How do you know it's over?

I'm wondering if we physically know when our malabsorption ends and we start absorbing all of our calories? Also, what is the usual timeframe, like 18 months or 2 years that we have malabsorption? I seem to be able to eat a lot more lately, about 1000-1100 calories a day and sometimes I eat even 1200 calories. Is this normal at 8 1/2 months out?

Sounds like a normal and healthy amount to eat to me.

We don't know exactly when the malabsorption ends.  It probably ends at about 18 to 24 months out.  But it's a gradual thing.  It's not like one day you only absorb 70% of the calories you eat and the next day you absorb 100%.  It's more like, right now you might be absorbing 80% of what you eat.  In another month, you might be absorbing 82%.  When you're a year out, you might be absorbing 85%.

Thanks Kelly. I'll have to read up on this.

Your pouch grows and by now it is getting close to its maximum size, so you can eat more.  For a long time, the extra calories work out fine and weight gain does not happen. 

For me, I saw a dramatic difference at 30 months out.  I started gaining about a pound a week and had to make a concentrated effort to stop the gaining.  That is when I believe my malabsorption ended.

I sure hope my pouch doesn't grow any more. I eat so much that I worry about being able to eat as much as I did before surgery if it gets any bigger. Yikes about the gain. So worried this will fail like my band so my increased hunger and quantities scare me.

What Kelly and White Dove said is what you hear most often from vets, so that's what I pay most attention to.

My surgeon has been pretty adamant since I first met him that malabsorption is mostly a myth in RNY. As with anything, there are conflicting scientific opinions, and he feels there is a little initial malabsorption of calories, and long term malabsorption of vitamins, minerals, etc. But he said caloric malabsorption just doesn't happen the way many believe. In addition to being a surgeon, he was president of the ASMBS, so he obviously knows more than I do.

But to me, it doesn't matter. I track everything I eat. If I gain a few, I cut back. If I lose a few too many, I eat a little more. I think our bodies change when we get older, regardless.

Thanks and interesting. I'm going to try to read more about this. Just trying to head off weight gain.

The good and bad thing about pouch size is that it does not make any difference in losing and maintaining your weight.  The thing that counts is calories.  It reaches full size somewhere between six months and one year after RNY surgery.