Gaining Weight After Gastric Bypass? Bad Snacks May be the Cause

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Gaining Weight After Gastric Bypass? Bad Snacks May be the Cause

By Kaye

As I become acquainted with many of our LivingAfterWLS.com community

members I'm finding that old snacking habits have crept back in to

our lives. In my third year post-op I returned to the miserable

habit of snacking and snacking on all the wrong foods. Crackers,

popcorn, toast, cereal, pretzels, sugar-free candy, granola bars.

The unpleasant result of this is I regained some weight, several

dumping episodes, vomiting and bouts of fatigue.

According to my bariatric center " Snacking, nibbling or grazing on

foods, usually high-calorie and high-fat foods, can add hundreds of

calories a day to your intake, defeating the restrictive effect of

your operation. Snacking will slow down your weight loss and can

lead to regain of weight. "

Almost universally the snacks WLS patients admit to eating are high

carbohydrate, nutritionally void processed foods. In order to

maintain weight loss after gastric bypass successful patients avoid

these poor snack choices:

Pretzels, potato chips, corn chips

Crackers - sweet or savory

Trail mix, sunflower seeds, nuts

Cookies, cakes, pies, pastries

Popcorn

Sugar-Free Sweets (except Jell-o)

Granola

Full-fat, full-sugar frozen desserts (ice cream, frozen yogurt,

frozen custard)

Smoothies

Foods containing butter or mayonnaise

What you will notice about the poor snack choices is that most are

nutritionally void foods – they do nothing to feed your body the

vitamins, minerals and nutrients it needs to function well. In

addition when grazed upon many of these foods can be consumed in

large quantities by gastric bypass patients. It's called the " soft

foods phenomena " . When WLS patients eat soft foods (think crackers)

which mix with stomach fluids a slurry results. This mixture passes

through the pouch into the bypassed intestine allowing for steady

intake without satiation. In addition, these foods may cause dumping

or vomiting.

You may be surprised to see trail mix and granola on the foods to

avoid list as they are well known " health foods. " It's true trail

mix and granola are nutritionally dense but most bariatric patients

report a low tolerance for nuts, seeds and raisins. In addition many

of these foods contain hidden sugars.

Kaye © 2005 - All Rights Reserved