When you first discuss the possibility of gastric bypass surgery with your physician, you will be asked to begin a diet to help you lose weight before your surgery.
A gastric bypass diet actually has several different stages.
Before your surgery:
Most surgeons ask their patients to lose up to 8% of their body weight prior to the surgery. A nutritionist will work with you to develop a low-calorie diet to help you lose these pounds. Since the weight loss prior to your surgery will determine your eligibility for the procedure, most weight loss centers provide plenty of ongoing counseling and support. It is vitally important for you to take advantage of this counseling, because most people cannot stay on a low-calorie diet without this support.
Many patients are unable to tolerate sugar after their surgery, (it can cause very uncomfortable symptoms, called the dumping syndrome). For this reason you may be encouraged to eliminate sugar from your diet before your operation. This dietary change will help you adjust to the changed requirements of your body after the weight loss surgery. This can be one of the most difficult parts of the pre-treatment program for people who are addicted to sugar.
Your diet after your gastric bypass surgery:
Following the surgery, you will probably be on a water fast in the first week or so while your body heals. This period of fasting is required to make sure there are no “leaks” in the sutures, which could cause inflammation, infection and serious complications.
During the next stage of your post gastric bypass diet you’ll be allowed clear liquids and broths. You then move to liquid foods, such as yogurt and thin oatmeal. The next stage will allow pureed foods in small quantities, then you’ll move to chopped foods, and eventually you’ll be allowed “real” food, in small bite-sized pieces.
Your nutritional adviser will try to pack as much nutrition into these small, easily digested meals as possible, in order to keep you healthy while you lose weight. Because each person is different, it’s important to follow your nutritional adviser’s advice to prevent nutritional deficiencies, a dangerous complication of bypass surgery.
The diet following your gastric bypass is very limited in calories, and the surgery itself causes a reduction in the amount of nutrients that can be absorbed. For these reasons, it is essential that you stay in touch with your nutritional counselor and take any supplements that are recommended.
Also, some of the risks associated with weight loss surgery are due to patients “cheating,” especially with sugars and fats. You’ll want to stay closely involved with any behavioral counseling that is recommended to get the support you need to follow your gastric bypass diet.
, about her personal experiences with sugar addiction.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Alot of Surgeons recommend doing that, but the problem is alot of pateints just dont want to listen and/or make up excusses for not loosing weight and eating healthy… So ya I agree with this
I had non-laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery in 2001. I lost 100 lbs within a year, gained a lot back after 2005 (but far from all), and now forever reminding myself why I had this surgery in the first place. Last week I couldn’t come up with a comprehensive answer when the gastroenterologist who had just performed an endoscopy on me asked me, so here it is. 1. I hated being fat, and no matter how many reasonable group diets I’ve been on, I would find myself fat again later. 2. I hate myself, and hoped losing weight permanently would make me feel better by looking better. 3. Didn’t want to forget, ever, why I am forever throwing up, dumping, whatever–this was a gift to myself to make myself happy. 4. I think I am self-centered, if these are the best I can come up with to explain why I wanted to undergo a life-changing, risky surgical procedure to lose lots of weight and become ever-mindful about nutritional changes I would also have to make permanent. Never mind that gastric bypass surgery was going to help me be healthy in addition to happy–life is very complicated as it is; high expectations of staying healthy when you realize you can only control so little of it is a conundrum. In other words, I admit I lost sight of why I had a gastric bypass, period.
It is very possible to get back control of poor eating habits, though, feel better, and lose the gained weight without becoming a diva. The loss of all my mandibular teeth, caused by years of un-treated dry mouth (dentists are expensive when you need one and disabled at the same time), is also a common side-effect of gastric bypass. Once the recipient of gastric bypass, you will never absorb nutrients, including medications or OTC vitamins including calcium, again as you did before. My gall bladder, bright green and healthy at the time of gastric bypass surgery, stopped functioning within four months, and took another two months to be removed by the general surgeon who performed bariatric surgery on me. And, after being intravenously hooked up for same-day surgery for the gall bladder removal, waiting buck naked in a hospital gown for several hours, my surgeon was unable to perform the surgery because a patient he previously operated went bad on him and so no one, much less himself, could perform the choleocystectomy. Hence, another month’s wait. A month later the general surgeon asked me not to ever ask him to operate on me again–so I didn’t. Two other surgeons who specialized in abdominal surgery performed the two emergent incisional hernia repairs six years later–I really must hate myself to have consented to all of this abdominal surgery. The hernias? Well, sometimes, when being a caretaker for terminally ill family members, it is necessary to assist moving them when they are too weak, and you will easily forget how weak your own abdominal muscles (not to mention the fusions in the back and neck) have beome. And then, when you need to move furniture, pull stuff out of storage, pack your belongings, renovate the house to make it look nice for real estate showings by painting it, after having spent a lifetime of cleaning up after others, you’ll realize your abdominals haven’t gotten any stronger after repeat abdominal surgery. You have to learn the importance of keep up a great looking front when you’re dying inside, not that anyone beyond a psychiatrist will care (and a great friend, lucky for me). Throw in uremia, a couple bouts of pneumonia, and the granddaddy of all genetic disorders, atherosclerosis requiring CABG, one would think a gastric bypass recipient would be immune to illness and never would want to eat again–did I mention conundrum?
This is called life. It hits you in the face, no matter what you believe is your destiny. And in terms of handling the gift of life, you have a choice to survive or not, and pray you have the strength to move on to a better place when necessary. I hate making excuses, because they don’t make a case. But I majored in listening to others–it’s brain-draining because I’m also permanently anemic, due to malabsorption, a widely known nutritional side-effect of bariatric surgery. I listen no matter how dry my mouth is, how much my gums hurt, how sick I feel when I eat anything, how uncomfortable I feel in my tight clothers, how angry I am of whatever–I made the choice which I thought was the best 10 years ago, and don’t regret it. I just have to work on a better one-line response when a gastroenterologist wants to know why I had it done in the first place.