What Can You Expect After Gastric Bypass Surgery?
Author: Donald Saunders
Category: Health
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Obesity surgery has been performed for more than fifty years now and, while it does carry risks the majority of patients are more than satisfied with the results and enjoy a a markedly improved standard of living. There is however a price to pay and you will have to lead a very different lifestyle after surgery which can be very hard unless you are prepared for the change.
Some of the post-operative changes are obvious as the principle behind obesity surgery is to markedly reduce the size of your stomach and physically restrict the amount of food that you can eat. This simply means that your days of enjoying a big meal are over.
But other consequences of weight loss surgery are less obvious.
For example, the days of eating foods that are high in fat or sugar even in small quantities are also over. The consequences of eating such foods can be very unpleasant as their rapid absorption in your now shortened digestive tract can lead to very disagreeable feelings of faintness.
You will also find that the change in your pattern of eating leaves you very short of water so that you have to get used to drinking small amounts of water during the day to avoid dehydration.
This is all very well but just what should you expect from obesity surgery when it comes to weight loss?
Results will vary from person to person but it is important to start by looking at just how post-operative weight loss is measured.
The starting point is to assess just how much excess weight you are carrying and this is done by working out your ideal weight. Using pounds, for a man this is calculated as 106 plus 6 times your height in inches minus 60. For instance, for a man 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 exactly 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 before surgery then his excess weight is 200 pounds. Weight loss is then measured in terms of the percentage of excess weight lost over time. So, if after 6 months he has dropped 100 pounds then his weight loss will be 50 percent.
In most cases you could expect to shed about 50 percent of your excess weight within 6 months of surgery rising to approximately 70 percent one year after surgery and to in the region of 80 percent after 2 years. For the majority of patients weight loss will not continue beyond 2 years and some long-term weight gain will be seen. Long-term weight gain is typically about 10 to 15 percent of your initial excess weight.
Again, as a general rule, if you are very overweight you will lose a greater percentage of your excess weight (possibly as much as 90 to 95 percent) while if you are less overweight you may lose as little as 60 percent in the 2 years after surgery.
You will almost certainly not 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. Nevertheless the vast majority of patients would not agree with this and will tell you that the improvement in their quality of life is simply indescribable.
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Keywords: gastric bypass, weight loss surgery, obesity, overweight, weight loss, surgery, health
View Count: 51
Date Submitted: 8/23/2008
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