Question:
Anyone else who can eat a WHOLE lean cuisine w/o a problem?

I think my diet is mainly okay, for breakfast I have a Luna Bar and for Lunch I eat a Lean CUisine (usually the whole thing) then a snack of hot chocolate or cup of soup and for dinner another Lean Cuisine dinner or soup (although I'm getting REALLY tired of soup!) My question is, when I eat a whole Lean Cuisine am I hurting my pouch? It takes me about 1/2 an hour to eat it and there's no discomfort when I'm done. I had the VBG and the RNY is not an option for me so it's important to me that this works. So far I've lost about 30 lbs.    — Michelle J. (posted on October 18, 2001)

October 17, 2001
Most Lean Cusine meals are 10-12oz and when you chew that up, it probably ends up being a little less than a cup, which is what I was told by my doctor is the most I should be eating in one meal. If you're eating it slowly and stop if you feel full, you should be ok..although you didn't say how long ago you had you're surgery...I'm 8 months post-op (open rny) and it took me up until month 5 before I was eating up to a cup of food, for the first few weeks it was a couple of tablespoons at a time! Talk with your doctor or nutritionist and see if they are concerned with your amounts at this point. Good luck and God bless!
   — DolcezzaVT

January 15, 2003
My doctorwas very specific on what to eat and when. On my 6week diet ...from 6 weeks to 12 weeks I am only to have 3 oz. per meal. I cant even get that down right now. I cant imagine eating a pre pack meal already?? But then again I had the RNY
   — Katie S.

November 23, 2004
Maybe you should try eating the dinner without the soup. Any kind of liquid with the meal causes us to not have that full feeling.
   — shannondab

November 24, 2004
I'd radically overhaul your eating plan. What strikes me about it is a relative lack of focus on nutrition, and in particular, the lack of a good presence of dense protein foods.<P>A Luna bar is really a candy bar with a bit of protein in it, not a proper meal or a good meal replacement (read that label critically). Personally I wouldn't choose to make a daily meal of it; rather, I'd go for a dense protein for breakfast, or something that's more heavily nutrition-oriented and less "looking like a candy bar."<P>Lean Cuisines, in general, are loaded with carbs and relatively little protein, compared to many other better food choices. I'm not saying they're bad, but the last time I checked the labels and content, they couldn't hold a candle to many better nutritional options out there. If you eat over the course of a half an hour, you can eat more than if you finish in 15 or 20 minutes. I wouldn't worry about the bulk of these meals, just the nutritional content if they're repeated twice a day as a regular part of your regime.<P>Hot chocolate has little or no nutritional value and won't fill you up. Dunno what kind of soup you're having, but most of them have a relatively higher price in terms of carbs and fats, for the little protein they pack. And they're not real filling.<P>I know you have the VBG, not the RNY, but even so, my impression is that you want to achieve and maintain fullness for a period of time after a meal, avoid cravings between meals, and retool the eating habits into something nutritionally-sound that you can keep up for life. But what I see in the plan described above looks more like a short-term dieter's approach to food, if you'll forgive my saying so, rather than a changing-lifestyle approach. Maybe I'm projecting, but I remember eating this way early on in my yo-yo dieting career and it didn't really work for me as a pre-op, not in the long run anyway. Dunno if any of this makes sense, and of course it's just my drive-by opinion, but there it is.
   — Suzy C.