Everyone has different pain tolerances. I remember when I was in the hospital, there was a girl who was just chugging away her protein shake lounging in the waiting room that had a view with her leg up shootin the sht with a nurse like she didnt even have the same surgery I just did... meanwhile I'm struggling to walk holding on to my IV pole for dear life...and it took me 2 hours to get my first protein shake down.

Welcome to the loser's bench! I had a pretty easy time of it too, at least after the first night. The morning after, I felt great, and was begging the nurses to let me shower. I don't know why that was so important to me; I'd had a shower the morning of surgery, and missing a day or two wasn't going to kill me. Anyway, it's great things went so smoothly for you!

I don't know why some people have an easy recovery and others don't, but I suspect it has something to do with your anatomy; the less the surgeon has to move organs around, the better. Also, if they need to repair a hiatal hernia or something, that seems to make recovery a bit more painful.

What you're describing is quite normal. Your stomach has been through a lot, so be patient. It sounds to me like you're swallowing too much air when you drink liquids. If you try to focus on just swallowing water, that should help. But in any case, you should find things become easier over the next few weeks. Just keep drinking fluids; that's your number one job now. I was feeling so good after surgery that I got a bit lax with my fluid intake. I was in the middle of the supermarket checkout when I needed to sit down now. It was a little embarassing sitting on the floor of SuperValu. (The staff were lovely, though.) I learned my lesson after that.

If you haven't been on the scale yet, be forewarned that you probably have temporarily gained weight from all the fluids they pump into you. It may take a week to 10 days to lose tha****er weight.

Holy Smokes. I have to just admit.. I went into this so uneducated and unprepared. I will now do the work I should've prepared for. So much more preparing and planning. I CAN NOT trust my eyes. No eyeballing for me as I still have "fat eyes" with "Fat brain" ugghhh.

Definitely a learning time. I will change!! I am determined. I appreciate the insight. VERY helpful.

"I need to be ok with putting food away or throwing out rest if I can not finish and not just keep it around till I feel a little more room."

Yes! Keeping foods around and taking another bite once you begin to feel less full will hinder your progress.

I wasted a lot of food my first 6-9 months. I felt bad about it, but it takes time to learn what you can eat. I think you need to give yourself permission to waste a little food while you're learning. Weigh/measure everything and you will begin to learn how much of different kinds of foods it takes to make you feel full. I record everything I eat almost every day, but even on the occasional day I take a break from that, I still measure.

There are a lot of foods I measure not to watch the calories, but just so I don't try to eat more than I physically can, and waste food. For example, from a calorie perspective it doesn't matter if I accidentally serve myself twice as much steamed broccoli, but it I try to eat that much my stomach will complain for an hour!

One thing that can make measuring less of a chore is if you dedicate special plates, bowls or cups for the things you eat most frequently. You'll learn to use the decorations for measuring things. To the bottom of the yellow daisy is a quarter cup, to the top of the blue ring is 3/4 cup, etc. I know that a heaping spoonful of a dry powder substance with my regular spoons is 10g. It reduces the number of times you have to go to the scale, or wash out a measuring cup.

Also, smaller plates (e.g. the size of a saucer) and bowls really help. Sorry if I mentioned this before to you; I forget who I've suggested what to!

The weighing, measuring, planning, recording all seems like a lot of work when you're right after surgery, but it all becomes second nature soon. Some things I eyeball, because they're very low calorie and I'm never tempted to overeat them. For example, I will eyeball 100 ml of unsweetened almond milk (only 13 cal for my brand). I will also eyeball a teaspoon of sunflower seeds because I'm not that fond of them, but I couldn't trust myself to do that with peanut butter! Even the things I eyeball, I double-check my measurements occasionally to re-callibrate my eye!

Have you checked the OH Post-Op Planner? It was accurate for me.

As the saying goes, this is a marathon, NOT a sprint!! Just keep following your plan and you have a great shot of losing it all.