How much to eat?

1/2 cup is 4 ounces, I'm not surprised you can't fini****

Hey Stitch,

Puree's no more than a 1/4 cup. If you can't fini**** don't worry. You absolutely do not want to eat until you are "full." Nerves are cut during surgery and it takes quite a while, close to month 3 or 4 before you will start to "feel full" or notice how much you are full off dense protein.

Please IGNORE the 2 tbsp of potatoes and 2 tbsp of veggies, especially carrots, they are full of sugar (carbs). So stick to your 2-4 tbsp of meat. If you can get 4 tbsp of pureed meat in (4 tbsp = 1/4 cup) then you are fine and DO NOT need potatoes or veggies. Drives me MENTAL that Centres tells fresh post ops to eat potatoes (for the record my Centre did too and I ignored them).

No offence but you (as well as I did) have lots of fat on your body and so eating such low calories now will put your body into ketosis and you will burn calories and fat. Start adding in carbs & sugar (in veggies & fruit) and you will slow your weight loss.

At your stage I was eating max 1/4 cup per meal. I ate about 200 - 300 max calories a day, again you have lots of fat to stay sustained. You will be tired, no doubt about it. This is a major surgery, a major change of dietary intake, keep your fluids up and rest as much as you can. Resting = healing.

Best of luck, you are doing great and asking really fantastic questions!

Just wondering how you only had 200 calories a day at 3 weeks out? If I drink one premier protein shake over the course of the day and have a yogurt that would put me at 200 calories and nowhere near the protein requirements. What were you eating?

Hi Liveyourlife,

I just looked back in MyFitnessPal for what I was eating at 3-4 weeks out, here you go:

Breakfast: chocolate premier protein (160 calories) 30 protein

Lunch: 1/4 cup Activia fat & sugar free yogurt (40 calories) - 4 protein

Dinner: one hard boiled egg I mashed up (60 calories) - 6 protein

Snack: 1/4 cup Activia fat & sugar free yogurt (40 calories) - 4 protein

Totals: 300 calories, 44 protein

Some days I had a very hard time eating, my pouch was not playing nice so I was around 200 calories, days when I could get in all the food I wrote above I was around 300 calories.

Its very hard in the early stages to eat enough food to get decent protein numbers.

Thanks for the reply, this makes sense. You definitely weren't getting much in, I will see what my pouch likes / doesn't like in a few days when I start puréed. I am definitely going to try to follow protein forward, very low carb. Thanks for the help!

So you weren't getting the amount of protein they suggest at more than 60 gr., I'm finally over that at 18 days out, I'm back at work so the "rest period" is over for me. Now that I'm starting to tolerate more foods I'm concentrating more on straight protein, for some reason chicken doesn't like me but had fish last night and it was great, I've also had no problems with beef, funny how are pouches work.

Our pouches are strange little things...

I could do chicken and fish (tuna/salmon) really early out and then steak and pork chops followed. To this day at 4 yrs out my pouch does not like ground beef. I can't eat hamburgers, *sigh* because I love a good cheeseburger.

And heck no I sure was not getting the "minimum" of 60 grams of protein early out. I really struggled for the first three months to eat. My pouch was finicky and I had no desire to eat and I was so tired all the time. It sure was difficult. And I found going back to work exhausting. Have to time vitamins around eating and then the whole not drinking after for 30 minutes, it felt like a full time job!

You are going great, keep up the great work!

Yeah I'm not eating the veggies for the carb reason, but wasn't sure if I should increase the protein then if they expected me to also be eating the 4 tbsp of veggies too per meal, should I be doing more like 6 tbsp to make up for the veggies I'm not eating. My calories are 300-400 though so much higher than yours were.

This early out, I wouldn't focus too much on the calories. I was so worried that all I could get was 300-400. It'll build. That's a totally normal range for where you are. You don't want to sustain that low over the long term.

I agree with Daisy about not making potatoes and carrots your veggies of choice. If you do choose to add veggies in, there are much better options. To this day, I rarely have them, and if I do, it's a piece to taste it.

Your eating retired beans??

I want to so bad but they said no. I might go rogue! I' cannot find anything that I can eat or drink. I haven't had protien in like a week now (I'm 2 weeks post op on monday)

So if you're in the same stage as me and you did well with refried beans, let me know because I might actually be able to eat them!

Thanks°°°°° and congrats.