How Much Weight Loss is expected after Bariatric surgery

Posted February 22, 2019

The most common question that I get from my patients is that, “Doctor, how much weight will I lose after bariatric surgery?”.
If I talk in terms of excess weight loss, most patients would lose about 60-80% of their excess weight after any kind of bariatric surgery.

How does one explain excess weight?
So, excess weight is basically your current weight minus your ideal body weight. So, suppose if a person is 120 kg and their ideal body weight is say around 60 kg, the excess weight that person is carrying is about 60 kg.
After any kind of bariatric procedure, we would expect that out of this excess weight of 60 kg, this patient would lose about 60-70% of this excess weight, so that would amount to about 35-40 kg.

The fastest weight loss after bariatric surgery happens in the first 3-6 months. About 30% of the excess weight is lost in the first 3 months itself, and most often patients start getting compliments from others at the end of 6 months, where people usually are not able to recognize them because they have already lost a lot of weight.

For the first 1½ -2 years, a patient would normally continue to lose weight, and it is also important to maintain a healthy lifestyle and diet even after surgery for weight maintenance because if that is not done then there are chances that some of the weight can be regained after 2 years of surgery.

So it is extremely important to follow up with your bariatric surgeon as well as bariatric dietician to be able to get not only the best results but also to be able to maintain those results.