Starting anyway...from my wheelchair

Just eating at a deficit will help you lose weight. Not a good cook? No problem! Baking is easy and if you have a crockpot, you can just toss meat in and forget about it for 8 hours or so. I will make a bunch of food at the beginning of the week, and than portion them out into freezable containers and that way I have ready made meals whenever I need one.

Not sure what to offer advice about workouts while wheelchair bound, but if you are making a goal to move around in your chair several times a day, you should be able to workout your upper body and arms. Good luck. Hopefully someone else can offer some insights. :flowerforyou:

Good for you for starting anyway! I lost twenty pounds without much exercise. Calculate your TDEE and eat under it. For me, because I was injured and mainly only focusing on me anyway, it wasn't hard to make my eating a priority. Don't be upset with yourself you have a day where you go over. If can wheel that chair yourself, I say challenge yourself every day. It's a great upper body workout to wheel a chair around. You can also use dumbbells and bands to work your upper body.

I think you may have to be careful not to get too stressed in order to avoid infection, but you know about that better than I, so just do what you can in the exercise department, and rely on a calorie deficit to lose weight.

I am a full-time special needs caregiver for a gentleman in a wheelchair who lives with me. Our gym actually has weight machines that adapt to a wheelchair, so he is able to lift. There is also an indoor track that we do laps on. We have been going there for less than a year and his health has drastically improved!

So maybe call around and see if anyone has wheelchair friendly equipment? With proper training there is alot you could do with free weights too.

You can still lose weight even if your in a wheel chair. Just eat at a deficit. Get a food scale, weigh and measure everything, log it on mfp :-) once your able to move around, you can slowly start to exercise then. There's an old saying ~ where there's a will, there's a way! You can do this! :-)

if you want to cook, there are plenty of options. most of my meals are sort of... er.. modular. at most, i throw broccoli, tofu and broccoli together, microwave and add my favorite sauce, but sometimes i'll have a serving of nut thins or potato chips plus my favorite light cheddar. i eat a lot of oats cooked in non-fat milk and sweetened with stevia (other non-calorie sweeteners would work), and sometimes also cooked with cocoa or cinnamon.

i think the most important thing to do is start off by logging everything you eat before you change anything. i started off writing everything in a notebook, but it's much easier to log in my fitness pal. two things happen when you start logging your food - first, it breaks eating habits with a new step. second, it gives you an idea of how many calories you're currently eating and the nutritional breakdown, and this is important so you don't cut too many calories all at once, which can make one feel terrible.

once you know your daily intake, you can start cutting calories here and there to cut at least 500 calories per day, but i don't recommend cutting more than 1000 calories per day to start. when i started cutting calories i did it with substitutions - eating reduced fat cheese instead of regular (i love sargento), egg beaters instead of whole eggs, eating dryer's slow churned instead of regular ice cream (dryer's slow churned is yummy, creamy and lower in fat) and so on. i lost over 40 pounds just by making food substitutions.

if you don't have an accurate digital food scale, a measuring cup and some measuring spoons, get them. i find weighing most of my foods is much more accurate - it's surprising the difference between a measuring cup and actual weight for some foods. amazon has some good choices, and you can get a scale for well under $20. i weight or measure everything i eat, and i find that letting myself obsess over food seems to keep me from binging - not sure if you are a binge eater, but i sure was. now whenever i want to binge, i amuse myself with data instead.

while you're in the wheelchair you might want to do chair exercises. you may want to get resistance bands (i love mine!) but there are plenty of exercises you can do without them. you can google "chair exercises" and "wheelchair exercises", and here are a few i found:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/videos-detail.asp?video=38
http://exercise.about.com/library/blseatedupperbody.htm (upper body only!)
http://www.livestrong.com/article/329889-upper-body-wheelchair-exercises/

if you have any questions, message me. i'll be happy to respond to the best of my ability. best of luck with your leg healing, and getting healthier

When telling me how a treatment would last for a severe broken leg the Dr. said "for a woman of your size..." which hit me like a punch, I felt like I crossed a line. I have 100 + lbs to lose. 3 1/2 mos. ago I shattered my calf into many pieces stumbling on a stair The break may have been so bad because of my weight..All kinds of food was my medicine. I don't know what to do. I am in a wheelchair and can't burn any calories. The only thing I can think of is to start changing my diet and to learn to plan meals. I am terrible at cooking and planning. My skinny husband is happy to help. He is very concerned about my health. I will probably have a bone graft which will put me out another 3-4 months with the additional healing. This is so weird. Can anyone offer advice?

I'm sorry this has happened to you... we all get a 'wake up call' maybe this was yours? Start by dieting, watching what you eat and how much that is where you start to lose. I pretty much eat 'normal' foods, just smaller portions or actually real serving sizes. I do avoid candy and chips and those sort of things though. Remember you can lose weight by diet alone, so start there.

As for exercising you can do things from in the chair, like sit ups yep from in the chair! and you can do things with your arms... just go to google and put in: exercise for in a wheelchair or try: exercise sitting... you'll get all sorts of stuff. I know because I've been there YOU can do this!!!

I have a slight inkling of how you are feeling. Me, I fell in Dove Dale, UK. I had to be airlifted out of the area leaving my husband and three granddaughter in our down draft not knowing how soon we would be reunited or how they or I would be able to get back to the cottage. I was fortunate in that my injury was simple, I did not need the additional attention it seems as if you may be needing. and we have photos which the g sons are now forgetting because they would ask to see them at each visit!

I wonder if any of your team have thought of testing your thyroid. It probably is the last thing on their and your mind. Circumstances have caused me to read up on problems which can be related to low functioning thyroid, one is slow mending after injury. One of the systems controlled or with thyroid input is the repair and replacement of cells. It could help you to find out your position especially if you have a low dairy and fish content in your diet.

Almost two years ago my daughter was dislodged by a bucking horse at the third attempt, she is still recovering from her fractured collar bone and ribs. My reason for telling you this is because her diet is very low in essential minerals which might have helped her repair herself, she may still have needed to have the collar bone operated on but her recovery time may have been shorter.

All the very best, take care, take time for yourself, you are probably too busy at other times.

Almost two years ago my daughter was dislodged by a bucking horse at the third attempt, she is still recovering from her fractured collar bone and ribs. My reason for telling you this is because her diet is very low in essential minerals which might have helped her repair herself, she may still have needed to have the collar bone operated on but her recovery time may have been shorter.

I broke my collarbone 7 years ago, and it never healed right. The bone did not regrow, so it was sort of permanently broken.
A year ago I had surgery to put in a plate.
After surgery, I paid attention to eating plenty of protein (actually bought a jug of protein powder), and took supplements for calcium, vitamin D, and magnesium. (Also a B vitamin complex, because he'd cut a nerve, and that helps nerves regrow.)
5 months after surgery, I started into my current weight-loss experience, which includes weightlifting. There's one shoulder exercise I'm still very weak on, but mostly it's healed quite well.

I am actually off to my health club this afternoon to check out what I might do Unfortunately they don't let chairs on the track.

Are you in the US? If so, a facility cannot restrict where wheelchairs can and cannot go. We run in to this issue a lot, and have to advocate for ourselves often. I understand you may not feel comfortable doing that. Eitherway, it would behoove you to get aquainted to your legal rights.

Yeah, what she said.
They can't (legally) prevent you from going in your wheelchair wherever someone else is allowed to walk.
Major ADA violation.
Contact the manager, or better yet the head office if it's a national chain.

Also, you can use free weights to do arm & torso exercises.

Can you ask about being allowed to use crutches on occasion? Or failing that, hopping on one leg behind a zimmer frame? My leg is currently in a cast following ankle surgery and I need to be strictly non weight bearing on the one leg for a couple more weeks. I use a wheelchair for longer distances but am cleared for hopping behind the walking frame around the house.

I am finding that hopping behind a walking frame (which allows you to bear more weight through the shoulders than with crutches) to be a pretty strenuous cardio workout. My normal pre-surgery workout was 65 minutes on the elliptical, but I find I am pooped and dripping with sweat if I continuously hop behind the frame for 15-20 minutes.