Avoiding overeating is crucial after gastric sleeve surgery. Your stomach is now much smaller, and hence it easily fills up; however, you may not experience that symptom of fullness-your body will signal you in a different manner that you have had enough. We find the following tips useful to stop overeating and hence we share them with you.
Our Tips to Avoid Overeating
20:20:20:20 Rule
This has been, quite frankly, a simple rule that has revolutionized our eating. Here’s how to do it: Take a Bite: Your bite should be the size of a 20p coin. Chew: You need to chew every bite 20 times to allow your smaller stomach to digest your food more easily. Pause: You need to put your fork and knife down for 20 seconds in between bites. Slow Down: Try to take at least 20 minutes eating your meal.
It helps you to eat slowly, allowing your body enough time to send signals when it is full, thus avoiding overeating.
Stop When Full
One habit that you need to work on is stopping when you feel full. If there are still food left on your plate, it is better to bin the remaining food than to risk overeating. Your body’s cue will be different now, so listen to it when it tells you to stop.
Use Kids’ Bowls
Portion control is key, and kids’ bowls are one of the most successful portion control methods. You will notice throughout our recipe pages how often we use these bowls as they are perfect in size for us. Smaller plates promote not over-serving and not overeating.
Meal Prepping
We plan and portion our meals in advance and freeze them. All we do is take out a meal on the day that we want to eat it. Meal prepping helps us stay portioned right and avoid waste, which translates to not overeating.
Hydrate
Drinking water is a good way to fill up between meals since it helps in hydration without adding calories. It’s important also in relation to meeting your hydrating goals. We find keeping ourselves well-hydrated reduces the urge to snack unnecessarily.
Eat Regularly
Skipping meals can lead to greater hunger later, and the temptation to overeat. This can be tricky if you no longer feel hunger the same way you did before surgery, which happens to us often. We use a phone alarm to remind ourselves that we need to eat at regular times. By keeping your meals on schedule, you’re less likely to overeat.
What Happens If You Overeat?
From our experience, one of two things will happen if you overeat:
You’ll be sick: Overeating may make you vomit, but you will most likely feel normal again right after.
You are going to feel terrible: The alternative is that you feel too full and uncomfortable for hours-like, worst food coma in the world. Moving will become impossible, and you will be sick all the while, yet nothing comes up. Definitely something we try to avoid at all costs.
This is not a long post, but we wanted to share with you some helpful tips that have helped us avoid overeating since having gastric sleeve surgery. In this post, we will be sharing with you some tips that have helped us manage our portions, which keeps us on track with our weight loss.