HEAVY Weightlifting is a GAME CHANGER Ladies!!! Pics included!

[SpartanMaker 1,035]

5 hours ago, Hiliaryw said:

I am 7 months post op and have ben lifting "heavy" for about 3 months now. i am trying to follow a body recomp plan but its been so hard to dial in the right macros, especially when i do loose. I just had a meeting with a dietician who told me i should stick to 1000 calories a day but i am in the gym 2x a day plus i am very active outside the gym as well. im not a competing athlete of course, im still very over weight, but i am pushing my body harder than ever before and i just don't think that my personal trainer or doctors recommendations are correct. one is only thinking about the size of my stomach ( i had bypass) the other is only thinking about the extreme amount of activity. i feel best between 1200 and 1400 cals however my trainer wants me at 2050 and the bariatric dr.'s dietician says 1000. when you were starting out did you eat back the calories burned while exercising to maintain your calorie deficit ? i see so many people saying contradictory things but most haven't had the surgery. id be interested to know what worked for you because your progress is amazing!

As a general rule, I would not recommend eating back calories burned for a few reasons:

1. People misunderstand metabolism. Our bodies are highly adaptable and our non-exercise calorie burn is also highly variable day-to-day. We know from recent research that your body tends to try to conserve energy balance, meaning unless your burning over ~400 calories per day in exercise, your body will lessen your calorie burn elsewhere during the day to try to "make up" for the exercise calories. In short, you're not burning as many overall calories on those exercise days as you think you are.
2. Our ability to accurately determine calorie burn from exercise is hard and often we think we've burned more calories than we actually have. For example, you may think you've burned say 400 calories, but it may have only been 250.
3. We also aren't very good at accurately tracking caloric intake, so you may be eating a lot more than you think you are. Adding in even more calories to "eat back" your exercise calories is not going to be accurate, even if the two points above were not true.

Something here is not adding up for me. You mentioned you're trying to do a body recomp, but also that you still have a lot of weight to lose. That just doesn't make sense. It's fine to say you want to lose fat and gain muscle, and as a newbie to weight training, you can do both, but you really need to make fat loss the priority here.

At best as an untrained woman, you might be able to add 10 or 12 pounds of muscle in the course of a year, but in all likelihood it will be less. I don't mean to discourage you, but most obese people already have more muscle mass than a "normal" person, so you can't expect to add as much muscle as they might be able to. My point is that when we talk about a recomp, what we really mean is trying to stay at about the same weight, but simultaneously lose fat and gain muscle. In my opinion, you need to focus on fat loss first, then try a recomp once you're closer to your goal weight.

My suggestion would be to focus on two things:

1. Most importantly, are you still losing weight? If not, then you're eating too much. If you are still losing, is it at a reasonable and sustainable rate? I'd want to see no more than about 3% per month considering that you should hopefully be also adding some muscle mass. This factor is really the primary determinant of where your calories should be. If you're losing faster than ~3%, then it's probably a good idea to eat a bit more, but don't change things by more than a couple hundred calories a day. If you're not losing weight, then as I said, you're eating too much and need to consider scaling back.
2. The second factor here is how you're feeling. If you're eating so little that you can't even think about completing your workouts, or you're just exhausted all the time, then that's a sign you probably need to be eating more. Even so, take it slow here. Add in a couple hundred calories a day and see if you feel better. You can go up to where you need to, but keep in mind, you may also slow or even stop the weight loss. If that happens, you may need to modify your workouts. The flip side of this is if you are feeling good, but not losing, that's probably a sign you're eating too much.

In the end, it's a balancing act of eating enough to fuel your workouts, but no so much you stop the weight loss. It will take some time to find the right point for you.

Best of luck. (Oh, and in the future, I'd strongly recommend just starting a new thread. This one is several years old.)

Edited Saturday at 11:07 PM by SpartanMaker

[Mspretty86 420]

Im late to this post but congrats to all the lifters In the building! I am proud of you!

Edited Sunday at 05:01 PM by Mspretty86