how much are y'all eating?

i'm curious... what are you able to eat in a sitting? i find as the day wears on, i can eat more. for breakfast, i try to eat 2 cheese sticks - sometimes i have to spread them out because i get too full. for lunch, i can eat about 2, maybe 3 oz of diced chicken and maybe 1/4-1/2c of salad. for dinner i can do about 3 oz of meat, 1/2c of veggies [if cooked a lot and mushy] and maybe a forkful of starch. is this normal? i can definitely tell i'm able to eat more than i have been in the past - i'm just soooo scared i'm going to eat too much! i know around 6mths we're supposedto be able to fit ~6-8oz, am i right? thanks! kristen*

I've been wondering the same thing. I'm worried that I'm eating too much. At breakfast, I can eat 1/2 c of cottage cheese with a little bit of fresh fruit (2tbsp?). Then I have a snack at 10:30, usually 1oz of cheddar cheese w/1 c. grapes (I eat the grapes over the course of the hour). Lunch can be 1/2 sandwich, 2-3oz turkey on 1 slice of bread (end up tearing most of it away from the sandwich) 2 or 3 cherry tomatoes. Sometimes I can fit in an afternoon snack...if I do, it'll be 1/2 a protein bar, or an ounce of cheese. But dinner I can eat 1/2c-3/4c depending on what I"m eating, plus another 1/4 c.of veggies. I feel like that's a ton of food. I just don't want to stretch anything!!

I don't usually eat alot of protein so it may seem that I eat more than you..... This is my normal intake: Breakfast...1 cup of ground beef/vegetable soup lunch...1 cup of potato soup dinner...1 cup of ground beef/vegetable soup and 1 cup of salad mix sometimes I have a snack in the evening I do better with soft (soup) foods, my pouch doesn't do well with alot of protein dense foods. P.S. I actually do feel hunger again AND food tastes really good to me again Amy 233/152/140 *** ALMOST TO GOAL ***

do you drink a lot of protein shakes instead of eating protein? i try to eat all my protein so i don't have to drink shakes - and even then - my iron and B1 counts were low last month. so i have to take supplements because i wasn't absorbing enough from what i was eating. how has your bloodwork been?

I know this is a few days after the posting, but this question interests me too...I wonder how I compare to others in amounts eaten now. For me, I can eat 1/2-3/4 cup at a time of either soft solid or more dense foods (1 cup of soup, but I tend to stay away from the more liquidy things so my pouch will stay full longer). The more dense a food is, the less I can eat of it at one time. This is a list of what I eat in a typical day. B: 1 egg scrambled with onion and tomato (about 2 Tbsp of each), or 1/2-3/4 cup oatmeal with 1/8 c. 2% milk L: 1 slice deli roast beef, 1 slice low-fat provolone cheese, 1 slice tomato rolled up S: 1 low-fat mozarella cheese stick or 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese or 1 Activia yogurt D: 1/2 cup turkey chili with 1/4 cup low-fat cottage cheese (my fav meal right now!) S: 8 oz. light soymilk with 1 1/2 scoops Isopure Dutch Chocolate protein I will also sometimes add another snack of 1 bag of Revival soy chips or some fruit or raw veggies if I'm having a more "hungry" day. I feel like the eating is all right except when I add that last snack...then I worry about it being too much...but the counts are still okay calorie-wise and carb/fat-wise...but still I worry. I think after our eating being so out of control previously it's hard to imagine that we can keep it in control long-term so the further out we get the more we worry about eating too much. I personally worry about gradually increasing my eating to a point where it IS "too much" and also I worry about snacking, which I didn't do before surgery (I was more of a "volume" eater and ate WAY too much at one meal). I did start increasing the amount of chili I was eating and it had become 2/3 cup plus the 1/4 cup of cottage cheese, but then I realized that I was satisfied with 1/2 cup chili and didn't need the extra so reduced it back to the 1/2 cup serving. Regarding the snacking, I feel I do get hungry now and need that extra snack sometimes. I try to make it a healthy one on those days when I'm just hungrier so I won't worry so much. I don't want to make excuses and regain the weight I've lost so far. And, I don't want to fall back into bad eating habits, maybe just exchanging one bad habit for a different one (snacking too much). So yeah, I think that worry is going to be with all of us...the success will just depend on whether we really use this time to relearn better eating habits. I wish all of us luck in relearning!!! "Is this normal...am I eating too much?" Seems to be the repeating question I see most often on this web site. Good luck Kristen! Sharon