Maintaining a healthy body weight is very crucial for the overall well-being of the organs and body metabolism. This becomes all the more important for people suffering from obesity as the increasing body weight puts them at the risk of various health diseases.
Body Mass Index (BMI)
A widely accepted scale to check which category you fall into: underweight, normal, overweight, or obese, is the BMI. It is calculated by taking the ratio of weight (in kg) to height (in meter square). In this post, we shall focus solely on the people falling into the obese category.
Bariatric surgery as a means to lose weight
Exercise and diet alone often fail to treat people with extreme obesity. Bariatric surgery is performed on such individuals to help them lose excess weight and live a healthy lifestyle by following a prescribed bariatric surgery diet.
The fundamental principle behind bariatric surgery is to decrease the size of the stomach so that the food intake of the patient is reduced. Biologically, digestion begins in the mouth where it is mixed with saliva and then transported to the stomach, where it is again mixed with other digestive juices and broken down into nutrients and absorbent calories. Bariatric surgery is specially designed to alter or decrease this process of absorption of nutrients and calories in the body, thereby helping people suffering from obesity to lose weight. As the size of the stomach shrinks, the quantity of food intake also reduces, thus lowering the death-rate and other related health disorders that might arise from obesity.
The importance of following a proper diet post the surgery
While the patient initially might lose weight quickly, maintaining the same gets difficult. It is, therefore, important to follow a proper bariatric surgery diet that comprises all the essential nutrients the body needs, that too in the right quantity. If the diet is combined with regular exercise, the effects of the same are sure to be multiplied, enabling you to keep most of the weight off.
While all types of the surgery have their own share of risks and complications, sticking to a correct bariatric surgery diet helps combat the risks and obviate the complications to the maximum possible extent.