What Else You Should Expect After Bariatric Surgery?

Follow up appointments.

After you go home from the hospital, you will be expected to make and keep follow up appointments with your healthcare provider. This is to ensure that you are recovering well and that your surgery is successful.  

Most bariatric surgery patients will also be asked to make an appointment with a registered dietician. This will help you fully understand how you should be eating and what you should be eating as well. This is a very important step to ensure that you are allowing your body to work in conjunction with your new surgery. 

Up to 12 weeks after. 

After your surgery and up to about 12 weeks later, you will be instructed to follow a very restricted diet. You will start off with liquids first and then you will be allowed to add ground or soft foods. As your body heals and you start adjusting to the diet, you can start adding in small amounts of regular food. 

Your stomach will start shrinking in size and as this happens you will only be able to take in very small amounts of food. Your stomach will be about the size of a walnut. You will be instructed to eat several very small meals throughout the day. If you eat too much food or you eat too fast, you may experience vomiting, nauseous  and pain under your breastbone. 

As the stomach adjusts, you will find that eventually you will be able to increase the amount of food you eat, but it will never be very much. Getting back into your old habits of eating will cause you too much pain and discomfort.

Three to six months after surgery.

Within three months, you will have healed enough to start eating more types of food. During the three to six month phase after surgery, you will still experience some side effects. This is due in large part to the body reacting to rapid weight loss in such a short period of time. You should expect to experience the following during this healing time after weight loss surgery,

1. Feeling cold much of the time.
2. Mood swings/mood changes.
3. Body aches and pains.
4. Thinning hair and hair loss due to depleted nutritional intake.
5. Feeling tired much of the time.
6. Faintness.
7. Dry skin.

After surgery, you can expect that you will lose about fifty percent of your weight in the first two years. With the right diet and following the doctor’s orders, you can expect that you can keep this weight off long term without too much difficulty. If, however, you get back into your old habits of eating, you can gain that weight back faster than you lost it.

In addition, there are a few other things that you should know about this surgery. When you realize that losing the weight may not be all you have to do after surgery, you should take care of yourself.