Obesity surgery has been performed for well over fifty years now and, while it does carry risks most patients are very satisfied with the results and enjoy a a dramatically improved standard of living. But there is a price to pay and you will have to follow a very different lifestyle following surgery which could be very hard if you are not prepared for the change.
Some of the post-operative changes are obvious as the basic principle behind obesity surgery is to significantly reduce the size of your stomach and restrict the quantity of food that you can eat. This simply means that the days of enjoying a big meal are gone.
But some of the other consequences of gastric bypass surgery are less obvious.
For instance, the days of eating foods that are high in sugar or fat even in small quantities are also over. The consequences of eating such foods can be most unpleasant as rapid absorption in your now shortened digestive tract can lead to very nasty feelings of faintness.
You will also discover that the dramatic change in your eating pattern leaves you extremely short of water so that you need to get used to drinking small amounts of water during the day if you are to avoid dehydration.
This is all very well but just what can you expect from gastric bypass surgery in terms of weight loss?
Results will vary from one individual to the next but it is important to start by looking at just how post-surgical weight loss is measured.
Here you need to begin by calculating just how much excess weight you are carrying and this means working out your ideal weight. Using pounds, for a man this is calculated as 106 plus 6 times your height in inches less 60. As an example, for a man who is 5ft 10ins tall the ideal weight will be 106 + 6 x (70 – 60) which works out at 166 pounds. For women the principle is the same but here a women’s ideal weight is calculated as 100 plus 5 times her height in inches minus 60.
Therefore, if we take the example of our man above and give him a weight of 366 pounds then his excess weight is 200 pounds. From this starting point we will measure weight loss in terms of the weight loss as a percentage of excess weight over time. Therefore, if at the end of 6 months he has lost 100 pounds then his weight loss will be 50 percent.
In most cases you could expect to drop about 50 percent of your excess weight within 6 months of surgery climbing to approximately 70 percent one year after surgery and to around 80 percent at the end of 2 years. For the majority of patients weight loss will not continue beyond 2 years and some long-term weight gain will be seen. Longer term weight re-gain is usually about 10 to 15 percent of your excess weight.
Once more, generally speaking, if you are excessively overweight you will shed a greater percentage of your excess weight (possibly as much as 90 or 95 percent) while if you are less overweight you may drop as little as 60 percent within 2 years of surgery.
You will almost certainly not drop all of your excess weight and are not going to achieve your ideal weight through surgery. As a result, it is sometimes said that obesity surgery is not a complete success. Nevertheless the vast majority of patients would not agree with this statement and will tell you that the improvement in their quality of life is simply incredible. Something that is also clearly evident to anybody who has looked at the many gastric bypass before and after pictures posted on the internet nowadays.
I'm eager to hear your comments...
{ 0 comments… add one now }