Is it normal???

I am 3 weeks postop and I'm finding it easier to eat more than 1/4c of food for a meal? I'm worried that If I am able to eat this much now that in several months I'm going to be able to go right back to the way I was.

 What surgery  did you have?  

What foods are you eating?  

Are you waiting at least 30 minutes after eating before drinking?

I am sticking to the 30/30 rule. I had RNY on Feb 7th. My doctor still has me on purreed or soft proteins. Chicken, white fish, turkey, and beans. But I can easily sit down and eat a 1/2c to a full cup of these foods.

Amanda -

It is sort of irrelevant how MUCH you can eat --- it is more about how LITTLE you need to eat.

If you stop after 1/4 cut and you put the food away, and then get busy doing something, do you find that your hunger is dimmed and you can go for a few hours without eating?

That is what worked for me -- I ate my allotted portion and I stopped. 
If I had sat there and tried to keep eating, I am sure that I could have eaten much more.

What happens if you eat the 1/4 cup ---- can it be enough for you?

Are you drinking while you eat? At three weeks out it was taking me 30 minutes to eat 6oz of yougurt. I am over two years out and can't eat a cup. Maybe our surgeons sized our pouches differently.

No, I'm not drinking with my meals. That's been the easiest for me to give up. I think part of my probelm is that I'm having a hard time realizing when I'm actually full. Some days I'll eat til I hurt and I don't mean to. It's completely unintentional. I just think to myself, I'll just have this last bite and the last one is the one that has me bent over in pain!

Ahhh -- another reason to eat your 1/4 cut and stop --- and wait to see what happens.

We just can't eat until we are 'full' any more -- we need to learn to eat until we are not hungry ---- and that takes time.  Time in months, and time in minutes after each meal.

Eat your 1/4 cup -- stop -- -tell yourself that you can have another 1/8 cup in 20 minutes if you are still truly hungry ---- you should be surprised that you will get distracted and not want to go back for more.

You won't feel when your pouch is full for many weeks yet. You still have nerves that don't work down there. A cup is a rediculous amount of food for a newbie. It took me over a year to be able to eat a cup of food. You can tear out your stitches inside by overfilling your pouch. Go back to the amounts your doc said, realize you won't feel full or anything yet and have to measure.

 At over four years out, I sort of know what full feels like.  But at your stage the nerves in your pouch have not healed yet and you cannot tell if you are full.  That is why you eat the allocated amount and don't try to force food.  I know surgeons start people on solid foods much sooner than when I had surgery.  It was about three or four months before I could eat even 1/4 cup of chicken or tuna.

The pouch usually starts very small.  We still have the memory of the big stomach and are used to eating enough to fill that up.  The old stomach was about the size of a two-liter bottle of soda.  Your new pouch is about the same size as the soda cap on that bottle.  It will gradually stretch out to the size of a large egg.  It will end up being about eight to twelve ounces at about one year.

Eating too much food now can stretch the pouch out too quickly.  It can also lead to stretching the stoma (opening from the pouch).  It could actually break open the healing pouch and lead to bleeding and further surgery.  I found protein shakes helpful at your stage, but could only drink about one a day.

It is very easy for us to learn how to outeat our surgery.  That is one reason why so many people never reach their goal weight and why so many people have a lot of regain.  Use this wonderful honeymoon period to lose as much weight as possible and to learn how to be content with a very small amount of food.  The honeymoon does end and it does get harder.

I'm another vote for measuring your portions, and eat only that.

I still can't and won't go by whether I feel full- my sense of fullness is so different since surgery. Also, I was a binge eater before surgery, and would stuff myself way beyond feeling full.

Feeling full is not a good indicator of how much to eat.