I had some pretty heavy surgery on 31st Jan and am expected to take 6 weeks to make my initial physical recovery, followed by 6 months to get "back to normal" whatever that is!

Nobody seems to be able to give me any consistent advice to do with my post-op diet, whether it's OK to carry on with weight loss or if I should eat maintenance for the recovery period to give my body more to work with. It kind of doesn't matter as my appetite hasn't totally returned yet, and I don't have an appetite for the kinds of foods my body would be asking for anyway. Am trying to get plenty of iron and protein but tracking what I am eating has gone out of the window with all the stuff going on.

Has anyone ever had any advice on this? My medical team seem to be under the impression they can answer every question with variations on "take it easy" "do what you can" and "moderation". If I need to get up to maintenance for 6 weeks that would be useful to know.

Rose: I don't have any real credentials here, but am an RN and RM (midwife), so deal with nutrition a lot. Not knowing what surgery you had, I think generally you want to be at maintenance, with lots of nutritional healing. I think calories are needed for healing, but not so much that you gain weight. But I don't think slightly lower will be a problem with nutritional balance.
Foods naturally high in vitamin c, and proteins are what are needed for healing in general. If you lost much blood, then high iron foods, taken with high acid and high vitamin c foods are recommended.
WHile vitamin supplements are ok, getting high quality foods will give you all the micronutrients that help.
HOpe you are recovering well, and your sometimes "too helpful" family isn't force feeding you all kinds of stuff you don't want!

Thanks. Luckily my family is on a cruise for 3 weeks so I've not had any help. A little help would have been useful, but not all the "help". With very limited access to the shops and a small appetite it's been more than easy to stick to plan, if I can even manage to eat that much. I do need to change my nutrition balance, though, have been trying to eat more protein and definitely iron. They couldn't get any blood out of me when it came to the post-op blood count as my veins were all messed up, so I'm sure I should have had prescription iron and missed out on it. I usually get giant supplements after surgery, seem to have managed to fight my way back from totally grey and washed out to a reasonable lip and gum colour with just food.

I just got given a leaflet that said it's super-important I don't gain any weight because they have removed skin from my torso and I don't have enough slack to put any weight on, so now I'm scared to eat too little and feared to eat too much! I think I will need to jack up my calories a little bit, maybe a bit closer to the 1800 maintenance, perhaps 1600, see how we go.

Hi Rose,

I wish you a speedy, uneventful recovery! I hope that you are feeling better as each day of your recovery goes by - soft

The info that fatmad gave you is pretty much what I was instructed to do after surgery, a little over a year ago.

I was instructed to eat at maintenance level for a minimum of 8 to 10 weeks post op, eating every 2-3 hours to keep blood sugar stable:
Lean proteins, lots of veggies, 2 servings of fruit per day, and whole grains. Staying away from 'processed' foods as much as possible.

For the first couple weeks I had ZERO appetite most of the time; the doc told me to drink smoothies until I had an appetite: made with 2% milk, almond or soy milk, veggies, fruit & protein powder.

Please keep in mind that everyone is different, and I am not a doctor or a nutritionist.

Sending tons of healing vibes your way!