Maintaining weight after surgery

skylercain1581 wrote: »

Ok. I love food. Like a lot! I just got a tonsillectomy and I'm 25. I started out weighing 222 lbs and of course am on liquid the last 4 days. In four days I now weigh 216.4 lbs. How do I maintain a healthy diet when I miss food so much? I still have a week left until I can eat normal again. Just want to set goals.

I'm confused.

If you can't eat solid food because of doctor's orders about the tonsillectomy, then you need to tough it out, I'm sorry to say, until you're allowed medically to eat solid food. Until you can eat solid food, eat the most nutritious liquid foods possible, in order to prioritize healing. If the surgery was very recent, you should not be trying to lose weight during the acute part of healing from the surgery: Your body needs calories and nutrition to heal. I understand that it may be a challenge to maintain weight, if on a medically-limited diet because of surgery (or another medical requirement).

It's long past, but I don't remember being limited to liquids after tonsillectomy, and a quick web search of reputable sites suggests that current guidelines are similar (for an ordinary tonsillectomy, unless you had some unusual factors). That was to eat soft foods, not sharp/scratchy ones; and avoid things that are sour, acidic, spicy-hot, or very salty, because those can cause pain. So, if that's what you were told, it seems like you could be eating things like mild soups, mashed potatoes/mild gravy, macaroni and cheese, scrambled eggs, yogurt, pudding, gelatin, soft fruits (bananas, for example), creamy nut butter, white rice, thoroughly cooked or pureed non-fibrous non-acidic veggies, etc.

If you're eating only liquids not because of the tonsillectomy, but because you think you need to be liquids-only in order to lose weight, that's a completely incorrect assumption. You can eat any foods you like while losing weight, as long as they add up to a calorie level less than the number of calories needed to maintain your current weight.

Many people do find that a way of eating that's mostly highly-processed foods (or so-called junk foods) isn't very filling, so eating that way can make it harder to lose weight because of appetite/issues. That doesn't necessarily mean eating zero highly-processed foods is required, though - just moderating them, and including some regular basic foods too (meat, fish, dairy, veggies, fruits, wholegrains).