Hi,

I am considering having gastric sleeve surgery and am wondering if you get used to eating a reduced amount of food and how difficult it has been to adjust to this change. Also, I have heard you have bowel problems, is this true for many?

Thanking you in advance!!

Still ... 9 lbs a month is amazing. I'm glad you found a forever diet that you enjoy and works for you. I'm glad you passionately advocate it on here, because I know my 1 oz of cheese lunch isn't for everyone

Speaking of success ... slider food is certainly is working for you @Orchids&Dragons! Congrats on being down almost 72 lbs!

11 hours ago, sillykitty said:

This isn't true for every WLS patient though. At 5 months out I have a lot of restriction. My max capacity is about 2 oz by weight of most solid food.

A typical meals for me

Sandwich made with 1/2 a slice of bread, 1 slice turkey

Protein Pasta (1/2 oz dry), 2 tbls marinara and a 1/2 meatball

Quesadilla with a 1/2 a low carb tortilla and a 1/2 oz of cheese

A typical snack for me

Slice of watermelon (little less than 3 oz net)

Laughing Cow cheese and 34 Degree Crackers

Jerky (1/2 - 1 oz)

Cheese (1 oz)

Cucumbers w light dip

On an average day I'm eating from home, I'll have a Protein Shake, 1 meal, 2 or so Snacks, plus yogurt or a Protein Bar (low cal) or Protein fortified Soup, as needed to get to my protein goals. After a meal, I'm stuffed. After a snack, I feel satisfied.

I know it looks like, and is a tiny amount of food. But I freaking LOVE being satisfied and full with these sized portion. I also don't feel at all deprived. I have no food that is forbidden, but obviously try to stick with healthier options.

The only time the reduced portions get awkward is dining out with people who don't know about my WLS. The amount I can eat is so tiny, it doesn't make a dent in a restaurant portion. It almost inevitably gets noticed by those dining with you and or servers. So just be prepared with answers.

Thanks so much for sending through these photos of what you can eat, that’s so helpful and looks totally doable! Looks like you have some delicious meals too! It doesn’t look like it is too depriving either :-) thanks again!

1 hour ago, Lara83 said:

Thanks so much for sending through these photos of what you can eat, that’s so helpful and looks totally doable! Looks like you have some delicious meals too! It doesn’t look like it is too depriving either :-) thanks again!

Glad you found it useful

9 hours ago, Creekimp13 said:

OH yeah....almost forgot....I eat this almost every day:

Veggie Soup with a few beans...food of the Gods. Yum! never get sick of it, and switch it up every time. Sometimes the broth is chickeny, sometimes beefy, sometimes I go coconut milk and curry, sometimes I throw a glob of Peanut Butter in there with ginger and garlic and lemon grass.....and the veggies and Beans are mix and match as well. Made by the bucket once a week...my family lives on this stuff.

Your food does look pretty delicious and interesting to hear that people vary with how much they can eat and feel satisfied. Thanks so much for your time with sending through photos of what is a typical day of food for you, so helpful!!

12 hours ago, RickM said:

Here is the perspective of one bariatric surgeon on how our meal volume progresses over time. In short, after a few years, we will typically be able to eat about half of what we could eat pre-op in a sitting or meal. This is consistent with my experience at seven years out, and my wife's at thirteen years out. There is still enough restriction to aid in effective long term weight control, but also plenty of capacity to go overboard on the wrong foods and see extensive regain. This doc is one of the few that I have seen that discusses this aspect of our surgery, and offers a prescription on how to mitigate the negatives of it. You may or may not get along with his prescription (I don't buy into everything he says....) but he does offer a model that we can use to develop our own approach to long term maintenance and weight control.

Thanks so much for sending this link through, that’s really interesting to watch and really explains how it all works :-)

On 07/11/2018 at 13:04, RickM said:

Here is the perspective of one bariatric surgeon on how our meal volume progresses over time. In short, after a few years, we will typically be able to eat about half of what we could eat pre-op in a sitting or meal. This is consistent with my experience at seven years out, and my wife's at thirteen years out. There is still enough restriction to aid in effective long term weight control, but also plenty of capacity to go overboard on the wrong foods and see extensive regain. This doc is one of the few that I have seen that discusses this aspect of our surgery, and offers a prescription on how to mitigate the negatives of it. You may or may not get along with his prescription (I don't buy into everything he says....) but he does offer a model that we can use to develop our own approach to long term maintenance and weight control.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3_aahPETzH0?start=404&feature=oembed

That video was fantastic! I have been so worried about stretching my stomach! This is very helpful to me.

15 hours ago, sillykitty said:

Speaking of success ... slider food is certainly is working for you @Orchids&Dragons! Congrats on being down almost 72 lbs!

Thanks, Kitty! I just worry that I'm ingraining the wrong habits because I pretty much eat all day. But, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. (I do follow 30-10-30. It never takes me more than 10 minutes to eat because, for the most part, I don't chew!) On the plus side, I'm not brave enough to try many tempting foods to see if they'd be ok. I did talk with my therapist last night (her specialty is eating disorders, not bariatrics) because I'm concerned that some bad behaviors are starting to creep back in. She really didn't get it because the choices I made were "healthy", or at least not bad. Like, for instance, the last 3 days I had veggie Thai green curry for lunch. (One order split over 3 days, no rice). It was probably under 100 cal. per day, but I doubt there was any protein in it at all. (There wasn't enough liquid to stir in protein powder) To the therapist, this was perfectly fine, but I tried explaining how important it was to eat the protein first for meals. Especially those of us who are chronically short at the end of the day and have to knock some down right before bed. Oh, well. I guess she'll be more helpful when my issues are more mainstream.

50 minutes ago, Orchids&Dragons said:

Thanks, Kitty! I just worry that I'm ingraining the wrong habits because I pretty much eat all day. But, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. (I do follow 30-10-30. It never takes me more than 10 minutes to eat because, for the most part, I don't chew!) On the plus side, I'm not brave enough to try many tempting foods to see if they'd be ok. I did talk with my therapist last night (her specialty is eating disorders, not bariatrics) because I'm concerned that some bad behaviors are starting to creep back in. She really didn't get it because the choices I made were "healthy", or at least not bad. Like, for instance, the last 3 days I had veggie Thai green curry for lunch. (One order split over 3 days, no rice). It was probably under 100 cal. per day, but I doubt there was any Protein in it at all. (There wasn't enough liquid to stir in protein powder) To the therapist, this was perfectly fine, but I tried explaining how important it was to eat the protein first for meals. Especially those of us who are chronically short at the end of the day and have to knock some down right before bed. Oh, well. I guess she'll be more helpful when my issues are more mainstream.

Do you eat all day to get your protein, because you're hungry, or to get to certain calories?

2 minutes ago, sillykitty said:

Do you eat all day to get your protein, because you're hungry, or to get to certain calories?

No, this is what the therapist didn't understand. Maybe 4 "meals" are for protein (counting protein water), but the other 2 are all about the party in my mouth, and that's bad! Even if they are "healthy" choices like the curry or cooked veggies. Like you, my capacity is very small, Unless it's totally liquid, I can't usually get more than 12g of protein at a time (hi-pro yogurt). So, it takes a lot of meals to hit my protein target (75g min) and I'm really wasting 1-2 with fruit or veggies or SF fudgesicles.

14 minutes ago, Orchids&Dragons said:

No, this is what the therapist didn't understand. Maybe 4 "meals" are for protein (counting protein water), but the other 2 are all about the party in my mouth, and that's bad! Even if they are "healthy" choices like the curry or cooked veggies. Like you, my capacity is very small, Unless it's totally liquid, I can't usually get more than 12g of protein at a time (hi-pro yogurt). So, it takes a lot of meals to hit my protein target (75g min) and I'm really wasting 1-2 with fruit or veggies or SF fudgesicles.

Yeah, I totally get that. Is it head hunger, or physical hunger?

1 minute ago, sillykitty said:

Yeah, I totally get that. Is it head hunger, or physical hunger?

I really have no physical hunger. Whenever I think I feel hungry I take a Tums and it goes away. So, plenty of acid, no real hunger.

Just now, Orchids&Dragons said:

I really have no physical hunger. Whenever I think I feel hungry I take a Tums and it goes away. So, plenty of acid, no real hunger.

Eating cause food is delicious, get that! I also would be frustrated that my therapist didn't grasp that that is worrisome.

12 minutes ago, sillykitty said:

Eating cause food is delicious, get that! I also would be frustrated that my therapist didn't grasp that that is worrisome.

Sometimes it's not even delicious. Sometimes I open a can of string beans and eat a third of the can. Nobody considers canned string beans delicious! But they do fill up my "void". No, not hunger, but still a mental need to put something with substance into my stomach, if that makes sense.

I think the therapist is so freaked out by the fact that I can't eat solid protein, that she's missing the bigger picture. But also, she normally treats anorexics who won't eat anything, or overeaters who won't stop eating, so that she can't really see the problem with how I'm eating. To her, if I'm getting all my required nutrition and taking in a reasonable amount of calories, what's the problem? And, of course, outside the WLS world, there is no "honeymoon" period.

Edited July 12, 20188 yr by Orchids&Dragons

2 minutes ago, Orchids&Dragons said:

Sometimes it's not even delicious. Sometimes I open a can of string Beans and eat a third of the can. Nobody considers canned string beans delicious! But they do fill up my "void". No, not hunger, but still a mental need to put something with substance into my stomach, if that makes sense.

I think the therapist is so freaked out by the fact that I can't eat solid Protein, that she's missing the bigger picture. But also, she normally treats anorexics who won't eat anything, or overeaters who won't stop eating, so that she can't really see the problem with how I'm eating. To her, if I'm getting all my required nutrition and taking in a reasonable amount of calories, what's the problem? And, of course, outside the WLS world, there is no "honeymoon" period.

Canned green beans were my Weight Watchers go to food!

Filling the void is exactly how I feel on my head hungers days. Maybe you could relate it to your therapist as an over eater that is just making healthy choices. But the over eating itself is a problem. That eating should be mainly for nutrition, and if it is for pleasure, or to fill avoid, that in and of itself is a problem, even if it were calorie free. Now you might be ok because you are making healthy choices. But healthy choices are much harder to make than unhealthy. I know I feel like I'm walking a tightrope some days.

36 minutes ago, sillykitty said:

But healthy choices are much harder to make than unhealthy. I know I feel like I'm walking a tightrope some days.

Definitely! It's a small step when you're already having a Thai curry to add the rice!

Edited July 12, 20188 yr by Orchids&Dragons