Gastric Bypass is a major weight loss surgery that helps patients lose weight safely. Dramatic weight loss is a serious experience that takes its toll on your body’s mental and physical health. To help promote healthy weight loss, your bariatric health care team has a rigid and strict diet plan that you must adhere to moving forward after your weight loss surgery.

Your new diet plan promotes new healthy eating habits that you must promote and extend your weight loss. After your gastric bypass surgery, your dietician provides you with a strict schedule for the types of foods you can have and their correct portion sizes. This diet outline also shows you when you can progress and add new things to your diet.

Here are some food and diet guidelines after your gastric bypass surgery:

• Hydrate with a minimum of 64 ounces of water
• Never drink during your meals.
• Wait 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after
• Eat a protein-focused diet
• Avoid food with high amounts of sugar and fats
• Avoid alcohol and tobacco products
• Helps prevent addiction transfer

The listed health guidelines are great habits to promote a healthy lifestyle after your gastric bypass surgery.

Immediately after surgery, dehydration is a major concern.  Therefore, maintaining a liquid intake is crucial for healing and optimal health.

Gastric Bypass Pureed Food

Before the pureed food stage, you will have a strictly liquid diet after your gastric bypass surgery.  The all-liquid stage lasts between 1 to 2 weeks by evolving from clear liquids to an all-liquid diet in the span of 1 to 2 weeks.

Your all liquid diet can have include:

• Broth
• Sugar-free jello or popsicles
• Unsweetened juice
• Decaffeinated coffee or tea

After your bariatric health care team approves your overall health progress, you can move toward pureed food.  Pureed food is food that is strained and has a mashed-up texture and consistency.

The pureed food stage is important as your body continues to heal from surgery and the pureed food texture is soft and easy to digest while your body heals.

When you prepare your pureed foods, you need to make sure the foods have a smooth texture that resembles a thick liquid or smooth paste.  You want to avoid any solid pieces of food.

During the pureed stage, you can eat many small meals a day.  Your meals can range from 3 to 6 small meals.  You should take your time and eat slowly.

Your meals should have between 4 to 6 tablespoons of food.  Take your time as you eat to avoid any digestion problems.

Some ideal pureed food choices include:

• Pureed lean ground beef, chicken, or fish
• Pureed scrambled eggs
• Strained cream soups
• Pureed cooked vegetables and soft fruits
• Pureed cottage cheese

To help add some flavor to your pureed food, you can also add a liquid.  Some liquids you can add are:

• Water
• Broth
• Sugar-free juice
• Skim milk

Gastric Bypass Soft Food Diet

After a few weeks on your pureed diet, your dietician will promote you to a soft food diet.  Soft foods consist of small and easy to chew foods.

For your meals, you eat between 3 to 5 small daily meals.  Your meals should be between 1/3 to ½ cup of food.  These portions allow your stomach to digest food safely while you are still recovering from surgery.

During the soft food, the stage makes sure you are eating slowly and mindfully chewing each bite of food to prevent swallowing and digesting issues.

Safe soft foods you can have are:

• Eggs
• Cottage cheese
• Rice
• Soft, fresh fruit and cooked vegetables
• Lean beef or chicken

Food to Eat After Gastric Bypass

When you progress to the final stage of solid food two months after your gastric bypass weight loss surgery, you are free to have any food.  With this newfound freedom comes an abundance of food types and textures that may prove difficult on your stomach.

To avoid any food issues, it is best to slowly incorporate new foods into your diet, chew each new food slowly, and listen to your body’s response.

During the solid food stage, you will decrease your meals to 3 meals a day.  Your portions will also increase to 1 to 1-1/2 cups of food.  To prevent overeating, you must stop immediately when you feel full to prevent your stomach from stretching.

Each patient is different in terms of what they can tolerate after surgery.  If you are concerned about including your solid food diet, discuss your questions with your bariatric dietician.  They will provide a list of foods that are safe to try as you navigate through this stage.

Some important rules to keep in mind throughout this process are to take your time and not rush along this process.  Try new foods slowly and stop eating immediately if you feel any pain, discomfort, or nausea.

If you experience any negative symptoms after eating new food, you may tolerate this food item later.  Along your body time to adjust and heal more and eventually you will probably try this food again without any problems.

Food to Avoid after Gastric Bypass

During the solid food stage, which is usually 2 months after gastric bypass surgery, you will have the ability to eat almost every type of food.  With this new food, choice freedom comes many uncertain risks and potential problems.

To help lessen any potential health problems, there is a list of food groups that you should avoid.

Foods that typically cause issues and should be avoided include:

• Fried Foods
• Carbonated Drinks
• Red meat
• Bread
• Spicy foods

Some of the listed food items are difficult to digest and cause many negative health effects after surgery—other things, along with being very uncomfortable to eat, offer no nutritional value, and are empty calories.

In the end, it is your choice about what types of food you wish to indulge upon, but keeping a balanced approach is an intelligent way to promote and continue your new healthy lifestyle.