Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass Surgery Recovery: My Month-Long Experience

Roux-en-Y (often abbreviated as RNY) is generally considered the "gold standard" for weight loss surgery and has been performed in various forms for over 40 years. The surgery process usually begins 2 weeks before your surgery date with a prescribed liquid diet. These 2 weeks leading up to your surgery date will be both mentally and physically challenging. The week after your surgery will be challenging simply because you're healing from major surgery and the 2^nd week after surgery is challenging because you're learning a new way of eating which can be very difficult.

I'll go into more detail about each of these 3 stages based on my own experience during the first month of my gastric bypass life. I had laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery on November 13, 2007 and in the first month (2 weeks pre-op plus 2 weeks post-op) I lost 27 pounds.

TWO WEEKS PRE-OP - Most surgeons now require patients to follow a strict 2 week liquid diet before gastric bypass surgery. Not all bariatric programs have this requirement, but more and more surgeons are adding this requirement. Many ask why such a strict diet. The reasons are twofold. First this strict diet will help the patient lose weight before surgery. Any weight you can lose before surgery will make you that much healthier and allow for a safer surgery. Secondly a liquid diet will shrink your liver. Your liver is located right in front of your stomach and in morbidly obese patients it is often enlarged due to overeating of complex carbohydrates. By losing weight and restricting food intake to a basic liquid protein diet, the liver will shrink and be less cumbersome for the surgeon. This will help to reduce the risk of complications or a "nicked liver" during the surgery. During the 2 weeks before my surgery, I lost 15 pounds.