I am a year and a half post surgery. I lost all the weight I wanted and I’m currently learning how to maintain my weight. But I feel that I messed up I feel/know I can eat more than a cup of food. It anyone else experienced this?

Most certainly you can eat more; some of that is natural growth and adaptation of your sleeve to the new world (it wants to counter the insult that happened to it, to the extent that it can), and some of it is the greater variation in your diet that typically occurs once you reach goal and have to increase your calories to maintain things (you aren't on a "diet" anymore.)

If you go back to just having a piece of chicken or steak, your capacity will probably be similar to what it was at six months post op, but now you are probably eating a lot more different things, things that are to varying degrees "sliders" that move through your stomach faster, letting you eat more. There is nothing wrong with sliders as long as you understand what they are doing and they aren't junk food - lots of fruits and veg can be sliders, particularly if served with sauce or dressing like a salad. I can put away a lot of salad, but still not that much basic meat by itself.

This doc describes the typical progression that he sees in his patients, and offers a prescription of how to mitigate its effects. In short, over time, as in 5+ years out, you will likely be able to eat about half of what you could pre-op; this is enough to provide substantial nutrition and control your weight if you eat wisely, but also enough to allow substantial regain if you do not.

You may or may not like his prescription for dealing with this fact, but it is something to consider in working out your own weight control plan. I don't buy into everything he says, but much of it does make sense, as vegetables tend to be bulky and low calorie, so work well to fill that added capacity that we tend to pick up over time without a lot of calories.

Good luck in exploring this phase of your post-op life!

Thank you so much!!!

I have another question. Is it still necessary to stop drinking 30 minutes before and after meals?

4 hours ago, nicolejahan said:

I have another question. Is it still necessary to stop drinking 30 minutes before and after meals?

I try to follow that 30 min rule so that I can get my food proteins in.

Okay that makes sense. Thank you!

On 7/3/2018 at 8:25 AM, nicolejahan said:

I have another question. Is it still necessary to stop drinking 30 minutes before and after meals?

The 30 minutes before rule that some impose doesn't make a lot of sense after the first few weeks, but the 30 minutes after does make sense long term.

Drinking during or soon after a meal tends to wash the food through the stomach rather than allowing it to stay there and be digested more slowly, keeping you fuller longer - this is particularly the case with the bypass which removes the pyloric valve from the system, leaving basically a funnel (pouch) between the esophagus and intestine, but still works somewhat the same with a sleeve with the pyloric valve intact. Even years post-op it is not comfortable drinking much for a while after a meal (though I may sip a bit during if something is dry.)

Before a meal with an empty stomach, it doesn't matter much whether you drink or not, as any fluids you drink flow right through fairly quickly. During the initial couple of weeks or so, you may or may not have significant inflammation in your stomach such that fluids only trickle through (if that) which is why we sip, sip, sip rather than drink normally. We want to leave some time to make sure that whatever we had been drinking has had a chance to move on through. So, once you get to the point of being able to drink fairly normally, there is little reason to stop drinking before a meal.

Thank you. Do you have any recommendation on meal plans? How many calories I should be consuming a year and a half out?