No appetite

[MsTeeTee 71]

I have no desire for food or beverages at this time. I have 3 days left in my purée stage and I can only tolerate my Bcomplex Vitamin for the day. Everything else just looks gross. Even the smell of food does not smell good to me anymore. Any ideas friends? Am I the only one?

[catwoman7 10,863]

pretty common - and take full advantage of this "feature", because for almost all of us, hunger and appetite come roaring back sometime within the first year post-op. I know this may sound strange to you, but...I wish my hunger and appetite had never come back. It came back at five months post op. It was so much easier to lose weight when I was never hungry and didn't give a flip about food. So, I know it sounds weird to say, but enjoy it while it lasts!

[Arabesque 6,476]

Oh yeah, it’s common. I didn’t have an appetite for months. It probably came back before my hunger did but having no appetite or hunger helped me start to look at food differently: as a source of necessary nutrition. That whole eating to live not living to eat thinking became true for me. So even if I wasn’t really hungry or interested I eating I knew I had to eat something that was nutritionally dense. There were times I just ate the Protein component of my meal. I also starting to eat to a routine which I continue to follow most of the time 4 years out. If it’s not a meal or snack time I don’t eat. Now, I’ll happily drop a snack if I’m not hungry because my meals are much larger & are more nutritionally balanced than they were when I was losing weight.

My enjoyment of food hasn’t changed (still look forward to marks, dining out, eating socially). It’s more that there are foods I value more & enjoy eating more now & others I just don’t want to eat.

[ms.sss 14,670]

i went through stages.

1st month: looking or thinking about food and eating made me sick. i was like REPULSED.

month 2-3: didnt want to eat (but no longer REPULSED) though i forced myself to eat because i was getting weak. i had a very strong restriction so wasn't able to eat much anyway.

month 4-7: there would be days that i wanted to eat and days that i didn't. i stopped forcing myself to eat on no-hungry days at this point and just ate when i wanted to because i started to develop this thing where i felt like eating was WORK and i didn't like that. my restriction was still doing its job though, so i still couldn't eat much anyway.

month 7-12: struggled to up my calories to ease into maintenance and i think my not-wanting-to-eat phases during this time period had more to do with a mental block than anything else. i had a bit of a time when i had a challenge "allowing" myself to eat higher calorie foods and carbs, ha. fear of weight gain and all that. though in hindsight i needn't have worried, as my restriction kept me in check.

1 year and onwards: i still get the odd don't-want-to-eat or oops-i-forgot-to-eat days here and there. not as often and regluar as before, but they show up every once in a while. i don't sweat it, as i know there will be hungry days too. my restriction is still very much in play, even at 5 years out, and i have learned over the years what foods and what amounts i can consume before i hit my full mark. i was/am a regular food tracker so its second nature. i tend to only eat things that i really want because, why fill my valuable limited real estate with something meh? luckily the list of things i want does not comprise of just junk. while i do enjoy a bite of dessert and a bowl of chips, i love me a salad just as much. though personally, my fave kind of meal is when there are an abundance of different things to take a bite or two of (like hors d'ourves at a cocktail party, or a tasting menu, or dim sum/tapas/izakaya, or when i go to a restaurant with a large group and get to have a bit of everyone's meal!)

anyway, i think i may have gone on a tangent there, lol.

but yeah, you are not the only one that gets the food aversions, and while you will get differing advice on this topic, i would say go what works for you. if you are getting worsening physical symptoms from not eating, or if your labs are not coming back satisfactorily, of course, please speak to a medical professional. otherwise, if you are losing weight, AND suffer little to no angst, then in my non-medical opinion, you're golden.

[Spinoza 1,175]

I would just add that hitting your Fluid goal is the most important thing at your stage, there's no room for manoeuvre at all on that one - but I'm sure you're doing that already. My appetite was not affected after my surgery, I just filled up really quickly. Hunger took about 7 or 8 months to reappear I think. And of course before that was when I lost most!

[MsTeeTee 71]

Glad to know I’m not the only one. I’ve been forcing myself to eat my Protein instead of drinking it. Hasn’t been the greatest. Struggling to get enough hydration because of the food. But im working on it. And I will improve. I believe in myself 💪🏾

[Smanky 743]

I lived on Protein Water in the first few months when I couldn't eat more than two mouthfuls of anything. Kept me hydrated and got protein into me. Nothing bad happened and I still get a lot of my protein from protein water.

[BabySpoons 531]

8 hours ago, MsTeeTee said:

I’ve been forcing myself to eat my Protein instead of drinking it.

At less than a month I wouldn't be forcing anything. Hydration is way more important at this point than trying to meet Protein goals. You have plenty of time for that when food isn't such an aversion for you.