I know after surgery we are supposed to take little bites and "chew, chew, chew." But I realized today that maybe I don't know what a little bite is?

:o :o

Interesting question...I always thought 'little bite' referred to the amount of food we put in our mouth in the first place...to chew...not the actual chew itself.

Becky

not sure either

my doc did suggest for the first month or so eating out of a baby spoon to learn to eat small bites

My doctor told me that each bite should not be bigger than your finger nail. Look at your thumb nail (if you have long nails, you have to invision them smaller), and vision a bit that size.

I'm not banded yet, but thats what I was told and when you get really tight restriction, your bite will be reduced to the size of your pinky nail.

wow! it is going to take forever to eat after my surgery!! I'm going to start practicing.

:nervous wow! it is going to take forever to eat after my surgery!! I'm going to start practicing.

Fresh out of surgery I ate with a baby spoon, and it took me a while to eat everything on it. I was afraid of what it would feel like.

Now I pretty much eat normal bites. Not normal compared to before surgery, still much smaller than that, but regular bites. What I moderate now is how much I let myself swallow at one time. So I take a "normal" bite, chew the crap out of it, swallow a bit, swallow a bit, swallow a bit...

My doc said the head of an eraser, though in practice, 7 months out, I probably eat a bite 2-3 times that size and do what Wheetsin said.

I shovel in only about 1/4 of what I did in the past and chew untill it is very soft. It seems to me that taking a long time to eat helps a lot. I fell overfull about 1-2 hours after a meal if I eat to much.

P.S. no drinking with food

My doctor said the bite size should be no more than the tip of your pinky finger. Hope this helps.

Wheetsin, that is the best description yet. I still work at the small bite thingie and sometimes slip up with a bite too big....but I never thought about the graduated swallowing method....I'm going to try that.

Carol

Some docs say no bigger than an M&M (guess they figure most of us can relate to that example!).

For me, its just a ladylike bite, not a huge gobful of food on the end of a fork. I've never needed to use baby cutlery or anything like that though. Just perhaps a 2cm x 2cm bite of food.

thanks for this i'm still putting the same in my mouth just chewing more throughly maybe this will help me slow down:clap2:

Another visual: my doc says meat, esp, should be no bigger than the eraser on the end of a pencil. Smae as the M& M concept, really!

My nutritionist says to eat food the size of a dime. It has worked for me, I have no problem eating. She also says to eat max time of 20 min. I am usually full in 15 and I stop then. Hope this helps.