Hi exercise people. I need help.

Your doctor is a jackass... EVERY health magazine, doctor, weight loss program, EVERYONE EVERYWHERE will tell you that you need to excercise to maintain a HEALTHY lifestyle. I am 100% in agreement with Nate. This is about health NOT what the scale says. muscle weighs 3 times more than fat. SO, if you lost 3 pounds of fat and gained 1 pound of muscle, you are the same weight. Keep that in mind and go by how your clothes are fitting you instead of being a slave to the scale. Losing weight and not excercising = skinny fat person, not necesarily healthy. My neighbor smokes 2 packs of cigarettes a day, gets doughnuts for he and his family 4-5 times a week. After work I rarely see him without a beer in hand, and he enjoys vegging out and watching the grass grow. He is my height, but weighs 40 pounds less than me. I doubt he could run from his house to the corner. I have ran 76 miles continually and could really care less what I weigh.

They key take aways from all this jargin I wrote... Eat good, excercise daily, be happy, and find a new doctor, because the current one is a moron... ROCK ON!!!

I need to disagree a little bit here Dan,
a pound is a pound is a pound.
What I think you are comparing is volume not weight.
The same volume of fat vs the same volume of muscle can weigh the same as muscle is more dense, but it doesn't matter if it's a pound of gold or a pound of feathers, they are both still just 1 pound.  The pound of feathers is going to take up a lot more space though.

Ditto

Volume, not weight... PUNK!! Lol, my bad. Sometimes I know what I want to say, but was so pissed at what her doctor told her, I just wrote it down and didn't proof it...

Hahah

I know you know the difference Dan, but there seems to be a lot of people who interchange them. How many times have you seen "muscle weighs more than fat" without the qualifier of volume.

Along with what Nate said is that a good chance a large portion of the 15 pounds you lost after not working out was fluids you were retaining from the weeks you had worked out.  Also if you maintain to large a deficit while workingout your body won't easily let go of the excess uneeded fat, I am a walking example of this and struggle daily to meet the ideal between calories in versus calories out.

If your doctor tells you not to exercise he is doing you a disservice.  Now if you are exercising to hit some calories burned number then you are doing your body a disservice and should probably back off on worrying about how many calories you burn while exercising.  I know someone that was in this spot where she workedout to just burn x calories to speed up the weightloss and once she backed off a bit she started losing at a better rate and enjoying her workouts more.

Like Nate said it is about health and not some magic number that you or your doctor believes the scale should read.

Well I can't get a new doctor because I paid for a year's worth of free visits. I don't really listen to what my doctors says because he doesn't even want me to count calories or do most of the things I do. He's all about the scale and the number. He wants me to loose on average 4-8 pounds a month until I get around 220 pounds, then he says it will slow.

As for my calorie deifict I might have worded that wrong. I meant that I only eat 1200 calories a day, everyday.

I want to be a smaller me and be healthy...why do I have to choose? I want both.

Most doctors don't want you counting calories.  My doctor still won't give me a Calorie goal and if he did it would be to low probably.  My Nutritionist sets my Calorie goals as she has a better understanding of how my activity level impacts my overall caloric needs. 

Surgeons base everything on averages because they preform the procedure the same on everyone.  This leads to unrealistic expectations on by the doctor.  While 4-8 pounds a month doesn't sound like a whole lot there will be months where you won't lose any and it may last for more than a month.  If you look at a surgeons patient list in general it probably doesn't contain a lot of people that get into the exercise aspect of post op life and we tank their averages when it comes to how fast or much someone loses. The reality your body is going to decide how much you lose and how fast you lose it.

Depending on what you exercise routine is 1200 might be a good spot but as previously stated the scale will move slow but you will be healthier in the long run.

As for small and healthy, depends on what you call small.  Small won't help you live longer or a happier life.

A smaller you is not healthy. Don't take that wrong , a smaller me wasn't healthy either. A smaller person is not the main goal. Be a smaller person with a smaller body fat percentage. A 150 pound person with 30% body fat is not the same as a 150 pound person with 10% body fat. They may weigh the same but won't look or feel the same. Get to the right body fat not the right weight.

I lost from 350 to 180 in 9 months and that was the worst possible thing I could have done. I have since started lifting weights and put back on close to 40 pounds BUT where the same clothes. I wish I had slowed the loss and kept my muscle and not had to build it back over the last 14 months.

I wish you the best , we are just giving you the info we have learned.

Hi there!!!

I talked to you over on the Band board.  I'm glad you took my advice and came here to the exercise board.  Listen to what they are saying.  I understand you want that number to go down...but more imortantly you will LOOK thinner.  You will be small...you just will weigh more because of the muscle you built.  So instead of weighing 150 lbs and wearing a size 14...you will weigh 180 lbs and wear a size10.  More importantly your heart, lungs, brain, circulatory system and skelatal system will be healthier than that of someone that didn't exercise.  

So let's reveiw.  You will be very healthy, you will have lots of energy, you will be able to eat more food and not regain, and YOU WILL BE SMALLER....you just will weigh more than you expected.  

I have come to this board a number of times and they have never steered me in the wrong direction.  Remember these people were where you are now.  And look at how great they are all doing and how great they all look.  When I started my journey I wanted to be 145 lbs (I'm 5'9" so that's thin).  I do still want to lose weight but I'm more interested on my measurements and what size jeans I fit into now.  When I started to exercise in October I was a size 24 now I'm a size 14!!!  So you do get smaller!!!