What’s the Best Diet After Gastric Bypass Surgery?

Losing weight inevitably requires alterations in dietary habits.  When it comes to diet after gastric bypass, the changes are not a matter of choice but of necessity.  The gastric bypass surgery changes the physical structure of the stomach and reduces its overall size.

This reduces the total amount of time and surface area available for the absorption of nutrients and calories, which is the key to how a gastric bypass causes weight loss.

It also means that someone with a gastric bypass is at a far greater risk for nutritional deficiencies that can negatively affect health.  Each patient is a little different, but the diet after gastric bypass or mini gastric bypass follows these general rules.

Immediately after surgery, patients are on a liquid diet including broths, juices and water.  From there they move on to a semi-liquid diet.  This may include low fat milk (1% or skim), blended fruits and soups, blended beans, and oatmeal or cream of wheat (thinned).

A daily multivitamin with iron and zinc will be added at this stage and must be taken every single day.  Sugary foods of almost any kind are not permitted.  After the semi-solid stage, the patient can move to semi-solid foods.

Examples foods from this stage include poached eggs, sugarless yogurts, canned fruits, cottage cheese and non-red, ground, lean meats. The final and lasting stage is solid foods.

The foods that are tolerated here include lowfat cottage cheese and yogurts, fish and lean meats and egg whites.  The key is to maintain protein levels while limiting fat and sugar.