Learning What (and How) to Eat After Bariatric Surgery

When you take a step like bariatric surgery, you’re making great progress toward addressing your future health.

While weight loss surgery is incredibly effective in giving you the leg up you need toward eliminating those unhealthy pounds, how and what you eat after your surgery plays an equally valuable role in your success.

To help you navigate eating after bariatric surgery, our team of weight loss experts here at Advanced Surgeons pulled together a few points you should consider before embarking on your road to better health.

Portion control

Whether you have a gastric bypass, gastric sleeve, gastric band, or gastric balloon, the key to eating after your weight loss procedure lies first in portion control.

Each of these approaches to weight loss shrinks the size of your stomach so there’s less volume. As a result, you need to pay close attention to portion control.

Instead of thinking of eating as an opportunity to pile your plate high and indulge, we want you to think of eating as more of a grazing affair in which you eat much smaller portions throughout the day, with more frequency.

This grazing style of eating allows you to get the nutrients you need, tackles any pangs of hunger, and keeps your digestive system running smoothly.

Concentrate on nutrients, not calories

The state of nutrition in the United States is quite worrisome as we now consume, on average, 3,600 calories per day, which is far higher than we need. Making matters worse, much of what is available are processed foods that are calorie-rich and nutrient-poor.

After your bariatric surgery, we’re going to ask that you pay close attention to the nutritional content of the foods that you eat.

Not only will you be eating less (about 1,000 calories per day), it’s very important that what you do eat supplies your body with the vitamins and minerals it needs to support great health.

So instead of processed foods, you’re going to shift your diet toward fruits, vegetables, grains, and proteins, which pack a far more nutritional punch.

How you eat (and drink) matters

While eating less and changing the foods you eat are important steps, so, too, is how you eat. After your weight loss surgery, we want you to eat more mindfully, taking much smaller bites and slowly chewing the food.

Not only does this prevent you from eating mindlessly, but by processing your foods through chewing, you can help your digestive processes.

We also want you to ditch the straws, which can introduce air into your digestive tract. This extra air can be very uncomfortable when your stomach is smaller.