Exercise & Nutrition Q&A - 10/8/2013

I am in an answering mood today, bring on the questions! Exercise? Nutrition? WLS? Cooking? Let me know what you need to know! If I don't know I will find someone who does!

I have had that "rundown" feeling the past few days.  I don't know if it is the flu shot I got over the weekend or if I need to add more to my diet or a certain type of food.

I have been around 600-800 cal a day. at least 80 protein, I've upped my water to about 100oz a day, started including peanut butter (for fat) and spend about 2-3 hours at the gym a day (an hour on the weekends).

I've had great energy for awhile now, but since last week (maybe a day or 2 before flu shot) I have been feeling really tired and my muscles feel tired/sore.

So far, my plan is just to keep doing what I have been doing and see what happens, but didn't know if you had any other words of wisdsom!

Thanks,
Kathy

So it sounds like diet wise you are fine but 2-3 hours per day in the gym you may want to consider a few more calories. My target right now is 1000-1200, everything else the same. You also need to make sure you have rest days built in. My target is 10 workouts per week and at least 1 per day for 6 days. Sundays is rest day and also usually a higher carb day for me. My workout plan currently looks like:

M - Chest/Shoulders (evening)

T - HIIT Training (morning) / Legs/Back/Biceps (evening)

W - HIIT Run (morning) / HIIT Training (evening)

Th - HIIT Training (morning) / Chest/Shoulders (evening)

F - Legs/Back/Biceps (evening)

S - HIIT Training (noon) / 5k run (evening/night)

S - rest

My opinion is not a popular one on here as far as approach but I am also closer to goal so take it for what it is worth. When I was where you are now I experimented a bit with intermittent fasting and saw some really great gains (well losses).

Tired and sore could be from the flu shot now but it sounds like you might have tuckered yourself out before that even. Sounds to me like more than changing anything in your diet you might need a rest day.

Thanks Keith.  I consider you my go to guru!!!

So...... I am a little over 3 weeks out.  I have been told only walking so far.  Do not burn any extra calories yet.  I have a meeting with the fitness guy at my DR's office on Thursday.  I hope to get released for at least some cardio.  I have been in a stall for 5 days now and want to change things up.

What have you seen folks doing at 3-4 weeks out?

I am chomping at the bit to get back at it.  I made soooo much progress before surgery and feel like I have lost a lot of ground.

First you haven't lost any ground, it only seems that way. Walking is the best way to burn fat right now. Be patient you will be tearing it up in no time. Even if you get cleared I would urge that you wait until 8 weeks post up until you start lifting anything. Those incision points are very easy to herniate (yes speaking from experience here) so take it easy until then. What I would tell you to do to switch it up is split your workout across multiple low intensity cardio techniques. If you go to a gym and are doing 30 mins do 10 on a treadmill, 10 on a bike, and 10 an elyptical, use different parts of your leg muscles. Also try to incorporate some intervals to spike your heart rate for a few seconds. So on a bike for example every 2 minutes do 30 seconds on a steep hill or speed it up to a sprint, then return to your regular rate. You will burn more calories and you get some residual burn when you use an interval approach.

That makes a lot of sense. 

DR told me it would be 6-8 weeks before I could do any weightlifting.  I'll take your suggestion and error on the side of caution at 8 wks.

Hopefully I will know on Thursday if I can add cardio to my list of things I can do.

Thanks!!

You posted something in another thread earlier that interested me, if you could talk some more about it. You said ( paraphrasing  here )  that you should start building muscle now so that basically you have a " storage " to pull from. Do you have a percentage of muscle gain that is ideal?

Also what are some good leg exercises esp. ones for the thighs. Do those abductor and adductor machines really work?

Thanks!

Yes, what I was saying is that it is much easier to build muscle when you can eat whatever you want than when your ability to eat food is limited by the size of your stomach. So any muscle you can gain before surgery is in addition to the muscle you are going to lose from the time you start the pre-op diet until you get back to full foods. 

No particular percentage in mind because that would be impossible to be able to predict, its based on how much  you can lift and how often, etc. Any gains would be good. Gaining muscle is very hard either way.

For legs, the best is squats and lunges. Deadlifts are good too. Leg extensions and leg curls should be done too.

Yes the abductor/adductor machines are good but they are focused on inner thigh muscles and not your whole legs.