Losing weight while injured.

lkmuse wrote: »

Hello, I am new here. I have a question, how can you maximize your weight loss when exercising is painful?
I need to loose 50 lbs to save my knees which are hurting, lower my blood pressure, cholesterol and ward off diabetes. Actually weight loss will cure a lot of things for me, but in the meantime, my legs are really hurting. (have seen a doctor, in the process of determining a cause of the pain) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

just put your stats into mfp and eat to your calorie goal. I would set yourself to sedentary and go from there. you dont need exercise to lose weight,all thats needed is a caloric deficit. also a lot of us have a food scale and weigh everything to be more precise in our calorie counts,its not needed but its really helpful. do that and give it a few months and see if you lost any weight.

exercise is mainly for health reasons. It can create a bigger deficit but you can lose weight without it. I wasnt able to workout or do much for 2 months due to being sick and having an injury,I still lost without conventional exercise.

Yeah, weight loss is mostly about the food.

Log your food, stay under calories.

How about an aquasize class? (Water aerobics), or just swimming if you like to swim. Canoeing or kayaking would be good too. That's what I did when I had a broken foot.

I am losing weight at a great pace without additional exercise. It's all about calories in and calories out. Enter your stats honestly and follow the guidelines that MFP gives you and you will lose weight. This works! Good luck.

Weight loss is mostly about calories, so you can do a lot just in tracking what you eat and limiting overall calories, while making sure to get enough protein & other nutrients.

If you're looking for low-impact exercises, water aerobics is good because the water supports a lot of your weight & takes the stress off the joints.

If you want to add exercise to help with increasing your caloric output, you could try swimming or slow walking. Any sort of movement helps.

Like everyone else said, calorie deficit is the thing to focus on if you can't really exercise! Everyone has a different BMR (basal metabolic rate) which is the number of calories your body burns over 24 hours of rest (so for example, if I did nothing but sleep for 24 hours my body would burn 1660 calories). This cal burn comes from heart pumping, lungs breathing, metabolism running etc. Yours will be different. It is based on a few factors, the major ones being height, weight and age. You can type in "my fitness pal BMR calculator" on google and it'll just ask you to input your info and it'll tell you what yours is. Make sure you eat a MINIMUM of your BMR (so for me, 1660) because your body needs that to function, and if you're trying to heal you need your body to be in best shape possible, but just don't eat anymore than your BMR and everything else you do during the day (walking, cleaning etc) will be a calorie deficit resulting in weight loss

On another note, I have TERRIBLE knees, and I've started doing my own physio. When I do my physio regularly, my pain is drastically decreased (by at least 95%). Knee physio really works on strengthening the VMO muscle which is the only muscle attached to the knee cap. So if this muscle isn't strong, our knees can't be supported properly. Physio really focuses on the tiny muscles, and strengthening SLOWLY! So go to google or Pinterest, type in "knee physio" and "ankle physio" and get a good selection of exercises and perform your routine 3 times per week. Remember to start really slowly, and use weights so light (if you even need weights at all) that it doesn't hurt. Good luck!