After obesity surgery you will be placed on a special diet. This is of course because you’ve just had surgery on your stomach and possibly your intestines. The surgery is a major procedure and its very normal to experience pains, disruption of the bowels and lack of any appetite. Most patients find that they aren’t even hungry for up to four or so days after their surgery. Which will initially help to create the patients weight loss.
Your first meal will be liquids, received in the hospital. Often patients will receive nutrient reinforced broth and jello. You will also be extremely thirsty and be given access to as much water and ice as you need. Although its recommended that you sip slowly because your stomach will be much smaller.
After you’ve had a few days in the hospital and a chance to recover from surgery you’ll be sent home where you can attempt to eat pureed food. Often soft food suitable for a recovering obesity surgery patient is baby food. Many patients have found that they either love the taste or abhor the taste of babyfood. It may be a good idea before your surgery to test out a few different kinds of baby foods to see which ones you prefer rather than finding out first hand post operatively. You can also puree your food in a blender to achieve soft consistency. This can include fruits and veggies or even soups that you would normally eat just blenderized. Lastly you move onto soft foods that are easy to chew.
Typically a patient starts with liquids for three days, then moves up to purreed foods for four weeks and next onto soft foods for eight weeks. This gives a total of about three months recovery time before you can progress to regular foods.