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Cottage cheese test?



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It is supposed to tell you how much your stomach can hold. You can get a container of cottage cheese (usually they're clearly marked with how many ounce it contains) mark the level of the full container, and then start eating at a good pace until you are full and stop. Then you take a measuring cup filled with Water, and start pouring the Water into the cottage cheese to measure how many ounces you were able to eat.

I did a form of the test, but I preferred to do it in a less messy/wasteful way: I measured out 1 full cup (8 ounces) of cottage cheese into a measuring cup, and ate from there. Once full, I tamped down what was left lightly to see how much I'd eaten. My results were my stomach could hold 6 ounces.

I discussed this test with my doctor, however, and he said it's complete BS.

He said that cottage cheese is too liquid to really fill up a pouch without immediately flowing out, so while you could conceivably eat fast enough to feel full, at least some of it had likely already left the pouch since you started eating and would give you a false sense of how much the pouch could actually hold.

He said he would be surprised if I could hold much more than 3-4 ounces of solid food. liquid foods like cottage cheese or yogurt are not a good measure.

The only true test is to use dense Protein - meat. He suggested cooked chicken breasts (not canned chicken either - too moist). Anything with a high moisture content will slide through the sleeve faster than you think. Weigh a few cooked chicken breasts, then eat until full. Measure what is left. That would be a much more accurate measure.

Edited by FrankiesGirl

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I have to agree with @@FrankiesGirl , I can eat a lot more of anything with moisture content than I can anything dry and dense. 3-4oz of chicken or steak, but 6 oz of fish, because fish has a high moisture content and basically turns to mush

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Ditto to the above. I have tried and suggested the cottage cheese test, and it seems to be a medium-high estimate of your true capacity. I've experimented with different things and discovered the following capacities for my sleeve...

Hamburger or chicken breast - 3oz

Cottage cheese - 6 1/2 oz.

Thick Soup or Greek yogurt - 8 oz.

This is what I can eat very quickly (within 2-3 minutes) before I feel full, but not overly stuffed. I'm very pleased with my sleeve capacity considering I am just over 2 years out.

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      On day 4 of the 2 week liquid pre-op diet. Surgery scheduled for June 11th.
      Soooo I am coming to a realization
      of something and I'm not sure what to do about it. For years the only thing I've enjoyed is eating. We rarely do anything or go anywhere and if we do it always includes food. Family comes over? Big family dinner! Go camping? Food! Take a short ride or trip? Food! Holiday? Food! Go out of town for a Dr appointment? Food! When we go to a new town we don't look for any attractions, we look for restaurants we haven't been to. Heck, I look forward to getting off work because that means it's almost supper time. Now that I'm drinking these pre-op shakes for breakfast, lunch, and supper I have nothing to look forward to.  And once I have surgery on June 11th it'll be more of the same shakes. Even after pureed stage, soft food stage, and finally regular food stage, it's going to be a drastic change for the rest of my life. I'm giving up the one thing that really brings me joy. Eating. How do you cope with that? What do you do to fill that void? Wow. Now I'm sad.
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