Eating can be a challenge for the first few days to a couple of weeks after you get your braces! They just seem so weird, uncomfortable, and a little painful. Trying to eat just doesn't seem to work and you can't chew properly!
When you get braces on your teeth, you may find that your teeth don't touch the way they did before when you bite down, which changes the way you chew. As your treatment continues and your teeth shift, you may continually need to adapt to biting and chewing in a slightly different way.
How long will eating be a challenge? Most people find that they are more comfortable and can chew food more properly in 2 to 3 weeks after the braces are put on. Patience is the key!
Here are some tips on how to make eating easier for you:
1. Slow down. Chew slowly and carefully, and cute your food into small pieces. Don't bite into your food, forget about taking big bites of anything, or wolfing down your food. The key word here is: SLOW!
2. Stick to soft foods. Eventually you'll be able to eat steak again. But for the nest few weeks, lean toward soft foods.
3. Avoid stringy foods, especially if you have a palate expander. You may love to wind your spaghetti around your fork, but for now it would be better for you to cut it into small pieces, or it will get wound around your brackets. Also, be careful with foods that get stringy when they melt, like mozzarella cheese.
4. Forget the nuts and seeds. These will get stuck in your brackets and drive you crazy until you finally brush your teeth and floss to get them out. Ditto for the hulls of popcorn. Sticky foods will likely stick to your brackets and be hard to clean off. You also want to avoid biting into anything hard that may break or pop off a bracket. Remember they are on your teeth pretty good, but they still are fragile so take care of your new braces!
5. Bite with the side of your mouth. It may be virtually impossible to bit into anything with your front teeth for a while. Get used to biting with your side teeth, instead. Besides, if you try to bite into a burrito with your front teeth, your front brackets will probably get plastered with tortilla!
6. Speaking of burritos, beware of anything with large hidden chunks of meat or vegetables, like burritos or sandwich wraps. Bite carefully into those types of foods so that you don't choke, or better yest, eat them with a fork and knife instead.
7. Sushi will be very challenging and could gag you. You should probably cut it in half instead of trying to pop an entire piece of it into your mouth.
8. Treat yourself to something cold, such as ice cream, popsicles, or frozen yogurt. The cold temporarily dulls the soreness and pain from your braces.
9. Develop an arsenal of soft food recipes. You don't need to sentence yourself to boring soups and shakes. There are several cookbooks that can help you prepare healthy, delicious meals, such as
The Braces Cookbook,
The Braces Cookbook 2,
Tender Teeth Cookbook, and
Surviving Braces.
10. If eating becomes too uncomfortable because of mouth sores or poking brackets, apply plenty of dental wax!
