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Many people are very excited to see those dramatic weight loss results after bariatric surgery. There is a sense of relief at first but then the reality of what a change of lifestyle really means sets in. There are a lot of questions since there is a lot to know when you’ve had that surgery done.
Questions like “why can’t you have caffeine after gastric bypass surgery?” or, “do I have to exercise?”. In fact, exercise is essential to be able to maintain weight loss after surgery. It is not uncommon to gain the weight back even after you’ve had gastric bypass surgery.
In this article, we will go over what you need to know about exercising after you’ve had weight loss surgery.
Although gastric bypass surgery is routine these days, there is a period of time in which you do need to recover afterward. You can go back to work and your normal routine after just a few days, but exercise needs to wait around three or four weeks to allow the surgery to heal.
Once you are through that period then you are able to start working out again without worrying about doing any damage to where you had the surgery done. This does highly depend on the type of surgery, however. Open surgery will require a few months of recovery time before you can safely start working out again.
The key to exercising after this type of surgery is to start out light and then build yourself up to more strenuous workouts. Walking is a good exercise that is not strenuous and is something that just about everybody can do. Take it slow and limit yourself to ten to fifteen minutes per day.
Other types of exercise that are good to begin with are yoga, bicycling, and swimming. These are all low-impact exercises that you can do at your own pace without straining yourself.
Doing this exercise after surgery is going to be a big part of your lifestyle changes that should last the rest of your life. The goal should be to do around 150 minutes of exercise per week. This is only 30 minutes per day for five of the seven days of the week.
This is not something that too many people can’t fit into a busy lifestyle. It is very important to make sure to incorporate this amount of exercise at a minimum into your schedule. Without exercise, the probability of lapsing and gaining weight again is very high.
Once you progress to where you can work out regularly make sure to mix up the type of exercise and alternate days. Some days you should be adding resistance training with weights to build muscle since more muscle mass will burn more fat. This will do a lot to help you keep the weight off and even have more strength.
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