Everything about eating changes after you’ve had a gastric bypass. Your new stomach is about the size of a shot glass (yes, it’ll stretch like your old stomach over time) and part of your small intestine that used to be responsible for most nutrient absorption has been bypassed. Because of these major changes, and your recovering from surgery, you’ll have to go on a special diet for your first few months after surgery.
Doctors’ orders can vary. I wasn’t allowed to eat for a couple days after my surgery in 2001 but my friend who had surgery in 2004 was allowed to eat solid food the same day.
After my gastric bypass, I was allowed only clear liquids to begin with. These included water, broth and clear protein drinks. After several days, I could drink other liquids and opted for some heavier protein drinks. Juice had too much sugar and attempting to drink it would cause Dumping Syndrome.
Dumping Syndrome: When you consume too much sugar, it pretty much sends your body into shock. You’ll feel nauseous, start sweating uncontrollably and depending upon whether the sugar passed through your stomach quickly or not, you may either vomit or have a sudden, uncontrollable case of diarrhea. This is very unpleasant to experience.
After about a week on liquids, I was allowed to add pureed foods. The easiest were baby foods as they came in perfect serving sizes. Yes, one small jar of baby food filled me up for hours. I ate baby food exclusively for about a month.
After a month on baby food, I was allowed to start adding solid foods to my diet. I had to be very careful about this though. Although my time on liquids and pureed foods gave my stomach time to heal after the surgery, adding solids was a whole new experience.
When you begin adding solid foods to your diet, you have to be very careful to eat extremely slowly. If you eat too quickly and take in more food than your stomach has a capacity for, you’ll enter into new realms of pain you never knew existed. When you overfill the stomach pouch with solid food, you either have to bear the pain until the food passes (which can take a long time) or you might opt for an unpleasant end to the pain – vomiting some of the food out so that your stomach isn’t overfilled any more. I’ll be honest with you here. I did a lot of vomiting in my first six months of learning how to eat again and it had nothing to do with bulimia but everything to do with pain relief.
Because of the reduced capacity of your stomach and the problems that can arise from overeating, you really need to adopt a grazing habit. Eating six or seven times a day instead of two or three is optimal for good nutrition when you can only consume an ounce or two at a time. As time goes on and your stomach pouch stretches, you might opt to go back to three meals a day. I personally found that several small meals a day worked better for me in the long run and continue to eat that way to this day.
Word of warning: drinking alcoholic beverages after a gastric bypass can lead to some very unpleasant side effects. First there is the dumping syndrome, then the fact that a shot of alcohol will have the instant effect of about ten. Lastly, there is the risk to your liver. Without a large stomach to break down the alcohol, it goes straight to your liver and hits your bloodstream like a Mack truck. I took a shot of Nyquil about a year after my surgery and it knocked me out for 22 hours. That was all well and good when I was sick and in my own bed but it can be mortally dangerous if you’re away from home.
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Dispelling Weight Loss Surgery Myths
Is Gastric Bypass Surgery For You?