Question for Jeremy

Hi, Jeremy,  I was writing in my blog and another OH member wrote the following comment in response: "Exercise during this type of dieting is mainly to keep you healthy and maintain the muscle mass you had when you started. It will not help you lose more weight or lose it faster. I was really shocked to learn this at the L.A. OH meeting from Jeremy, who is our fitness advisor here on OH. It makes sense, though. Because we have such a low caloric intake, our calories are being spent to keep us healthy, and exercise is merely (but very importantly) being used to keep us strong. You can't build muscle during weight loss surgery dieting, but exercising will help you retain what you had, and help you stay physically strong. Protein is what helps you lose weight, strangely enough." My question is, did this person hear you correctly?  Is it true that WLS individuals cannot build muscle during the period of our weight loss and that exercising only helps us retain what we had?  I thought exercising would increase muscle mass which in turn would burn more calories and have a positive effect on weight loss. Thanks in advance for your response,

Hello Linda, While this member misunderstood a couple of things I said, such as protein being responsible for weight loss (not true), much of this is correct yes, but a lot of this will have to do with how many calories you are consuming each day. If you caloric intake is below a 1000 calories or so each day, it going to be impossible to build muscle tissue. In fact it is actually very difficult to even maintain the amount of muscle tissue you have...actually, i would go as far to say that it is impossible to maintain the same amount of muscle tissue when you caloric intake is this low no matter what form of exercise you perform....this is seriously something to consider when many post ops caloric intake is around 400-500 calories right after WLS. During periods of dramatic weight loss it is impossible to maintain muscle tissue. This however is much different than strength. You can actually gain strength while losing muscle tissue....this is especially true when you are going from being sedentary to participating in an exercise program.  Those who have not had WLS and can consume a more "normal" number of calories, the potential for building muscle tissue is much higher....in turn, this will indeed contribute to fat weight loss since muscle tissue is extremely metabolically active. With this said, we can't simply apply this principle to post ops from the get go. During periods of significant caloric restriction you body mobilizes not only stored fat and carbohydrate to meet its energy needs, but you begin to mobilize a more significant amount of muscle protein to meet energy needs as well. As a consequence you will lose muscle tissue. As you are further out from weight loss surgery and your caloric intake begins to increase, so will the potential for you to build muscle tissue. Most research does show that exercise does NOT increase weight loss when in combination with weight loss surgery or a very low calorie diet. This is not to say however that exercise does not contribute to long term weight loss maintenance. While this seems to be a trivial distinction, this is a distinction that needs to be made. Don't expect a great deal of weight loss from exercise but do expect it to increase you level of cardiovascular health, lower blood pressure, increase bone mineral density, increase strength & function, and help maintain weight loss. People need to exercise for the right reasons. If I tell you your weight loss will accelerate if you begin exercising and it does not happen what do you think your chances will be of exercising again? I know that you can increase strength and improve cardiovascular endurance/health, so these are the things that we need to focus on. As a note, an individual can develop cardiovascular disease simply do to the fact that they are sedentary, even if their weight is a healthy one. It is also important to start exercising as soon as you can after weight loss surgery even though it will probably not increase total weight loss. You are far more likely to adopt and stick with new healthy habits if they are started now while you are succeeding in losing weight rather than to wait a year or two down the road. Weight loss surgery is going to cause the weight loss. Adopting an exercise program early on will help you maintain that weight loss for a lifetime. Hope this helps. Please let me know if you need more info. I also wrote a short article about this topic. You can check it out at the following link here on OH: http://www.obesityhelp.com/forums/fitness/cmsID,11239/mode,c ontent/a,cms/