Maintaining weight after Surgery

kristenmeleniak
kristenmeleniak Posts: 46 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
Had surgery today that will leave me unable to workout properly for 6 weeks or even more. I've heard that I can take walks at 4 weeks if I'm feeling up to it.
Anyway, I've lost about 50 lbs total and want to stay around this weight for now. What would you recommend I do to maintain without exercise while I'm recovering?
I'm 5'3" 130 lbs and want to stay as close to this as possible. How many calories would you eat?

Replies

  • subcounter
    subcounter Posts: 2,382 Member
    Simply set yourself activity level as sedentary, and set your goal to maintain, and eat your calories at your maintenance on MFP. Hope the surgery went well! :smile:
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Set MFP to maintain with an activity level of sedentary.
  • Linzon
    Linzon Posts: 294 Member
    When I was recovering from my surgeries last year (meniscus trim and then ACL replacement) I was too depressed and overwhelmed with extensive physio to keep up with tracking. Instead I stuck with the eating habits I picked up while losing weight (lots of veggies, only eating out once a week, keeping 'trigger' foods out of the house, etc) and ended up maintaining my weight for 5 months until I began tracking again. My stats were almost the same as yours, although I've lost less weight overall and am an inch taller.

    If you do want to track still, the recommendation I kept hearing was to set the exercise level to sedentary but to eat slightly above maintenance - your body needs extra energy to heal! If you do end up putting on a couple of pounds, you know how to take them off again when you're all healed up.

    Hope you're back on your feet and feeling better soon :)
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    What they said, but also don't weigh in for a week or two following the surgery. (Or if you do, don't freak out if you see gains). Depending on the extent of the surgery, you could have a lot of swelling and water retention, both of which will cause the scale to jump. Just be patient, rest and heal. Recovering fully is WAY more important than the number on the scale right now, especially if it's just a six week recovery. If you gain a few pounds in that time, you can easily lose them again when you're back at 100%.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 33,792 Member
    AliceDark wrote: »
    What they said, but also don't weigh in for a week or two following the surgery. (Or if you do, don't freak out if you see gains). Depending on the extent of the surgery, you could have a lot of swelling and water retention, both of which will cause the scale to jump. Just be patient, rest and heal. Recovering fully is WAY more important than the number on the scale right now, especially if it's just a six week recovery. If you gain a few pounds in that time, you can easily lose them again when you're back at 100%.

    Seconding the idea that you should expect to see some water weight gains after surgery, and that it will probably stick around longer than the routine water weight gains from extra sodium or that sort of thing.

    I had surgery while losing, and it took perhaps 2 weeks for the water weight to drop off post-surgery. But mine was laparoscopic surgery (gall bladder) . . . something more invasive could take longer.

    Personally, I just kept weighing daily because fluctuations & such don't freak me out, but if they bother you, then AliceDark's advice is good.

    Your decision to eat at maintenance is excellent. I stupidly didn't do that, rather kept losing, and it was a bad, Bad, BAD decision. Paid for it later with fatigue/weakness, I believe.

    If you've been losing for a while, you can use your experience to set your maintenance calorie goal during recovery. (It will only work well if you've been logging pretty accurately, and losing long enough to have gotten past any startup anomalies in your weight loss rate).

    To estimate your maintenance calories, take the last couple weeks or month pre-surgery, and figure out (1) your average net calories eaten daily, and (2) your average pounds lost per week.

    Multiply the average pounds lost per week by 3500 (rough number of calories in a pound). Divide the result by 7 (number of days in a week). This will give you your approximate average calorie deficit per day.

    Add that number to your average net calories eaten per day during the same period. That'll be your target calories to maintain at your current weight. As suggested above, you might even want to eat a bit above that to help the healing process. Also good, solid nutrition (and hydration) is your friend - always, but especially while healing.

    Best wishes!


  • dlinace
    dlinace Posts: 27 Member
    Eat foods at are high in nutrient density, basically meaning that you need to stay away from junk food. Look up "food that are nutrient dense" and see what you find. Stay positive too!!
  • STEVE142142
    STEVE142142 Posts: 867 Member
    Hey you've developed the long-term habits to succeed but the most important thing is for your body to recover. You don't want to win the battle but lose the War and what I mean by that is your body has to recover and heal itself and that may require extra calories.
  • goldthistime
    goldthistime Posts: 3,214 Member
    STEVE142142 wrote: »
    Hey you've developed the long-term habits to succeed but the most important thing is for your body to recover. You don't want to win the battle but lose the War and what I mean by that is your body has to recover and heal itself and that may require extra calories.

    My thoughts exactly.

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