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In looking at Carnie Wilson and her choice to get a second weight loss surgery, I found this information about Weight Loss Surgery regarding Vertical Banded Gastroplasty.

Patients generally lose about half of their excess body weight in the first year after restrictive procedures. However, in the first 3 to 5 years after VBG patients may regain some of the weight they lost. By 10 years, as few as 20 percent of patients have kept the weight off. (Although there is less information about long-term results with AGB, there is some evidence that weight loss results are better than with VBG.) Some patients regain weight by eating high-calorie soft foods that easily pass through the opening to the stomach. Others are unable to change their eating habits and do not lose much weight to begin with. Successful results depend on the patient’s willingness to adopt a long-term plan of healthy eating and regular physical activity.

Between 15 and 20 percent of VBG patients may have to undergo a second operation for a problem related to the procedure. Although restrictive operations are the safest of the bariatric procedures, they still carry risk in less than 1 percent of all cases, complications can result in death.

Total operations performed according to the American Society for Bariatric Surgery are as follows:

2005    171,000

2004    140,000

2003    103,200

Jacqueline Odom, PhD, the psychological director of the Beaumont Weight Control Center in Royal Oak, Mich., evaluates patients that are on the path to weight loss surgery to help make sure they are ready for this step and to handle the life afterward. In this article she stated”

“A lot of people want a magic bullet and really don’t understand what is involved,” she tells WebMD.

The new stomach requires several tiny, nutrient-rich meals a day supplemented with additional vitamins and minerals. Eating too much or indulging in rich, sugary or fried foods can overload the pouch and cause dumping — a term used to describe the sweats, chills and nausea that result from food filling the pouch and overflowing straight into the small intestine.

The re-feeding process starts with getting in protein because that will repair the cells and help them heal after surgery. “We use liquid protein supplements to start, then pureed foods, then soft foods like scrambled eggs and then eventually graduate to other foods,” Odom says.

“It’s not glamorous,’ she says. “You have to chew your food more thoroughly then you ever did and really emulsify it. You must eat very slowly and in small portions.”

Emory’s Smith adds: “The volume of food they can eat and the types of food they can eat changes dramatically. And there are indirect changes surrounding eating. Many people who eat for social reasons have significant changes in interpersonal relationships.”

Another Article on WebMD stated this:

For starters, Odom tells WebMD, there are the chemical changes that are causing a loss in appetite. The hormone ghrelin decreases in patients after gastric bypass surgery. This contributes to the decrease in appetite, which helps people not crave foods they used to.

However, she adds, most of the patients report that this stabilizes and that their urges for food start coming back within six to nine months.

Three months after her surgery, Kathy, 43, a home health care specialist in Watervliet, Mich., eats by the clock.

“You are on a really strict regimen of eating six times day,” she says. But “I have no desire to eat.”

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