I don't have experience, but I will share what my surgeon and I discussed at my two week followup.

I was doing fine after surgery and looking to up my activity (move from just walking back to the elliptical and add weights). I had already done a short trial on the elliptical and could certainly feel more abdominal engagement.

He explained to me what they had done to the muscles and how that impacted exercise. As he explained it, there were no muscles that were actually cut. On my lower left side (where the stomach came out), they make an incision in the skin and then an incision in the sheath surrounding some abdominal muscles. They then yank the muscles around and stretch them pretty aggressively to make a hole big enough to remove the stomach. They then put a few stitches int he sheath to bind it back up and trust it to heal itself.

As a result, he said it would feel like a severely strained muscle (I agree with that description) but that the healing of the sheath was the main barrier to abdominal exercise. His guideline was that it would take about 6 weeks for the sheath to be at 85% of initial strength and a year for it to be as high as it was going to be, but it would never get back to the original strength.

For exercise, that translated into increasing my exercise and adding weights as long as it doesn't hurt. He also said no abdominal specific exercise for at least 6 weeks. Practically, for me, that has meant that I have moved back to the elliptical as my main cardio exercise, and I am back up to the same level on the machine, but I reduced the time, as I am more interested in the weights to protect from muscle loss than I am in calorie burning from cardio.

I started back with weights at about 75% of the weights I was using pre-surgery, and I mostly notice the abdominals engaging on the last few reps (the hard ones), so I stop the set as soon as I feel myself straining to make the last few reps. The surgeon also made sure that I understood to exhale on the difficult part of the rep, as holding your breath really adds strain to the abs.

In summary of this rambling post, I am taking it ab-easy and will likely try adding some ab work starting in December. I never did much ab work, so it will be a learning experience and I will be watchful and not jump in too hard when I get there. other than that, I am back to cardio and weights almost to the pre-surgery level with no real issues.

Just my experience and plan. Please do not take this as any sort of specific advice or do things other than what your program/doctors advise. I am pretty sure I am not an ordinary bear in this zoo!

Rob