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Gastric bypass has been performed for more than fifty years now and, although there are of course risks the majority of patients are more than satisfied with the outcome and enjoy a a markedly improved standard of living. There is however a price to to be paid and you will have to lead a very different lifestyle following surgery which may be very difficult unless you are prepared for the change.

Some of the post-surgical changes are obvious as the principle behind obesity surgery is to vastly reduce the volume of your stomach and to restrict the amount of food which you can eat. This means that the days of enjoying a big meal are gone forever.

But some of the other consequences of gastric bypass surgery are less obvious.

For example, the days of eating foods which are high in fat or sugar even in small quantities are also over. The consequences of eating foods of this nature can be extremely unpleasant as their rapid absorption in your now shortened digestive tract can lead to very nasty feelings of faintness.

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

This is all well and good but just what should you expect from obesity surgery in terms of weight loss?

Results will of course vary from person to person but it is important to start by looking at just how post-surgical weight loss is measured.

The starting point is to calculate just how much excess weight you are carrying and this means working out your ideal weight. Working in pounds, for a man this will be 106 plus 6 times your height in inches less 60. As an example, for a man 5ft 10ins tall the ideal weight will be 106 + 6 x (70 – 60) which works out at 166 pounds. In the case of a woman 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.

Thus, if we take the example of the man and give him a weight of 366 pounds before surgery then he is carrying 200 pounds in excess weight. From this starting point we will measure weight loss in terms of the percentage of excess weight lost over time. Therefore, if after 6 months his weight has fallen by 100 pounds then his weight loss will be 50 percent.

As a general guide you could expect to drop approximately 50 percent of your excess weight within the 6 months following surgery rising to about 70 percent after one year and to possibly 80 percent after 2 years. For the majority of patients weight loss will cease after 2 years and some long-term weight gain will appear. Longer term weight gain is generally about 10 to 15 percent of your excess weight.

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

You will rarely shed all of your excess weight and are not going to get to your ideal weight as a result of surgery. For this reason, it is occasionally said that weight loss surgery is not completely successful. Nevertheless the overwhelming majority of patients would not agree with this and would say that the change in their quality of life is simply unbelievable. Something which is clearly evident to anybody who has seen the many gastric bypass before and after pictures posted online these days.