Exercise help

I have been doing the elliptical for 40-50 minutes up to 3-4 times a week for awhile now. I am seeing a new bariatric nutritionist and he no longer wants me doing cardio for that long. Only 15-20 minutes a day. He wants me to focus on resistance training to build and keep the good amount of muscle I already have.

I belong to a rec center that pretty much only has cardio equipment. Is there any kind of resistance stuff I could do at home?

Any advice is appreciated!!!

You might want to get a second opinion on that

You can do both cardio and resistance training - unless you have some medical issues that your nutritionist knows about, I don't see why you can't just add resistance/strength training to your current levels of cardio.

You can can some light weight or bands with DVDs to do at home.

He thinks my metabolism is slowing down and I am not eating enough. He wants me to focus on building more muscle and eating more healthy and not just on burning calories on the cardio equipment. Does that make any sense?

I understand focusing on building muscle, but unless you have no time to do both, Im confused why you have to reduce your cardio. Cardio isn't just about burning calories - there are other benefits as well. Im not an expert so I don't know - if it were me, Id at least maintain my current cardio levels and add resistance training.

The general advice makes sense. The specific advice does not.

Also, the fact that he thinks you aren't eating enough makes me suspect he's not that familiar with WLS. Also, I question where he's coming from when he says he "suspects your metabolism is slowing down."

First of all, when you restrict calories, your metabolism slows down. So of course yours has slowed down. But working out, including cardio, can combat that. Also, as we lose weight, we need less calories to maintain our bodies. Since our metabolism is the rate at which we burn calories, our metabolism slows down by definition. But this isn't because there is something wrong with us. It just takes less energy to run a smaller body.

I am a big proponent of strength training and building muscles definitely helps raise our metabolism. However, you can build muscles with 2-3 strength sessions a week of 30-60 min. There really isn't any reason to cut down your cardio so drastically to do that.