Eat slowly and be aware of when you feel full. When you feel full, stop eating! If you try to continue to eat, you may vomit. You may only be able to eat a few bites of food at a time.

CHEW, CHEW, CHEW! You need to make sure you chew your food very well before you swallow it. This makes it easier to digest and pass from your gastric pouch to your small intestine.

Avoid drinking fluids 30 minute before and with your meals. If you fill up your small gastric pouch with liquid, you won't have room for your food. If you need to, take only small sips of liquids while eating.

Drink enough fluid between meals to meet your fluid requirements. You need 6-8 cups of fluid per day to avoid dehydration. You may need to carry a water bottle with you and sip on low calorie liquids throughout the day to get enough fluids.

Avoid sticky foods. These foods can stick together and form a ball in your gastric pouch, causing nausea and sometimes vomiting. Sticky foods include white bread, rolls, buns, pasta (especially if overcooked and large pieces), rice that clumps together, grits, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter.

Avoid crunchy, hard to digest foods for the first 3 months.
Crunchy and hard to digest foods include: raw vegetables, nuts, popcorn, chips, coconut, olives, pickles, tough fruit/vegetable skins (such as apple, cucumber skin), dried fruit, corn, iceberg lettuce.

Avoid tough or rubbery meats. Avoid steak, pork chops, ham, and other tough meats for the first few months. Meat is a great source of protein, but it needs to be soft and tender for you to digest it. Try a slow cooking method to make your meat tender, such as a crock-pot, boiling or cooking at a low temperature over a long period of time.

Avoid food/beverages high in sugar. High sugar foods can cause "dumping syndrome." After gastric bypass surgery, some people feel light-heated, sweaty or faint soon after consuming sugar. See page 12 of booklet for description of dumping syndrome.

Avoid extremes in the temperature of your foods and beverages. Some patients experience spasms or cramps with very hot or cold food/beverages.

Limit high fat foods. These foods may make you feel nauseated. They are also high in calories and will slow down your weight loss. Try changing to a fat-free comparable product. If you don't like the fat-free product, try the light product.  Once you have learned how to eat with your new gastric pouch and have healed from surgery, you can start to add other foods one a time over the next few months. If you follow these suggestions you should transition to solid foods and lose weight successfully!

Remember, your gastric bypass surgery is a crutch to help you lose weight, but it is not magic. If you overeat on high calorie foods or beverages this will reduce the amount of weight you lose. Try to eat nutrient-dense foods to get the most nutrition from the smaller amount of foods you will be eating.