After WLS Patients Must Give-up Coffee, Tea, Soda and Alcohol to Sustain Weight Loss

Dieters are often told - drink water. Drink a minimum of 64 ounces a day - eight glasses a day. Gastric-bypass patients don't have a choice: they must drink lots water. Other beverages including coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks and alcohol are forbidden. Water is the essential fluid for living. Water is one of the most important nutrients the body needs to stay healthy, vibrant and energetic. A tell-tell sign of a gastric bypass patient is the ever-present water bottle.

The restrictive and malabsorptive nature of the gastric bypass causes several things to go wrong if a patient partakes of caffeine coffee or tea, high-caloric or alcoholic beverages. The caffeine assimilates into the blood stream very quickly causing jitters and nervousness more-so than a normal digestive system. The high-caloric beverages are easily absorbed through the shortened intestine causing a weight plateau or weight gain. And alcohol is absorbed with break-neck speed causing intoxication, vomiting or dumping.

Knowing this bariatric centers advise patients to drink water throughout the day to avoid dehydration. However, patients are told to avoid drinking water with meals as it will facilitate food movement through the small stomach pouch allowing a person to consume more food.

Nutritionists say a precise measure of the body's need for water is to divide body weight (pounds) in half and drink that many ounces every day. That number could well exceed 200 ounces a day for morbidly obese people actively engaged in weight loss. Most doctors advise gastric bypass patients to consume 64 to 72 ounces of water daily.

Kaye Bailey © 2005 - All Rights Reserved

An award winning journalist and former newspaper editor Kaye Bailey brings expertise in writing and personal experience with gastric bypass surgery to EzineArticles.com. Having spent most of her life overweight Ms. Bailey is strongly empathetic toward the obese, particularly overweight children. This compassion compelled her to found the website http://www.livingafterwls.com , a fast-growing resource of information, understanding and support for the weight loss surgery community.

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Coffee Shops

But have you ever wondered when the first coffee shop started? For most harried career individuals, a visit to their coffee shops for a nightcap with friends and business associates is their idea of a relaxing evening.

It quickly grew in popularity, and by 1675, three thousand coffeehouses were born in England. Boston welcomed its own version of this haven for coffee lovers in 1670, while Paris opened the doors of its first-ever coffee shop in 1671. The first coffee shop opened in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1554, while the first coffeehouse opened in Cornhill, London, in 1652.

Its success was akin to that of tobacco in seventeenth-century Europe. The first coffee plantation in modern times was started in Brazil, in 1727, using slave laborers from Africa. A more credible version asserts that the first coffee shop opened in Krakow, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, owing to its close trade ties with the Turks. The coffeehouse was started using supplies left behind by the losing Turks. As the legend goes, the first coffeehouse was believed to have opened in Vienna in 1683, after the Battle of Vienna.

For the French, Spanish, and German people, a café is a place where a wide variety of beverages are served, ranging from different types of coffee, tea, and alcoholic beverages. In the Netherlands, the term coffee shop is used to refer to places where marijuana is sold, since one needs fewer permits to open a coffee shop. The Dutch people associate the word with bars and thus relate it more to alcohol. The term "Café" is synonymous with a place where coffee and meals are served together.

Visit your favorite coffee shop and take your pick from among these wonderful concoctions, sure to warm your hearts and lift your spirits. What are you waiting for? In addition to those blended commercially, a lot of coffeehouses have their own signature house blends.