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A bowl of salad with a fork.

Your Diet

Bariatric surgery changes the way you digest and absorb food, so you must carefully follow the recommendations outlined in the bariatric surgery guide for the rest of your life to maximize weight loss and stay healthy.

"Proper nutrition plays a key factor into the success of our patients. Choosing the right foods, at the correct amounts, can make all the difference."

Lianne Stephanos, MS, RD, LD Bariatric Clinical Dietitian

Immediately after surgery, your stomach pouch will be about 1 ounce, or 1-2 tablespoons in size. As you adjust to this very small capacity, you may find that just 2-3 teaspoons of food will fill you up. This is expected.

You may also find that you are able to eat more of some types of foods than others. That is OK, too.

Over time, your stomach pouch will stretch. By six months after surgery, it may hold 8 ounces, or 1 cup.

In the long-term, the size of your pouch is likely to be 8-12 ounces, or 1 to 1 1/2 cups. This will limit the amount of food you can eat at one time for the rest of your life.

To ensure optimal nutrition, you’ll need to take multivitamins and mineral supplements for the rest of your life. You’ll also need to focus on healthy food choices to get the most nutrition from small amounts of food.

Post-Surgery Diet Tips

After surgery, you will follow a five-step diet to allow your body to heal and to gently introduce food to your digestive system.

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Step 1

Step 1

While you are admitted to the hospital you will start a clear-liquid diet. Clear liquids include:

    • Chicken, beef, and turkey broth
      Sugar free Jell-O
    • Clear, zero-calorie beverages
    • Decaf tea or decaf coffee
    • Water
Next: Step 2
Step 2

Step 2

Upon discharge from the hospital, you can advance to a full liquid diet as tolerated. A full liquid diet includes:

    • Protein shakes
    • Low-fat milk
    • Plain low-fat yogurt
    • Low-fat strained soups

These liquids need to be sugar-free and low-fat. Patients will remain on the full liquid diet for one week.

Next: Step 3
Step 3

Step 3

Advance to pureed foods, which have the consistency of applesauce or pudding. You can puree meat, vegetables, and fruits in a blender or food processor. It’s very important to ensure that food is pureed well to prevent blockage in your digestive system.

Patients will remain on pureed foods for about two weeks.

Next: Step 4
Step 4

Step 4

Advance to a soft texture diet in which you cook meat, vegetables, and fruit to the point you can mash them with a fork. During this step, you may try new foods to see if you can tolerate them.

If you have a bad reaction to a new food, don’t give up. Wait and try it again in a few weeks.

Each person’s tolerance to different types of food varies. The only way to discover your tolerance is by trial and error.

During this stage, taking small bites and chewing your food completely is important to aid digestion.

Next: Step 5
Step 5

Step 5

Advance to a regular diet. Gradually increase your intake of textured foods until you can tolerate solid textures. For example, instead of mashing down steamed vegetables, simply chew them up very well.

In this last step, focus on a well-balanced meal consisting of 2-3 ounces of lean protein, ½-1 cup vegetables, and 2 tablespoons carbohydrate.

Next: Step 1

As your body heals from the surgery, this five-step recovery diet will help you meet your protein and liquid requirements and, later, your nutritional needs.

It is critical that you follow the diet’s steps as outlined above to enable healing and minimize the risk of surgical complications.

Nutrition After Surgery

After surgery, you’ll need to think about nutrition differently to make sure your body gets what it needs to stay healthy now that it digests and absorbs food differently.

You'll focus on consuming a well-balanced diet following the bariatric plate method:

  • Half your plate should contain a lean protein
  • The other half of your plate should contain:
    • 1-plus cups vegetables
    • A small serving of a whole-grain starch or other complex carbohydrate.

Your primary goal is to consume 60-80 grams of protein per day.

The plate you will need to use will be a small 6-inch diameter “salad” plate.

Common Changes to Your Eating Habits to Keep in Mind

One of the biggest changes that patients often talk about is re-sizing “wasting food.” After surgery, your eyes and head still work the same way as they did before. However, because of your new, smaller stomach pouch, you will be satisfied with eating much less. It is critical to listen to your body’s signals of fullness and not to your eyes, which see the food left on your plate.

Some patients experience dumping syndrome after surgery. This occurs from eating or drinking sugary, high-carbohydrate foods or high-fat foods.

Dumping syndrome can last 30-60 minutes after eating these foods.

Symptoms vary among patients and can include diarrhea, nausea, abdominal pain, and heart palpitations.

In order to avoid having these symptoms, it is highly advised to not experiment with unhealthy foods containing sugar, high amounts of carbohydrate, or foods high in fat.

To maintain a healthy weight and to prevent weight gain, you must develop and keep healthy eating habits. You will need to be aware of the volume of food that you can tolerate at one time and make healthy food choices to ensure maximum nutrition in minimum volume.

Patients also talk about being surprised by how surgery changes their wants and desires for certain foods. Foods you may have previously loved may no longer be interesting to you. Other foods may become more attractive and tastier.

A remarkable effect of bariatric surgery is the progressive change in attitude about food and eating. Patients begin to eat to live – they no longer live to eat. And this new life is what it’s all about.