Exercise & Weight Loss Nutrition advice please

This helps a TON! Thanks, Kairk. I was feeling a little panicky about 600-800 calories lol. 800-1000 I can do. I will lower the carbs too. I experience mild hunger as well. I completely agree with you on the deprivation. I, too, had to give up the super strict mindset because it was my nemesis and causing me to fail. We are humans not diet robots and we live in the real world. I haven't really ever watched my fat because I believe the same thing, it keeps me full. I buy full fat yogurt, etc, for my kids too. 

Thank you!

I feel your pain!  I'm only 4 months post-op and I'm having the same issues.  I exercise (cardio) 5-6 days a week and lift weights 2x a week on top of the cardio.  My weight is not coming off.  Last week I couldn't workout 3 of 5 days and I lost 2lbs.  I don't understand why the exercise makes it slow down.

I read too much and have those who say too many carbs, too many calories, not enough calories for the exercise I do, not enough protein!  It's confusing and I don't know what is right for "me".  I won't even begin to give advice on this because I'm struggling.  

I hope you find what works.  As slow as it has been for me, it is still a downward trend so that's a good thing.

Good luck!

I agree with the others in that starting a new exercise routine can have your body holding onto water weight & it might take awhile for it to figure out this is your new routine. At the same time however 1000 calories is probably too much to keep losing weight. I know for me whenever I'm at that amount my weight loss crawls or stops, so cutting back is the only way to drop it down. You might have to play with the numbers to find out where you'll start losing again. I had to drop my carbs to closer to 30, as well as dropping the calories & up my water & protein. I never tried the social media part of mfp.

If you're into cooking you might want to check out Shelleys blog/website. The world according to eggface. She has plenty of wls friendly recipes.

What kind of working out are you doing? If weight training, are you going to exertion? Lifting moderate weight, rather than keeping super super light? Are you focusing on a single body group, or doing things like whole body or just kind of on the fly decisions? 

How about cardio? Time? Heart rate zone?

When lifting weights, depending on what youre going for, you should be either lifting enough weight to where you can only get about 6-8 reps (what we'll call bulking) or 10-12 reps (for leaner muscles). Dont be timid of the "bulking" descriptor... It takes a LOT of work to put on "big bulky Arnold Schwartzenegger" muscles. Most people cant even do that even though they try. The higher weight, lower reps will give you a more caloric benefit as far as weight loss. The leaner rep range will also give you a caloric benefit, just not as much... Either way, weight lifting will give you caloric benefits that last for hours rather than the cardio variant, where if you run a mile and burn 50 calories, thats it pretty much. Weight lifting if you burn 450 calories during a workout, your body is continuing to burn calories to repair the muscle mass you targeted.

When weight lifting, you should try to focus on either pairing push/pull groups, or large muscle groups. Examples of push/pull would be back/triceps (back is pull, tris are push), hamstrings/quads (push, pull), chest/bis (push, pull), etc. Or, just beat the **** out of your back, or your legs, or your chest. Those are your three largest muscle groups. If you fatigue your legs, back or chest (that order) they will also give you the greatest caloric advantage

If you do lift weights... just be sure your form is good. If it feels uncomfortable like a pain, stop. If it hurts, stop. If youre new to it and it feels weird or different, youre probably fine. Your body will talk back to you immediately. Form is critical. Lifting enough is, too.

If you go in there and curl the 5# dumbbells and expect to get anything out of it youre wasting your time... If you are there on a squat rack and only doing 10 pounds on each side, again, wasting time... The rep zones above are what you should be able to do and by the time you get into those zones, you should be wanting to quit and feel you cant go further. Go until you form is about to be sacrificed.

Feel free to ask any questions... I'm fat, but under that I'm sure I've got a bangin ass body of muscle ;) I spend a lot of time in the gym.

Chris, I love the last sentence! Made me totally laugh.

Thank you for all this!!!! Much of it I have been trying to focus on. So I usually focus on 30 minutes of decent cardio. I get my heart rate up to 185 or so max and it stays in the 175 range usually. Mostly I have been running or I guess jogging (two mile stretches) slow pace as I am not a runner but I know I am getting stronger. I signed up for a 5k in May so I am working up to 3.1 miles or whatever it is. This is 4-5 times per week.

During the same gym session I focus on either arms, abs, or legs and work the weight machines and have been trying to use the heaviest weight that I can handle to get the reps done. I have only been doing 4 reps though, so maybe I need to increase those. I have been doing 15, 12, 10, and 8 count reps. But feel free to tell me otherwise. I am going to start adding my back in one of those days also.

I can see the muscular changes, but it's been a little discouraging as far as weight loss.  I haven't done free weights, I do the row pull thing, tricep pulls, and the bicep pull down bar thing. Do I also need to add weights in? 

Thanks for your help!!!! You look great!

Thanks, am currently sitting at around 311lbs. Am working on getting VSG, am at the stage of scheduling it and then getting all my labs done 30 days prior.

I kind of didnt cover anything cardio related, because I hate cardio. However, cardio is good, but HIIT is even better (high intensity interval training). This would be say walk fast for 60 seconds, turn speed up to a full on sprint for 30 seconds, down to 60 seconds for fast walk, back up to 30 seconds of sprint, etc... You could do that, or walking and then a handful of burpees, etc. Basically spike heart rate, let drop some, spike again, and keep going. About 12-15 minutes of this is fantastic. Granted your HIIT abilities today would be much different from 30 days of consistent work (you could do more burpees, etc).

For your 5k, if you havent look up Couch to 5k. They have programs all over, even some itunes "songs" that are a full workout with music that tells you when to walk, when to jog, when to walk, when to jog, every week changing and building endurance slowly. And they have music tracks to listen to while you do it.

When you say you do 4 reps, but then you do 15, 12, 10, 8 count reps. Whats that mean? Do you mean 4 sets? First set, 15 reps, second set is 12 reps, etc? Im thinking so, just want to be sure. Thats not fine, but your weight should be increasing each new set a decent amount. Maybe, lets say for bench press youre on a machine and use 70 pounds for 15 reps, then 75 or 85 pounds for 12. You want that LAST rep to be a huge pain in the (_!_) to finish

You want to work on developing a mental relationship with your muscle. To go thru the motion of say a bench press is great, but you want to be super focused on feeling the muscle contract. Normally that means lesser weight than normal and at the peak of the movement really trying to flex it and hold for a few seconds... Almost like you may get a cramp kind of feeling, if that makes sense... 

Do machines if youre comfortable. Free weights are great because they trigger a few more muscles... You have your fast twitch and stabilizing muscle fibers. Using machines, youre really just using the stabilizing or your core muscle. When you do free weights (or even bands) youre having to manage the weight a lore more to keep in correct position.

Its good to start with machines and then move to free weights once you have good form and control over a decent amount of weight. I had read one study that said one year of machines... I didnt wait that long... The goal is to always get stronger. I promise promise you will not end up a bodybuilder, so always push yourself as hard as you can.

I've not had WLS yet, but I know when I went from 345 to 245 in college I was doing nutrisystem and cycling 14 miles a day, and 50-70 miles on Saturdays, I would stall. I would have to add in some more lean calories (tuna). I have no idea how post WLS nutrients work though... But if you are exerting significant calories, its my understanding that you may need to backfill those. Its not much, though.

I lost a lot of weight for my wedding doing Mediloss (phentermine) and they had a little book that said if I was to eat 700 calories a day and do 30 minutes of weight lifting I only got to add like 50 more calories of protein in

Bodybuilding.com has some great plans on there, from beginner to advanced. Check them out. They also have some great women focused ones, my wife does those a lot to give her something just to follow and stay "fresh"

Thanks so much! Yes, sorry I meant sets of 4. Ok, I will try to increase my weight. They don't have very many increments but I will maybe increase it after a few sets. I do want to get into free weights and have done that (a little) in the past so I am not terrified. 

Thank you! 

Hi,

Don't freak out that you're not losing weight.  A few months after surgery, I started working out more -- everything from Zumba to working out with a trainer to yoga.  To lose weight I need to count calories, carbs, and protein grams.  But working out has TOTALLY changed my body -- my trainer takes my measurements once a month and measures fat with calipers.  Every month (no matter what the scale says) I'm getting leaner and losing 5-10 inches.  It toally changed my perspective on the scale.  I never wanted to bother with measurements in my previous 45 years of dieting, but now I do.  

Also, exercise has become more about how I feel and the joy/sanity/calm/confidence it gives me.  Any calorie burn (which isn't as much as you would think...less than a Quest bar for me...) is extra.  It's totally helped me become reacquainted with the fact that I have strong, lean body that I want to take care of.  That sounds weird, but having totally ignored my SMO body for 40+ years, it's weird getting to know what I'm physically capable of (if that makes any sense...)

Hope that helps! 

Have you considered upping you protein to around 80g?  55-60 seems low especially if you are working out.  Muscles need protein to grow and use calories effectively.  just a thought... good luck!

Thank you for this! After Kairk posted that and maybe a couple others about increasing protein I did just that and I have seen the scale move so that is promising!!