so good was because of bulk. it tends to make us feel full faster and we may not get much Protein during that meal. aside from that, if you tolerate it well then enjoy some now and then :-)

It's one of those 'it depends on how you use it' things. The typical before entree salad at a restaurant gets in the way (I may have a few bites of my wifes salad these days, a year into maintenance,) but as an entree itself with some meat added in, it can be a very satisfying way to get in some additional nutrition without many added calories. This works well once you have the protein consumption down well (I was told to start adding veg by day 10 since my protein intake was doing well, and was starting to play with salads by the end of the first month - YMMV.) I typically use chopped spinach instead of lettuce for its somewhat better nutritional profile, and add in whatever salad veg I have around - peppers, grape tomato, avo, green onion, snow peas, carrot. It's maybe 10g of each, but keeps your feet on the ground of a healthy diet that can be built on later.

To me, the salad veg tends to be a bit of a slider (the good kind of slider that's high nutrition and low calorie!) where my capacity for meat by itself may be about 3 oz, if I cut that back to around 2 oz, I can add around another 3 oz or so of salad veg to it for a satisfying meal without being overly full.

Thanks so much for all the input!