I am 8 days out and have been slowly increasing calories. Yesterday and today I hit 500 for the first times. This seems really low. Should I have more just because or be ok with it as is?

I am 11 days post op now and my goals are 600-800 calories daily as directed by my surgeon. Being a fairly big guy, my NUT wants me at the top end of the calorie goal so I've been hitting 750-800 a day easily. What did your NUT or surgeon give you for a goal?

She did not give me a calorie goal. She said 40-60 ou of water and 40+ protein shooting for 60 - 80.

She did not give me a calorie goal. She said 40-60 ou of water and 40+ protein shooting for 60 - 80.

My Dr said not to be concerned if I couldn't achieve 800 calories a day, in his words I have a dining car strapped to my body, and if I wasn't able to eat enough it would just start burning some of the reserves. You shouldn't wait till your hungry as you may not really feel hunger at this point, rather aim for between 3-6small meals making sure you get your protein in first then whatever veg you can manage

I would agree with Merry. At 8 days out, your body is still out of whack from the surgery. You absolutely should not wait to eat until you feel "hungry", since your body may not know if it's coming or going right now. Don't worry about hitting calorie goals this soon, just focus on getting in your Water & Protein for the first couple of weeks.

I concentrated on 64 oz of water; 60-80 grams of Protein and making sure I got my supplements in (Vitamins, Calcium etc.) My surgeon told me I could live like that for a very long time. I still don't really count calories. Because I eat a lot of the same things every day, I'm not even good about tracking (don't follow my lead on that one). At 3 months out, I get between 600 and 800 calories a day but I'm not worried because I have energy, my weight is stair stepping down, and I'm getting my Water, protein, supplements and my workouts are increasing in intensity as my cardio health improves. I'm measuring that on how hard I have to work to maintain my target heart rate.