Your diet after gastric bypass surgery presents its own set of challenges even after you’ve gone through the process of undergoing surgery. After your surgical procedure, you have to learn how to eat again—in order to lose the weight and keep it off, one must learn a whole new diet habit that includes extremely small amounts of food. So what foods are allowed on a diet after gastric bypass surgery?

The first thing to keep in mind is the actual size of your stomach after your surgery. It is now the size of a small egg—and a portion of your small intestine is completely bypassed in your digestive system. With such a reduced area for digesting food, it's easy to see that you need to consume extremely small amounts of food.

Liquids
For the first day or two after surgery, you'll be on a liquid diet. The only thing allowed will be things in a liquid or semi-liquid state. In other words, prepare to mix up your diet by having an assortment of gelatin favors on hand.

Puree
After the first two days, the gastric bypass patient is put on a diet of pureed foods. Pureed foods are blended to form a smooth paste or very thick liquid state. Generally, this stage of your diet after gastric bypass surgery will last about three to four weeks. Keep in mind that you are training your digestive system to function differently than it has since you were an infant, so it will take a while to get your system used to working properly.

Soft Foods
After pureed foods for a few weeks, you will progress to a soft foods diet. You will add things like eggs, finely diced or ground meats, canned fruits and cooked vegetables. Eventually you will be able to eat regular foods again.

A Matter of Quantity
In addition to changing the types and textures of the food you can eat after surgery, you will also need to change how much food you take in at one time. Instead of three meals a day, you will have several very tiny meals throughout the day. Your entire meal will consist of approximately one tablespoon of food; you will eat one of these mini meals about six times a day.  Eventually you will work your way up to about 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups of food three times a day.  You'll need to save your beverages for other times of the day, rather than with you meals.

Although the diet after gastric bypass surgery is strict, it's critical to play by the rules. Patients who try to eat too much or too fast will find themselves with nausea, vomiting and pain. They will also find they are unable to lose the weight they so desperately wanted to lose in the first place.