What to Eat After Bariatric Surgery

How to know if you’re a candidate for bariatric surgery: have a body mass index (BMI) over 40, which means approximately 100 pounds overweight, have a BMI between 35 to 40 with at least one obesity-related medical condition, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, reflux disease, arthritis or sleep apnea, are unable to achieve sustained (long-term) weight loss by dietary/exercise measures alone

Kinds of bariatric surgery:

Gastric bypass is surgery that helps you lose weight by changing how your stomach and small intestine handle the food you eat.

Laparoscopic gastric banding is surgery places a band around the upper part of your stomach to create a small pouch to hold food.

After bariatric surgery patients are able to eat very little. Immediately after the surgery, patients can only hold about an ounce of food in their stomach at one time.

Most commonly, the gastric bypass diet has four phases to help you ease back into eating solid foods. How quickly you move from one step to the next depends on how fast your body heals and adjusts to the change in eating patterns. You can usually start eating regular foods with a firmer texture about three months after surgery.