I am asking for medical advice, so please don’t give me any…
I’ve read somewhere that if you eat a large meal your stomach will stretch to accommodate it, but that it will return to it’s normal size once the food is sent ‘down the line’.
But what happens if someone is constantly stretching their stomach, like those guys that eat 50 hot dogs at a single sitting? Will their stomach permanently stretch out? And conversely, if you eat very small meals will your stomach shrink down to a much smaller size than normal?
My wife had gastric surgery and her stomach is now 70% smaller than it was prior to the surgery. She can’t eat very much at one sitting, and feels full after only a few ounces of food. Can someone who diets for years effectively do the same thing by shrinking their stomach smaller and smaller, or is there some limit to how much your stomach can shrink or expand over time.
Stomachs don’t shrink as a response to smaller meals. The idea comes from the tendency to feel full after one has been eating the smaller (more frequent) meals for some time, leading to the (incorrect) speculation that the stomach has shrunk to accommodate the smaller meals. All that has happened is you aren’t as hungry.
Yes, they do. If you’re interested in all the details of this (as well as just about everything else having to do with the alimentary canal), you should check out Mary Roach’s book, Gulp. Like all her books, it will give you more information than you ever needed and it’s absolutely hilarious.