Recomp without heavy lifting

Your best bet is to switch to ketogenic diet, so you can at least burn the fat.

JewelLeValley wrote: »

segacs wrote: »

Can you ask your primary care physician or surgeon for a referral to a qualified physiotherapist? They should be able to design a program for you that takes your injuries into account.

And you may have to accept that, in the short term at least, you might lose some muscle mass by not being able to work out as usual. It sucks, but it happens. The best thing you can do for yourself is to follow the doctor's instructions, avoid making anything worse, and hopefully recover and get back to your old routine as quickly as possible.

I went through 6 weeks (my insurance maximum) of PT starting a month after surgery. They gave me a lot of exercises that I still do but at that time we were more worried about things like walking, sitting in a chair, and holding my head up then maintaining my overall muscle mass. By the end of PT we had worked up to a little more strength type exercises. My therapist told me I could return to my "normal" exercise routine with no high impact activities and no heavy free weights. I had to put normal in quotes because my normal is high impact and heavy free weights.

I have been trying to maintain my muscle mass as well as I can with body weight exercises but I am failing horribly. I just got my body composition tested by the same people and method as normal for the first since surgery. Preop I was 5'3 130lbs and always tested between 22 and 24% body fat. Now I am 5'6 130 and 35% body fat. I don't even know how that happened. I lost 16 lbs of lean body mass and put it back on as fat in 4 months. I was expecting to lose some muscle but now I am devastated and it needs to stop.

Well if you are the same with all that hardware, some of that weight is just that - hardware. Your actual body weight is slightly different. You might want to take that into account when doing TDEE, deciding what amount of exercise is needed etc.

I had no idea you could gain 3 ins. in height through surgery, almost sounds tempting NOT.

I have several friends with a lot of spinal hardware, I wish you well in all your rehab work and you a true champ for not gaining more weight in general, most end up over weight and not able to exercise. You are on a difficult journey and I wish you great success.

There is a limit to what can be accomplished when you can't lift. Bodyweight exercises are good, but progressing them involves very gymnastic moves that might not be possible for you. I tried doing high reps to compensate for low intensity, but that actually got me into new trouble with even more repetitive strain injuries (tendinopathy). 2-3x12-15 reps is fine, just don't go doing 3-4x20-30. Isolation exercises on the machines are a good idea, if you can do them (and are cleared for that.)

Definitely do all and any exercise you can. You could see a PT once or twice to design a program, and go back in a month or so. (Pool exercises sound reasonable to me in the absence of that kind of advice, and I guess you could try resistance bands.)

Other than increasing muscle mass, which is not likely, you can lose some absolute amount of fat and probably lower your bf% by losing weight - I have read that the ratio is 70% fat, 30% lean mass. That doesn't sound like it's ideal for you, though. Maintenance is probably the best option.

I've got a number of chronic injuries that mean I am very limited in what I can do, so I understand how you feel, but I think you should be realistic about what's possible right now. A buff body like you'd see in fitspo stuff is probably not on the table. It is really hard to wrap your head around this, I know

heybales wrote: »

Muscle will get weaker if not used.

But unless you are in a diet there need not be a concern of actually losing it, as in muscle mass.

Eat at maintenance. You still will lose muscle size and strength, and likely make up for it with fat, but it isn't that extreme if you are using it in the least.

And keep protein up, I recall seeing a study or two that showed no loss of muscle mass even in a slight diet when protein was high enough.

That's heartening to know

Wow,I'm guessing that upper curve was the reason for the surgery (as in you weren't standing like that for the x-ray).
But that is a lot of metalwork.

But those are some great results! I hope for you that you get cleared soon.

JewelLeValley wrote: »

AsISmile wrote: »

Wow,I'm guessing that upper curve was the reason for the surgery (as in you weren't standing like that for the x-ray).
But that is a lot of metalwork.

But those are some great results! I hope for you that you get cleared soon.

Yep I'm actually pushing down against a railing to straighten my back as much as possible in the first one.

The metal must be a real improvement then. All the best to you for your recovery.

Isometric holds to start then once your core is more solid move to body weight strength training.

If you look at my photo, that muscle definition is solely from body weight strength training.

Best of luck to you.