Can I Eat Normally After Bariatric Surgery?

This is a common question and, not unsurprisingly, often leads to a degree of anxiety either before or after weight loss surgery.

Immediately after surgery we recommend building up slowly from liquids to a soft diet to ‘normal’ solids within 4-6 weeks.

In the long term the ‘clinical’ answer is that we want patients to be able to eat normally textured, healthy food in small amounts after surgery.

However, after the gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomy procedures, your stomach capacity is significantly reduced and if you try and eat a ‘normal’ sized, 3 course meal you will probably struggle! If you eat too much, too quickly you are likely to experience some abdominal discomfort and the food may not go down very easily.

This is partly what the surgery is designed to do. You will also experience a change in digestive hormones after surgery that will also lead you to feel full quicker (‘early satiety’) and maybe even a little nauseous on occasions after meals.

The bottom line is that you lose weight after weight loss surgery because you eat less. The surgery helps you to do this.