drinking after surgery

I was just speaking to someone about my weight loss and they said they are hesitant to do the surgery because they can never drink alcohol again if they do. Is that true? I'm not a big alcohol drinker but I was curious if this was in fact true or misinformation.

I know my doctor discussed alcohol gets processed much faster and one drink could have you feeling drunk.

Its highly recommended to abstain from alcohol, especially while in the initial weight loss phase. There are a number of reasons for this: 1) it WILL affect us differently and faster for sure. 2) for those who have food addictions, it's very easy to develop "transfer addictions" when after surgery, we no longer have food to turn to for comfort. Many WLSers do develop alcohol problems, even if they never identified as much of a drinker before. 3) alcohol, especially mixed drinks, has a ton of calories, and it's generally not advised to get your calories from beverages (especially empty calories like that) while trying to lose weight.

That all being said, my own surgeon says he wouldn't consider it a problem to have a glass of wine occasionally/socially after a while, when I'm comfortably in maintenance.

My doctor said 1 drink a year...lol

We have a drink on our anniversary

My doctor pretty much said the same thing. I think this person is just really misinformed. I've never heard of "transfer addiction" so thank you for sharing that with us. It's nice to learn everything you can after having this surgery.

I was warned of transfer addiction but never told that I MUST stay away from it, just that it's something I should look out for if I do decide to drink. That being said, as writergurl mentioned, we don't really want to be drinking empty calories during out weight loss phase anyways....so yea, it shouldn't be a big part of and post op life

I think that was his problem. He's very big on drinking now so he knows he won't be able to drink much after. I would honestly say he's borderline an alcoholic, many people have told him to seek help but he never does. I believe they don't perform the surgery on heavy drinkers, I remember hearing something like that in the weightloss seminars.

I was told absolutely no alcohol for the first year after surgery. Then after that, the occasional drink was fine, but I was also warned how it would take way less to feel the effects after surgery and to be aware of that. I've had a couple of drinks in the 2 years since surgery, and it definitely only takes a little for me to feel it!!

I drink wine 3x year at the Opera. It helps the second act.

About a 3-3.5 ounce pour.