BigViffer

Believe it or not, gaining weight is accomplished the same way as losing it. Counting calories and tracking macros. You say you eat 100 grams of Protein a day, that will only account for roughly 400 calories; what makes up the rest of your daily intake? I've switched over to higher fat foods like nuts, seeds, and real cream in my coffee. I make a point to get my carbs in too. If you are only eating dense protein, not all of that will go towards tissue repair, you body will have to use some of it for fuel.

It takes a while of experimenting to find the mix that works for you, but you need to find how much carbs and fats to take in for fuel and then protein for repair and muscle mass gain. I was able to put on about 20 lbs of muscle after hitting goal, 198 back up to 225. There is a little more fat on my than before, but it is where it needs to be for lifting and my reserves. It comes off pretty rapidly when I stop working out and eating for fuel.

Oh man, finally a topic I can talk in! I sous vide all the damn time now. I do meal prep for the week with mine. I went with the Joule from ChefSteps. While I don't like the fact that there are not controls on the circulator (everything is done via smartphone), it consistently wins the comparisons because of it's ability to maintain temp and speed at which it brings the Water up to temp. Plus it has a magnetic base so you can use antique turkey pans as sous vide containers!

I have sous vide entire pork butts, beef brisket, turkeys, fish... you name a meat , I've sous vide it. Hands down the best steak I ever ate was from my sous vide. And it was a cheap skirt or flank steak. Veggies are actually more of a pain in my opinion, but they are not that bad. I highly recommend getting good vacuum sealer if you plan on doing long cooks. Brisket takes over 36 hours.

So far, my absolute favorite thing to do right now are the Butterball turkey roasts. They are breasts & dark meat netted together. I will stuff a couple pieces of back into the netting, season the meat however I feel like that day, then I will smoke it for about 2 hours. Pull it from the smoker and then vacuum seal it and plop it in the sous vide until I am ready for dinner. I swear you will never have a better bite of smoked turkey.

I don't comment that much anymore, but there is so much misinformation in this thread that it needs to be addressed.

A sleeved stomach will never "stretch out" to normal size. Swelling will subside, scar tissue will soften, but stretching out just doesn't happen. It can't. The fundus was removed. However; frequent and constant over eating can weaken the esophageal sphincter and/or the pylorus.

With the esophageal sphincter weakening you would experience frequent heartburn. With the weakened pylorus, food just gets pushed out of the stomach before the bulk of digestion can happen. This leads to a decrease in satiety and more frequent eating.

Either your doctor doesn't know what he is talking about, or he is just telling you something in "layman terms". But that does neither you nor the community any good since it just perpetuates the belief that a sleeve can be stretched.

You need to correct your post. There is no way that hottie is 50 years old. You must have mistyped 25!

Sent from my phone. Please forgive brevity and spelling.

I'll chime in, just because I haven't seen it mentioned yet. The effective use of snacking in a diet plan is going to also depend on what kind of a relationship you had with food pre-surgery.

Me personally; I was a bulk eater. I would eat once or twice a day, but in huge volume. Now 4 years post op, I snack all the time to meet my macros. My average caloric intake is 2,000. Someone else at my stage may get that in their 3 meals a day, but I prefer to control my hunger throughout the day so that I don't try and over eat.

If you were a grazer pre-op, snacking might not be a good idea.

That is a company that just needs to die. No matter what marketing you read, it's a crap product. Go with a trusted brand like Optimum Nutrition or Isopure.

I used to live off of Fage 0% flavored with Torani sugar free syrups. Now I don't even bother flavoring it, just eat it plain. But that takes some getting used to really.

Hi everyone!

I am 51...

If your goal is a straighter back, it would be best to strengthen the muscles of the back and not the abdominal muscles. If it is a prominent lower back (lumbar) rounding, deadlifts or a similar exercise would be the best. If it is the upper back (thoracic) then upright rows or shoulder presses would be a good idea.

If you are not really into weight lifting, a rowing machine is a great way to get all of the back involved at one time. The strength gains will take longer, but the endurance will build fast and it is a killer cardio workout.

IT is also possible he is using your interaction as a bragging point to whomever is listening. Doesn't matter the age, the male ego is a silly thing and he may be using these obviously mundane conversations as examples of the attention he brags about to the men in his group.

Or it could just be that he isn't very good at dealing with the opposite sex.

I do not understand what you mean by maxing out. Carbs and Protein are both about 4 calories per gram. In my situation, the excess carbs would drive blood sugars too high. Proteins don't give me that problem, so I would lean more towards them for that reason.

17 hours ago, Mhy12784 said:

Well I'm maxing out my Protein daily, so excess is just wasted calories.

It depends on how much weight lifting you are doing really. If the excess protein is just wasted calories, then the carbs would be as well. Carbs are just for fuel, protein for synthesis and normal body functions. If you are getting enough of each, then your activity level needs to be adjusted. If you are moving too much for your current intake, ease up a little bit. If your activity level is too low and calories too high, more movement will be necessary.

Maybe look into getting your BMR (basal metabolic rate) tested?

You have me confused actually, if you are wanting to add lean body mass, carbs aren't the way to do it. Carbs are very important for Protein synthesis, true - but a diet dominated by carbs will not produce muscle mass. You'll need the protein for that.

Oatmeal is my go-to carb personally. Love the stuff. I cannot eat Pasta anymore, it feels like it gets stuck at the top of my stomach even now. Carrots, quinoa, barley, sweet potatoes, real pumpernickel bread, Beans, smoked basmati rice... those are carbs I can think of off the top of my head that I eat on a regular basis. And they don't give me a huge sugar spike that leaves me feeling awful.

I have arthritis everywhere. The x-rays even cause the technicians to gasp when they look at them the first time! I have been on Voltaren for at least 10 years, the last 3.5 being post op sleeve. I am gleefully down to only one a day that I take with omeprazole.

That being said, I never miss a scheduled doctor appointment and we keep an eye on it. Not everyone will develop ulcers, but if it starts I'll have to drop the only arthritis medicine that has given me any relief.

[mention=323408]FluffyChix[/mention]

10 hours ago, Kat410 said:

Agreed. Right now I am almost 18 months post op. I am at goal. Fitness is my primary concern now. And by fitness I mean functional strength, mobility, balance, flexibility, stamina, endurance and overall health.

@BigViffer recommended a book when I first came on whining about my gym anxiety (The Barbell Prescription) which I read along with other things.

<snip>

And by the way, haven't seen it asked or answered - but @BigViffer, what is the Viffer?

Inquiring minds.

I almost got emotional reading this. My little grinch heart swelled, You actually read the book! I was fortunate enough to meet and get the authors autograph when I attended his lecture while promoting that book. When someone says that a book is life changing, I usually scoff. But that book is amazing in it's ability to present massive amounts of information easily.

As for the Viffer, wish I could say it was an entendre, but alas I cannot. It's my motorcycle. VFR1200. VFR's were normally 800cc, but mine is the big one at 1200cc's:

Ugh... pistol squats... Why not just do both legs at once to the proper depth instead of so far down that it becomes dangerous to the knee? One legged pistol squats don't increase balance or work the core better than a traditional squat.

However, if it's just a movement or exercise she enjoys, more power to her. Just feel sorry for her knees when shes older.

3 hours ago, GreenTealael said:

I think we may need that post, friend...

Ok, but this may be a bit of a long post. We all want to be stronger. Not necessarily huge muscle strong, but make-everyday-life-easier stronger. The elderly might want to open jars unaided or be able to squat down and get back up from the toilet without grab rails. Middle aged people like myself need it to do all the things that are necessary with older parents and evidently slug-like teenage daughters who cannot move anything under their own power. The young want it to p!ss off those of us 40 and up by showing off.

The one thing that all of these type of people have in common is that strength is the ability to exert force on an external object via the leverage and power of our bodies. In the simplest example I can think of, you have a rock and a seesaw. To move the rock, you push down on the opposite side of the seesaw. If more or larger rocks are added the more force it takes to move them, but the plank of the seesaw will also start to bend. If the person is strong enough to continuously lift the rock, eventually the plank will break. In our case, that doesn't mean a bone will break, but there will be a chance for injury.

Muscles can get stronger faster than bone, but bones can definitely get stronger. NASA includes resistance training in space for this exact reason. Bones are in a constant stage of breaking down and building up. Just like muscle tissue that tears and repairs stronger, bones breakdown and are built back up stronger via osteoblasts. Remember that Vitamin D and Calcium we were told to take religiously post op? This is exactly why.

There is a lot more to getting stronger than just getting bigger muscles. You can have larger muscles, but a weak nervous system. That could be just the way a person is or because of some injury, but the strength of the signal telling the muscle to contract and pull bones together is what makes lifting everything possible. This is one reason that warm up sets are so important. Train the neural pathways of the movement so that that pathway stays strong as long as possible.

Heavy weights exert stress onto the skeletal system and that system response to that stress by getting stronger. It gets stronger by becoming more dense. It is an evolutionary response that all animals with bones have. It just takes time and measured training to accomplish it safely. Hope this little blurb helps.

20 hours ago, Kay07 said:

I’m running, I’m doing kettleball swings, I do an obscene amount of squats, and I pretty much use lunges as a viable form of transportation.

Running is great for weightloss, but excessive running is catabolic unless you are eating enough to repair the damage being done to the muscle.

As for squats, it is pretty much the standard for building glutes, but if you are just doing air squats with your own body weight, you won't be gaining any mass. Also, the type of squat is important. High bar squats and front squats are so quad dominate that the hips and glutes are almost unused compared to the low back back squat. I don't like front squats but I understand peoples desire for larger quads. High bar squats are a recipe for cervical spine pain and I never recommend them.

If shoulder mobility hampers your ability to do a low bar back squat, you can do prone machine leg curls:

Not a fan of them personally since I don't like isolation exercises as a whole, but there are times when they are a "necessary evil" for vanity reasons. Arm curls and cable butterfly being examples of weights I am embarrassed to say I do. Hopefully the gym you go to has this machine with the feet towards a wall so that creeps aren't watching. This one and the good girl/bad girl machine are famous for meatheads to hang around.

1 hour ago, Jeff M. said:

<snip> I have lost most of the weight that I am going to lose, and would like to target certain areas, for more weight loss/muscle build.

Am i mistaken, in thinking that targeting certain areas will help achieve this? <snip>

You can target areas for increased muscle size, but not for weightloss. One bad thing about targeted muscle training is while you may get one muscle group stronger, the supporting kinetic chain does not. Perfect example would be the leg press versus the barbell back squat. I can leg press an insane amount of weight, but only squat 250lbs. The reason being the entire body's kinetic chain (basically any joint that moves or is an anchor point for muscles) is involved. You cannot squat anything more than your shoulders, back, and hips can bear. So while the leg press will work your legs muscles, it won't do much of anything for your hips, back, and shoulders. Same thing goes for the deadlift versus a lat pull.

This is problematic because the leg press does not carry over into real world applications as good as a squat. While your legs may be strong enough to pick up something off the ground, your hips and back are not. There is also the fact that machines to not load the skeletal system so you are not gaining bones density, but that is whole other post.

16 minutes ago, fitdutchess said:

Also dark chocolate helps the skin to stay tight so eat a little piece. It does not do much but it helps a bit.

I can find nothing about dark chocolate and "tightening" skin, just a bunch of studies on the anti-wrinkle attributes and possible increased UV protection from the antioxidants within dark chocolate. Of course, all of those antioxidants are found in greater quantity in fatty fish, bell peppers, brocolli, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, walnuts, avocados, and various nuts & seeds.

Regardless of how great or high the level of antioxidants, it's not going to do more than increase bloodflow and moisture retention in the epidermis temporarily.

Now if someone wants to eat dark chocolate and just needs something to justify it, there you go, skin tightening!

Unfortunately there is no exercise, cream, or lotion that will tighten loose skin. No matter how much a marketing department claims otherwise, it just isn't possible. The only thing that would come close would be a vasoconstrictor that temporarily tightens tissue (Preperation H).

The only thing that weight training can do is enlarge muscles to back fill the loss of fat. And even then, it's unlikely most of us can build that much mass. Your best bet to enlarge muscle is to do comfortable weights at a higher rep. When I say comfortable, I don't mean 5 - 10lb curls either, I mean a weight that you can finish 8-10 reps with. It still needs to be work.

If strength is your goal, it is the heaviest weight you can handle safely for about 5 reps for 3 sets after warm up sets. Compound lifts like barbell squats and overhead press are ideal. If size is your goal, total volume is what you want and targeted lifts make sense. (Arm day, chest day...)

Either route you take, quality Protein is paramount. And that means whey concentrate or isolate. Go with your palate because the only supplement worth buying is the one you will use. Just make sure it is whey. Not casein, not pea, not soy... good old fashion whey. And not that GENEPRO crap.

35 minutes ago, skinnylife said:

@BigViffer @Matt Z

I think matching tattoos

How 'bout no?

Congratulations Matt, you are officially a BP vet now. You've used tough-love and been called calloused, hard-core, harsh... all the greatest hits.

We should get jackets.

36 minutes ago, skinnylife said:

You already know my warped humor

And love you all the more for it.