Maintaining the recommended diet following a Gastric Bypass or Lap-Band surgery is crucial to the patient’s success and long-term improved health. Specific guidelines will be created for each patient following surgery, and the diet will be extremely mild due to the new stomach pouch and Roux intestinal limb, as they require time to heal. A patient’s new diet can be compared with how parents oversee and control what their toddler eats. Just as a child has a smaller stomach than an adult, a post-operative patient with a stomach pouch will only be able to consume a very small amount of food at one time. It’s important to get all of the nutrition you can when you eat, so you’ll want to avoid eating “junk food,” just like a parent may not allow their toddler to eat potato chips or other snacks an hour or more before dinner.

This kind of food intake monitoring goes hand in hand with the entire WeightWise program, as bariatric surgery is not a one-step cure for obesity. These diet restrictions must be remembered and followed for the rest of the patient’s life. Patients who decide to have the surgery reversed at some point in their future, for the most part, regain the excess weight. This is very damaging, as it results in the person going through two major surgeries with virtually no positive outcome.

Before deciding to go through bariatric surgery you must be sure that you are willing and able to commit to the change in diet and lifestyle. This is a life-changing decision and so should be seriously and sincerely considered and researched.