Restriction

A while back, I posted a link to a guide that you put on your plate to help with portion sizes. It's portions are a bit too big; but there are gradient lines that might help and I will experiment with it and a digital scale we have on hand. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach; so I don't want to trust them with this! Thanks.

I'm glad you posted this; it's on my mind too. I'm not on "real" food yet but my plan is to measure everything. And to stop before I get any full signals. I think I'm going to be one of those people whose nose runs when I overdo it. When I drink too fast, I get a drippy nose. So that may function as a backup "knock it off, Horrible Monster" signal. I guess we'll see. Like I said, my plan is to measure. Everything. 

Thanks. I hope that there is a switch that flips for me that I can recognize. There never has been; but I hope to be able to find that indicator that will help me.

There is no doubt if you get too full. I never recognized it prior to surgery either. Almost anytime I eat something without measuring ie: take a couple of bites from my husbands plate, I suffer & end up vomiting. So to repeat everyone else, measure. 

Don't really want to vomit. Thanks for kicking in on this.

TRUST ME....you will feel it and will only do it a couple of times as its bloody uncomfortable!!

Im lucky that Ive never thrown up, but I have had a couple of "one too many bites" moments and had to go for a long walk to help things move on through.

I was a serious over-eater with bad portion control skills.  Nowadays, I look at a plate of restaurant food and go "holy cow that's a LOT of food".

it will take time to adjust, which is why measuring and weighing is so important early out, but you will learn (probably the hard way a few times) what your new capacity is.  It doesn't kick in until 6-8 weeks after surgery, but when it does, you will know it. :)

I hope that I feel the same way; because I'm bad about just eating what it put in front of me. I am not sure I have ever said that a loaded plate was a "lot" of food! Measuring seems to be the advice of the day. Thanks.

I had never thought that either, but you will too.

At first, you will look at a tiny little amount of food and your brain will tell you "that's not enough". But then you will get 1/2 way through it and start going "hmmm...getting a bit full".

My thing is to eat everything off of small side plates rather than full size dinner plates. Apart from when I eat out with friends or at a restaurant, I haven't used full sized dinner plates for 7 months now. This visually makes the food look bigger, which I think helps trick the brain and reset the mental visuals on what our new portion size is and the fact that it IS enough food.

Nowdays, I actually find restaurant portion sizes and how fast normal people eat quite confronting. It's SO much food and people eat SO fast compared to what Im now used to.

Its going to be a big mental adjustment and your body will definitely be telling you a different story to your brain for the first few months, but you will get used to your new normal place

HI

I think you have been asking some great questions in your process to determine whether a sleeve will work for you.  As with many things with this procedure people have different experiences.  So I can only share with you my experience with fullness.  Although my sleeve is my new normal and I love it, fullness now is very different for me than it was before surgery.  Post surgery when I first started eating mushees and purées I measured what I was eating.  But what you can't believe pre surgery is that it is likely that initially a 1/4 of a cup of cottage cheese will be too much.  I would eat a couple of small spoonfuls and then would look at the food and feel that I couldn't possibly have another bite.  Pre surgery I could eat a 1/4 of a cup in one heaping spoonful.  As I moved on to more solid foods I would have a more pronounced feeling of fullness.  I would feel an ache behind my shoulder blades.  I think it's been explained to me that something with our new stomachs presses against a nerve that you feel in your back.  But it's a completely different type of fullness than pre surgery.  Nothing like I just stuffed myself with thanksgiving dinner.  The way it's different for me is that is pre surgery if I felt full you could still always find room for one more bite.  Now when I am full or satiated physically I feel that there is no way for me to eat another bite.  Another example of eating in my first few months out - I'd make a scrambled egg and it would be in my calorie allotment to eat a whole egg.  However, frequently I would only be able to eat 1/2 of the egg and then get to the point that I couldn't possibly eat another bite.  Again who would ever think that you couldn't eat a whole egg.  At this point in time I can eat one egg with some sautéed onions in it with a sprinkling of cheese.  Pre surgery I would have had no issue eating 3 - 4 eggs at once.   Now that would not be possible.

Another thing that is different is my reaction if I do overheat.  It has happened only a few times.  Usually if I have eaten to quickly something like chicken.  It may only be about 2-3 ounces.  But a shortly after overheating I start to salivate.  Not quite the foam use which people write about.  But a lot of excess salivation and feeling like I need to spit.  It is not pleasant.  

One additional thing you have to take into account is the reduction in ghrelin, the hunger hormone.  For me I am so much less hungry and no longer feel the same drive to eat.  There are some people who go months initially with no hunger.  That was not me but my hunger is a small fraction of what it was in the past.  It is more for me now that I am almost a year out then it was post surgery but so much less than before.  I used to be able to put away a very large portion or two but now I love to pick at my food.

It's hard to comprehend pre op what the sleeve feels like post op but hopefully this has helped.

Stephanie

 

Thanks so much for answering my post. You have given me some great information to think about. I suppose that at the heart of my worry is the hope that there will be some "new" signal for me to recognize. So, I hope like you that my feeling of fullness is different than it is now because I can go right by that as it is now! I am somewhat sad to be heading this direction because I "love" food. But, that love will kill me if I don't put hand cuffs on it!