What Can You Expect After Weight Loss Surgery?

Obesity surgery has been around for well over fifty years now and, although there are of course risks most patients are more than satisfied with the outcome and enjoy a a vastly improved standard of living. However, there is a price to to be paid and you will have to lead a very different lifestyle following surgery which may be very difficult unless you are prepared for the change.

Some of the post-surgical changes are obvious as the principle behind gastric bypass surgery is to markedly reduce the volume of your stomach and to restrict the amount of food which you can eat. This means that the days of enjoying a big meal are over.

However other consequences of gastric bypass surgery are not quite so obvious.

For example, even in small quantities your days of eating foods which are high in sugar or fat are also over. The penalties for eating foods of this nature can be very unpleasant as their rapid absorption in your newly shortened digestive tract can produce very unpleasant feelings of faintness.

You will also find that the dramatic change in your eating pattern leaves you very short of water so that you have to get used to drinking small amounts of water during the day if you are to avoid becoming dehydrated.

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

Results will of course vary from one individual to the next but it is important to start by understanding just how post-operative weight loss is measured.

Here you need to start by calculating just how much excess weight you are carrying and this means working out your ideal weight. Measured in pounds, for a man this is 106 plus 6 times your height in inches less 60. As an example, for a man 5ft 10ins tall the ideal weight will be 106 + 6 x (70 – 60) which works out at 166 pounds. For women the principle is the same but this time a women's ideal weight is 100 plus 5 times her height measured in inches minus 60.

So, 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. We would then measure weight loss in terms of the weight loss as a percentage of excess weight over time. Thus, if after 6 months he has dropped 100 pounds then his weight loss will be 50 percent.

In general you could expect to drop around 50 percent of your excess weight within 6 months of surgery climbing to approximately 70 percent one year after surgery and to around 80 percent at the end of 2 years. For the majority of patients however weight loss will cease after 2 years and some long-term weight gain will be seen. Longer term weight gain is typically around 10 to 15 percent of your initial excess weight.

Once again, in general, if you are grossly overweight you will shed a greater percentage of your excess weight (perhaps as much as 90 or 95 percent) while if you are not so heavily overweight you may shed as little as 60 percent within 2 years of surgery.

You will rarely lose 100 percent of your excess weight and are not going to reach your ideal weight as a result of surgery. Consequently, it is sometimes said that obesity surgery is not a complete success. In spite of this the overwhelming majority of patients would not agree with this and will tell you that the improvement in their quality of life is simply unbelievable. Something that is clearly evident to anyone who has seen the many gastric bypass before and after pictures posted on the internet nowadays.