Setting calorie goal as an amputee

Go with your current weight and activity level and adjust from there once you see how your body does.

If you are really worried, talk to your doctor.

I wish you the best of luck! I don't have any answers for you but I hope that you are successful in your journey!

Do you have a dietician on your care team? That would be a good question For them. Wishing you the best.

lorrpb wrote: »

Do you have a dietician on your care team? That would be a good question For them. Wishing you the best.

I was reading an article just an hour go on BMI and one of the parts was how it isn't practical for exceptional circumstances like this. They recommended consulting a dietitian.

It may not be entirely accurate, but it might be worth wearing a heart rate monitor for a whole day, and seeing what that gives your daily calorie burn as. I'd recommend putting in your original height, along with a weight a bit below the 60kg, as I think almost all heart rate monitors worth a damn need those stats to provide an estimated calorie burn. For the standard algorithms to work, you're going to need to put a weight that would have corresponded to your original height.

I have fairly bad muscle wasting in my lower legs (neurological disease), and the formulas are noticeably wrong for me already, as there's an implicit assumption about how your weight is distributed. My legs are probably a couple of kilos too light each, so if I'm a "perfect" weight based on all the formulas, then I'm probably carrying 4kg too much from the butt up. Your adjustment without prosthetics would be bigger than mine, but maybe there's a way of finding out if your prosthetics weigh about the same as "real" legs, then you could just always weigh with your prosthetics?

It's more hassle, but seeing someone to get skin caliper measurements done might be a more useful metric than weight. Even if they don't plug the readings into the formula that gives your body fat percentage (it needs weight and height), it can still show where you are carrying a bit of excess, and where there's really nothing to spare. I'm not too convinced that the formula gives my body fat correctly because of my weird legs, but at least I have the actual skin fold measurements to show that I've shifted some fat off my butt!

I'd also be ultra careful about going too low calorie. If your kidneys have already taken a beating, then you don't want to constrict your diet in a way that puts any further stress on them. Depending where you are with your prosthetics and/or wheelchair, you may be burning quite a lot, particularly if you're still learning and not all the way there with efficiency yet! As others have said, input from a dietician could well be beneficial, but otherwise trial and error is the way to go. I'd reckon 1,500-1,600 is a fairly arbitrary but not ridiculous place to start.

Also, I just saw someone posting about his progress as an amputee bodybuilder today - @chriswoodwardclark7531
so it may be that there are more people on MFP who could help you found an amputee community!

All the best with everything, and always remember to take what the doctors say about what you can and can't do with a pinch of salt. I've found that they tend to present the worst case scenario, but there is no reason why you can't overachieve!

Yes to mobility issues.
I'm still up and walking, but that's thanks to 3 sets of surgery and an ankle brace! My toes don't wiggle, I can't really move my ankles on demand (although they do move when I walk and things), and my range of ankle mobility is hilariously terrible so my squats are barely even half squats. I can't really do stairs without a hand rail, I haven't been able to run for about 20 years, and I certainly can't jump or anything. My walk is noticeably odd too.

But I keep plodding on. I have a paralympic classification for rowing, so I can race against other people with wonky legs (current British indoor champion! No-one else turned up to race, but shhhhh!!), and I've done a whole ton of stuff that the doctors said I couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't do. I figure that if I never bothered trying, I'd just sit on the sofa and then I *would* have been in a wheelchair by 21 like they said I might be.

I don't think my calories are too different from average, because my mobility inefficiencies mean I burn more walking than a normal person but I suppose my legs don't need so many calories because of the lack of muscle. I guess it roughly balances out or something. I just make sure I stay active enough to get away with eating a good amount of food!
I started lifting weights about a year ago, and with my trainer we've worked out that I'm maintaining happily on 1,900-2,000 a day. I was a bit leaner in May (before I went to the US on holiday and ate ALL the doughnuts!) but I'm basically happy where I am now, and get to eat a bit more food so that's great.

Well done on getting off dialysis and getting your kidneys going well again! That's great news. Particularly if you're cleared to follow the kind of diet you enjoy and feel good on.

I'd say just go for it and start a group - people might come out of the woodwork, you never know! Or they may already be something on facebook or whatever. The internet's great for that - there's literally a niche for everyone. I've also found that a lot of groups for people with, let's say, the slightly more unusual requirements are really welcoming, even if your situation isn't quite the same as theirs. (There used to be a really great forum for people with my leg condition, but sadly the US organization for it decided to shut it down and focus on their facebook presence instead - it's never been the same. I miss it!)