What Should You Expect After Gastric Bypass Surgery?

Obesity surgery has been performed for well over fifty years now and, despite the fact that it does carry risks most patients are very satisfied with the results and enjoy a an enormously improved standard of living. But there is a price to pay and you will need to lead a very different lifestyle following surgery which may be very difficult unless you are prepared for the change.

Some of the post-operative changes are obvious as the basic principle behind gastric bypass surgery is to drastically reduce the size of your stomach and physically restrict the amount of food which you can eat. This simply means that your days of enjoying a big meal are gone.

However some of the other consequences of surgery are less obvious.

For instance, the days of eating foods which are high in fat or sugar even in small quantities are also over. The consequences of eating foods of this nature can be most unpleasant as rapid absorption in your now shortened digestive tract can lead to very unpleasant feelings of faintness.

You will also find that the change in your pattern of eating leaves you very short of water so that you must get used to drinking small quantities of water throughout the day in order to avoid becoming dehydrated.

This is all well and good but just what should you expect from weight loss surgery in terms of weight loss?

Weight loss will of course vary from person to person but it is important to start by understanding just how post-operative weight loss is measured.

The starting point is to calculate just how much excess weight you are carrying and this is done by working out your ideal weight. Using pounds, for a man this will be 106 plus 6 times your height in inches less 60. As an example, for a man who is 5ft 10ins tall the ideal weight will be 106 + 6 x (70 – 60) which works out at 166 pounds. In the case of women the principle is the same but this time a women's ideal weight is 100 plus 5 times her height in inches minus 60.

Thus, if we take the example of the man above and give him a weight of 366 pounds then he is carrying 200 pounds in excess weight. From this starting point we will measure weight loss in terms of the weight loss as a percentage of excess weight over time. Therefore, if at the end of 6 months his weight has fallen by 100 pounds then his weight loss will be 50 percent.

In general you could expect to shed approximately 50 percent of your excess weight within 6 months of surgery climbing to approximately 70 percent one year after surgery and to in the region of 80 percent at the end of 2 years. For most patients weight loss will stop after 2 years and indeed some long-term weight gain will be evident. Longer term weight re-gain is usually around 10 to 15 percent of your excess weight.

Again, in general, if you are very overweight you will lose a greater percentage of your excess weight (perhaps as much as 90 or 95 percent) while if you are less overweight you may drop as little as 60 percent in the 2 years following surgery.

You will almost certainly not shed all of your excess weight and are not going to achieve your ideal weight through surgery. As a consequence, it is sometimes said that gastric bypass surgery is not completely successful. Despite this the vast majority of patients would not agree with this and would say that the change in their quality of life is simply incredible. Something that is clearly evident to anybody who has looked at the many gastric bypass pictures posted on the internet these days.