Obesity surgery has been performed for well over fifty years now and, despite the fact that there are of course risks the majority of patients are very happy with the results and enjoy a a markedly 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-surgical changes are obvious as the basic principle behind obesity surgery is to drastically reduce the volume of your stomach and restrict the quantity of food that you can eat. This means that your days of sitting down to a big meal are gone.

But some of the other consequences of obesity surgery are not quite so obvious.

As an example, even in small quantities your days of eating foods that are high in sugar or fat are also over. The penalties for eating such foods can be very unpleasant as rapid absorption in your newly shortened digestive tract can lead to very unpleasant feelings of faintness.

You will also discover that the dramatic change in your pattern of eating leaves you very short of water so that you must get used to drinking small amounts of water during the day to avoid dehydration.

This is all well and good but just what should you expect from obesity surgery when it comes to weight loss?

Weight loss will of course vary from person to person but it is important to begin by understanding just how post-operative weight loss is measured.

Here you need to start by assessing just how much excess weight you are carrying and this means working out your ideal weight. Measured in pounds, for a man this is calculated as 106 plus 6 times your height in inches minus 60. For instance, 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 less 60.

Therefore, if we take the example of the man above and give him a weight of 366 pounds then his excess weight is 200 pounds. We would then measure weight loss in terms of the percentage of excess weight lost over time. So, if after 6 months he has lost 100 pounds then his weight loss will be 50 percent.

As a general guide you could expect to lose about 50 percent of your excess weight within 6 months of surgery climbing to about 70 percent one year after surgery and to perhaps 80 percent at the end of 2 years. For most patients weight loss will stop after 2 years and some long-term weight gain will be evident. Longer term weight gain is generally about 10 to 15 percent of your excess weight.

Once again, generally speaking, if you are grossly overweight you will lose a greater percentage of your excess weight (perhaps as much as 90 to 95 percent) while if you are less overweight you may lose as little as 60 percent within 2 years of surgery.

You will almost certainly not lose 100 percent of your excess weight and are not going to achieve your ideal weight as a result of surgery. Consequently, it is sometimes said that weight loss surgery is not a complete success. Nevertheless the overwhelming majority of patients would not agree with this statement and would say that the change in their quality of life is simply inconceivable. Something that is also clearly evident to anyone who has looked at the many gastric bypass pictures posted on the internet nowadays.

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