Salad

I went out for lunch with a friend yesterday to a salad restaurant. I haven't eaten salad really in more than a year since surgery. It was large, mostly well chopped lettuce and small tomatoes and a little cheese and avocado. Delicicious. But what surprised me is that I was able to eat a lot. When you think of your sleeve, it is supposed to be very narrow. So how could lots of lettuce fit in it? I didn't gain any weight and it was a lovely meal. Won't do it again, but just don't understand how it would fit, it's not dense like chicken breast but it's not ice cream or mushy food either.

get some lettuce and chop it up finely (like it's been chewed) then put it in a small/narrow container with vinegar and that should answer the question. ACID and HEAT melts it fast, heck think about cooking that big batch of spinach and how rapidly it goes to nothing.

Why won't you eat salad again? I eat salads quite often. People do not gain weight on lettuce and salad greens. They gain weight on the other things they pile on to a salad. Too much cheese, several servings of dressing, croutons, etc.

Salad can be something of a "slider" in that it tends to slide on through without much restriction; many "sliders" are things like chips and twinkies (and "bulletproof" coffee for the keto crowd) that are high calorie and low nutrition and should be avoided, but salad greens are high nutrition and low calorie, so they are a good way to improve your overall nutrition with little caloric cost. I figured this out pretty early when I found that if I cut back my normal meat allotment from 3 oz to 2 oz, I could comfortably have another 3 oz of misc. salad greens. Salad has been a primary staple for the past seven or so years.

I'm two years out. I have salad, minimum, two lunches a week because I have to pack my own and my office doesn't have a fridge or microwave. (Long story). So I have a bento set - where I pack 2 cups of mixed greens, 4 ounces of chicken breast, 1 tablespoon of vinaigrette and that's my lunch. It keeps me happy and full until after I'm done fencing for 2 hours on Monday and Wednesday evenings right after working a full day. I throw in a few black olives. Sometimes, I add some cheese cubes. But I guess it depends on where you are after surgery.

If you put lettuce loosely in a plastic bag it appears to have great volume, if you squeezed the air out the volume would appear to decrease tremendously. Same thing going from the bowl to our pouch or stomach... volume decreases tremendously as it's chewed.

Hi - my lunch everyday is romaine lettuce, chopped kale and a protein - usually tuna. Protein and fiber :) Healthy and filling. It is the dense protein that fills up our pouches, so that is why it seems we can eat more lettuce than a cup.