Bariatric Surgery Nutrition and Diet: What Should I Eat After Weight Loss Surgery?

Treatment of morbid obesity can be difficult. If all the conventional and alternative ways of losing weight are not proving any success in your case, it is time that you consult your doctor about your excessive weight problem. At first, he may recommend putting you under medically supervised diet control, but if it still doesn’t help you lose weight, then the only way to lose those excess fat cells is through bariatric surgery.

Bariatric surgery is organized into two procedures, gastric banding and gastric bypass surgeries. These types of surgeries involve altering your digestive structure, which in turn helps you lose weight after surgery.

So how exactly can surgical procedures help you lose weight? The answer lies in the drastic change in eating habits and practices of someone who has undergone bariatric surgery. This diet change is mandatory, which means that the patient must strictly follow the surgeon’s guidelines for proper diet. You should keep in mind that this diet change is permanent for the rest of your life once you have bariatric surgery.

The diet mainly suggests that what you eat, how you eat it and how much you eat changes after the surgical procedure. The altered anatomy of his digestive system can no longer function as before the operation. What happens is that the pouch in your stomach becomes the size of a walnut which cannot accommodate much food during digestion unlike before.

If this is the case, what will happen to your body? The body’s natural reaction would be to consume stored fat stores as additional energy and this process will result in further weight loss.

Even if your food intake is reduced, you will still need adequate daily nutrition to avoid malnutrition. A registered dietitian will manage your diet regimen, which includes the type and amount of food eaten with each meal, as well as monitoring the consistency and texture of the food.

There is also a proper diet progression you need to follow, starting with liquids, pureed foods, then soft foods, and finally regular foods. This progression ensures that you are not harmonizing the surgical sites within you during the healing process. You should eat and drink slowly, taking as much time as possible to avoid dumping syndrome which includes nausea, weakness, sweating, fainting, and possibly even diarrhea shortly after eating. Eating too much or too fast than is required can even put your life at risk.