Nutrition while recovering from surgery

TallGlassOfQuirky

I have been on MFP for so long (September 2010, despite what the date on my avatar says - I reincarnated as this user) that it sort of seems wrong for me to ask a question on the general message boards - I feel like I should know all of the answers or at least be able to search well enough to find them.

I don't, though, and although I have a brilliant group of friends on my FL, only a limited number have experience with recovering from surgery and how it relates to nutrition/fitness, so...

Here's the deal. I lost a crap-ton of weight on MFP. I gained a bit of it back and have been eating a moderate deficit and doing moderate exercise to get back to where I was happiest (not my lightest, but about halfway between there and where I am now). No big deal. I know how the calories-in-calories-out thing works. I'm a veteran here and, honestly, I am at a healthy weight now anyway so that's not really a big deal even if it was a struggle to get that balance right.

*Insert giant wrench in my whole world*

I had emergency back surgery last week. They shaved off a bit of bone and cut out a part of a disc and I am hopefully going to regain full strength and mobility in my left leg as the nerve that was (in the surgeon's words) "in pretty bad shape" heals.

The surgeon told me that I should *absolutely NOT* eat at a deficit while I am healing (not sure if this means the full 3 months of recovery they estimate or just the first 4-6 weeks - I will find that out at my follow up appointment, I guess). This might be different for people who are very overweight but in my case anyway I am supposed to consume every last calorie my body burns.

There are a couple of problems with this idea, though.

1) I don't know what my maintenance calories are. My TDEE *before* my surgery was between 2300-2400 calories because I exercised regularly. For the next month, however, all I can do is hobble around with a cane or walker and am not allowed to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk. Do I recalculate my TDEE based on a sedentary lifestyle for now, or do I assume that my body is actually working quite hard in the background to heal all that slicing and dicing that was done? So... how many calories do I eat to not be in a deficit?

2) I have no appetite. At all. Just to put this in perspective: Massaman curry is probably my favorite food on the planet. In two days, I ate less than half of what my boyfriend got for me as a single portion. Peanut butter is also a favorite food. I don't even want that. I don't want chocolate. Or ice cream. Or... well... anything. I do better with smoothies or drinkable things because just the idea of eating doesn't appeal to me and drinking isn't quite so unappealing, but I don't think I can stomach the idea of 2000+ calories worth of smoothies.

I have found that I can eat a small portion of something if someone (my son or my boyfriend usually) gives it to me and watches me, MAKES me eat it. A Greek yogurt cup, a string cheese, or a piece of fruit are the usuals. There's one type of protein bar (I can't have gluten) that isn't bad that I can sometimes make myself choke down. Even trying really hard today, though, that puts me at less than 1000 calories and I know I need to do better.

So... I need ideas of easy to eat, high calorie (and preferably high protein, since that's important while I heal) gluten free foods that also don't require a lot of cooking, since I am not allowed to load the dishwasher and it's kind of hard to get to the pans, anyway.

I also need advice on how many calories to eat to avoid a deficit (if it helps, I just turned 29, am a 5'10" woman, and weigh between 170-175 pounds with around 25-ish% BF)