Pouch expansion?

The schedule from my bariatric program said that at about six months I should be able to eat a half cup. If I'm eating soft stuff like pudding, I can do that (and a little more), but if I'm eating regular food, I still can't do more than maybe a 1/3 cup. I'm not complaining at all, but I find it odd that my pouch isn't expanding at the usual rate.

Tom, That does seem strange. If I eat soft food, like yogurt or fat free cottage cheese, I easily eat 1 cup. If I eat chicken or some kind of meat, I'm at half a cup. I think the soft stuff just goes right through me. I'm carefully measuring and keeping track in fitday.com to make sure I don't over do it. I'm still a food addict unfortunately. Lori 384/274/170

Hi, Tom! Are you visually measuring the 1/3 cup the way it sits before ya eat it? Remember that when stuff gets chewed and chewed it'll take up much less space. I had an endoscopy a week and a half ago and was told that my pouch was 5 cm long. That is about 2 inches long. Don't know the width but that seems pretty darned small. Gastroenterologist told me that it being that small at 6 months post-op means I'll still continue to lose and probably won't have a hard time of maintaining my loss. That was a nice to hear comment! And I hope that is the case. My surgeon also said when I saw him that my pouch hadn't stretched much since surgery. I don't know what the "usual" rate of expansion is. I don't know how much we as post-ops can really influence how much stretching goes on. I know that many people *fear* that they have overstretched but I do know that naturally the pouch should end up about 8-10 oz from what I was told. And that is a far cry from our old stomachs which were on average 32 oz, I believe. Kathy