Recovering from Weight Loss Surgery
Every aspect of weight loss surgery is crucial to your success — including recovery. Keep reading to learn more about what to expect during the recovery period after you've had a weight loss procedure.
If you’re overweight, life can get pretty difficult. Whether it’s fitting into a seat on an airplane, or just being able to get up the steps in your home, excess weight really affects your daily activities and your health. Diet and exercise helps some people, but if you’ve tried that without success, weight loss surgery like the gastric sleeve could be the next step for you.
At Snow Bariatric Center, our team has all the tools you need to take the next step in your weight loss journey. Dr. Robert Snow is our experienced bariatric surgeon who offers many different types of weight loss surgery. He helps you figure out what treatment option is best to help you lose those excess pounds for good.
Obesity is a growing problem in the world, and it leads to many health problems and premature death. When you’re overweight, your body has to work harder to do simple tasks, which takes a toll over time.
Diet and exercise have probably been preached to you your whole life; but it doesn’t always work for everyone. If you have a lot of weight to lose, you might need more than just a reduction in calories to get your life back on track. That’s where bariatric surgery comes in to help.
Left alone, obesity leads to many different health complications which can cut your life short if not treated. Some of the medical conditions linked to obesity include:
Obesity also takes its toll on your joints as well, and often leads to osteoarthritis. This may cause you significant pain and disability, making life that much harder day to day. However, you can get your life back on track with a procedure known as a gastric sleeve.
The gastric sleeve procedure is a type of bariatric surgery that makes your stomach smaller, so you feel full with less food. This procedure is relatively safe, and Dr. Snow performs it using minimally invasive techniques.
To perform a gastric sleeve surgery, Dr. Snow removes a large portion of your stomach, about 75% to be exact. What’s left of your stomach is re-attached, and usually is in the shape of a tube or sleeve. The procedure is done with several small incisions, decreasing the trauma to your body.
This procedure doesn’t change the way your stomach digests food, it only decreases the amount of food that your stomach can hold. This allows you to feel satisfied with much smaller amounts of food. The gastric sleeve procedure also decreases ghrelin, which is the hormone that makes you feel hungry.
Dr. Snow recommends this procedure if you have more than 100 pounds to lose to reach your ideal weight, or if you suffer from health issues related to your obesity.
You can expect pretty dramatic weight loss in the first year after the gastric sleeve procedure. In the first several months, you can expect to lose almost 30 percent of the excess weight you’d been carrying around. You may also notice a decrease in symptoms of osteoarthritis and other health conditions.
Around six months after gastric sleeve surgery, you should be down almost 50 percent of your original weight. As long as you’re following Dr. Snow’s post-surgery regimen and eating less, these results are pretty common.
One year after surgery, you should have lost most of the extra weight, almost 70 percent to be exact. This varies from person to person, but on average these are the typical results you’ll see if you continue to eat less food.
With bariatric surgery, including the gastric sleeve, you can expect to regain a little bit of weight. This is due to your body adjusting to the new smaller size of your stomach and nutrients balancing out. However, if you continue to eat less and follow Dr. Snow’s instructions, you should keep off most of the weight for the rest of your life.
If you want to get your life back on track with gastric sleeve surgery, schedule a consultation with Dr. Snow today by calling one of our convenient offices in Texas. You can also request an appointment online using our booking tool.
