How long are we supposed to......

chew chew chew? 

I know that I have to do it now.. and for quite a while... but will I ever be able to have a "normal" bite of food and then not have to turn it to much before I swallow it?  Will it always take me 35-40 min to eat a meal?

I dont miss shoveling the food in.. lol.. but I was just curious if this will be my "new way of life" going forward.

Give yourself about three months.  Yes, you will be able to eat normally again, just heal up first.  After a while, this will become second nature.  Hang in there, it does get easier with time.

Elina
you have been so successful, once you reached your goal, how did it stop? how do you maintain rather than just keep loosing??

Please hear me on this, as I think this is the most important but hard to grasp piece of advice I have.  There is nothing magic about this process, either the losing phase or the maintenance.  I do not mean this in a condescending sort of way, I mean this to be helpful.  It really does come down to calories, protein grams, carbs and exercise.  That is the whole enchilada so to speak.  It is just that early out, no matter what you do, the physical restriction makes it almost impossible not to lose weight, the further out you get, the tougher this becomes.  You eventually reach a point where the calories consumed equals the calories burned, but it is all in your hands.  You can choose the weight that you want to stop at and maintain at.  I could have chosen any weight, 105 lbs. works best for me, but I could have gone lower or stopped at 110 or 115 lbs.  I control the caloric density of my meals, I choose to eat mostly dense protein and veggies and stay this thin, or I could make another choice and gain.  The power is all mine, and that means it is all yours too.  I hope this helps and doesn't sound preachy, I really don't mean it to be, but I think it is a very important point.  If you have specific questions about how to stop the loss at a particular place, I would have to look at your calories and percentages of proteins and carbs and your exercise to figure it out on a case by case basis, but it can be done.  I hope this helps.

that is helpful. i havent had procedure yet. i am so very good at sabotage....i am afraid i would overide even surgery!

We are all good at sabotage, or we could just do this on our own.  We need this tool and it is very powerful.  I could not have done this well without this tool,BUT it really is only a tool in the long run.  It really helps if you use the early easy stages of weight loss to retool your whole relationship with food.  In my experience, this is the real trick to maintenance.  Good luck to you and to all of us.

thank you for the sanity:)

 I used to ask ( Elina ) the same questions, but im 3 months out now and I chew but not like before, and it used to take me an hour to finish my meal now it takes me 10 minutes. 

 I am  not saying this is what you should do....  but I am able to take normal bite sizes and eat at a normal rate.  I am nearly 9 weeks out.  Never vomited, no foamies ever, sleeve tolerates everything.  

Thank you for your responses... good to know I wont have to eat like this for ever...but the thing is.... I can only take 2 or 3 very small bites and then I have to wait a couple minutes for the weird feeling in my chest to go away before I can take another bite, but I will say that this baby spoon is getting old! LOL