The Lap Band Diet: Eating After Surgery

The lap band diet will help you recover after your lap band surgery and will help make sure that you lose the weight the surgery was meant to help you lose. In most cases, your doctor and dietician at the hospital or clinic will help you develop a meal plan following your lap band surgery. It is important to ask before and after your lap band surgery for clarification on what you can and should eat following surgery. It is important to follow the meal plan or diet your health care workers give you exactly.

Right after your lap band surgery, you will likely only be allowed very small sips of ice water or ice cubes. In the first few days, you will only be given fluids so as not to stretch your stomach. In the first while after lap band surgery, you will likely be eating very digestible foods in small qualities. You will likely be eating a diet largely made up of broths or very soft foods. That is because your stomach needs a chance to heal and because you will be prone to nausea and other unpleasant symptoms. It is important that you follow a diet that will not stretch you new “reduced” stomach and it is important that your diet reduce the chance of vomiting as much as possible, as vomiting can also displace the lap band device in your stomach. As you dietician sees fit, you will slowly add solid foods to your diet. You will have to continue watching your meal plan after lap band surgery, though, since in many cases eating certain foods may make you feel ill. You will likely be discouraged from eating very fatty or very sugary foods, for example, since many patients who have had lap band surgery have reacted poorly to this type of eating. You will continue to be eating small meals in order to avoid stretching your stomach.