Foods you ate after first getting braces.

[Wook]

Hello,

I'm going in for my second consultation in a couole of weeks for lingual braces (top and bottom). Getting really excited about starting the long road to having perfect teeth! Just curious as to what you ate after you first got braces and how long it took for you to finally eat "normal" food again.

Thanks!

[Tobilei]

It took me a good 6 weeks to eat normal food again and about 8 before I braved steak (casseroled was okay because it was so soft and chicken and stuff was okay at about 6 weeks or so). Bread took me about 2 or 3 weeks. Before you get to that point you can eat bread dipped in soup until it is really soft, polenta, yoghurt, smoothies, cream of wheat, rice pudding, custard etc, then you graduate onto mince and have things like shepherds pie, spaghetti bolognase, lasagna, soft pasta, bread and sandwiches, salmon and fish.

Some people take a long while to get there (like me) others don't find their eating gets affected much at all.

[Lalaloo]

It's strange, but i was able to eat almost everything the next day. I ate meat, bread, cake, popcorn and even 3-4 peanuts (i know i shouldn't and i won't do it again)

[cs2thecox]

I just had lingual braces put on three days ago...
For dinner that evening I managed mac & cheese. The next morning I had fruit salad (cut in to VERY small bits), tore tiny bits off a croissant, and also had pancakes with stewed apple and ricotta. OK so I was on an overnight business class flight from London to the Middle East STRAIGHT after having my braces put on which wasn't the best idea in the world, but eating soft stuff was fine.

However it's kind of got worse since then! My tongue is kind of getting shredded on my lower brackets so eating is painful as I have to move my tongue around. I think it got shredded worst by having to speak a lot in a meeting the morning after I had the braces put on. Because I hadn't had any pain, I didn't put any wax on, but then ow ow ow!

But last night I managed an Indian takeaway ok despite the pain - rice is easy, and all the meat is cooked so well it just kind of falls apart when you chew so that's ok. Birthday cake (my own!) was also no problem.

Today I'm waxed up with silicone wax (SO much better than the wax I had 17 years ago as a teenager when I had normal braces) and it's much more comfortable. I'm also using sore throat spray under my tongue to numb it a bit and that's great. And mouth ulcer gel to help it all heal.
I have a formal dinner tonight as well, so here goes nothing...

I think I have eBraces, I'm not quite sure. The bottom bits of the brackets sure are pointy though!

[cs2thecox]

Oh, other successful foods in the first few days...
- arabic bread (in little bits) and hummus
- the chicken out a chicken schwarma (but not the bread)
- duck with apple and something else, on a plane
- pasta and roasted veggies
- yogurt, lots and lots of yogurt
- pea and ham soup
- Slim Fast drinks for when you just need to get some calories in and everything else hurts too much!

Unsuccessful foods...
- chopped salad, just too crunchy even though the bits were tiny
- bread that I need to tear with my teeth

[Aneli]

I also ate pretty much the same foods right away. That same day for dinner, in fact, I had chicken and pasta.
Once the soreness kicked in, however, I was eating as little as possible, and foods that I didn't have to chew much. I am past the initial soreness and am eating normally again, though.
I imagine that the cycle will be repeated every month. /:

[Norrie]

I basically ate soups, oatmeal, and risotto for the first few weeks. Now I can manage most things, but there was a time when I thought that I'd never be able to eat real food again.

[cs2thecox]

I broke off a bracket on a piece of chicken on Friday!

OK, so it was a bracket on a crown which are always a bit dodgier, but still.
That was a £200 trip to the emergency dentist to get the elastic band unhooked so I could get the bracket out safely...

Thankfully just stuck back on free of charge by my ortho.

Back to the soup and pasta for me, just in case. Sigh.

[LingualWearer]

I lived off smoothies for my first 1.5 weeks after getting linguals. Lost almost 10 lbs which was great since I was going on vacation soon after

[orchid]

Well, I'm only one week in but it has become a bit easier to eat now. I've lived on soups, smoothies and tiny pieces of sandwiches the whole week. I don't have brackets on my back molars or wisdom teeth so I use them to chew tiny bits of food.

[Kirst29]

I'm on day 3 of linguals on top arch only (for now!) and have managed to eat soup with sliced bread, cereal, some chocolate, ice cream, mashed potato and meatballs! My front teeth are particularly tender so I'm steering clear of anything I have to bite into. Also my molars now don't meet because of my lower lateral incisors touching my upper brackets so I have to be really careful not to chew too vigorously/strongly