Hi everyone,

I was banded three weeks ago and was wondering if anyone could explain to me why we are not allowed to drink with meals? Also, how long should we wait after eating to drink anything? My doctor has told me 30 mins on one occassion and 5 mins on another so I'm getting conflicting messages.

Also, advice for the first few weeks was to sip water slowly with breaks in between each sip. Is that just for the first few weeks or for ever because sometimes I find myself very thirsty and can't bear to sip slowly.

As long as you don't chug and it doesn't nauseate you, you can just drink your water.

And the "no liquids with meals" is to keep you from flushing the food through your pouch too quickly. If you do that, you won't feel full as long. I think 30 min is a good average but if you want you can call your doc and reconfirm; they are all a little different.

Drinking with meals is a way of "eating around the band" and is pretty much a prescription for failure. If you have liquids in your pouch before you eat, it will pass through your stoma quickly. If you have liquids too soon after eating, the same will happen. Your pouch won't stay full long enough to hold off the hunger as well as it should.

My dietician suggests 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after, aside from the 20-30 minutes that the proper chewing of a meal should take. I thought I was gonna die, but it is actually alot easier than I was worried about. I had to REALLY adjust how big my bites were while I was trying to figure out how to eat without drinking. Turns out I had to eat less than half of my regular bite in order to have enough room to properly chew without "added" liquids.

I've been able to drink regularly since the recovery room. My doc said that was not a problem at all and that I should drink at whatever rate I can tolerate as long as I'm not chugging like a frat boy. He said that when I get fills I will probably see a reduction in the rate that I can drink, but that "sipping" would usually be a 24-36 hour deal after just because of the swelling.