I'm 3 months out today, and starting in January I've gone back very slowly to lifting at the gym. A little background: I love lifting, and used to be pretty heavy into picking things up and putting them down again. About 4 years ago my husband and I started biking together, and my lift routine had to be cut back drastically so I could actually get my legs to cooperate on our routes. Sadly, I got heavier and we biked less and less and in November 2017 I had gastric bypass.

SO, I have lots of questions for the lifters on here:

1. What is your current lift routine?

2. What was your experience starting after WLS, were you new to lifting or just getting back to business?

3. When you started, how was your routine structured? Heavy weights and less reps, or lighter weights and all the reps?

4. How much protein were you aiming for?

I love lifting, and I'm really enjoying getting back into the gym but I've lost a lot of strength (some over time, some post surgery) and I'm feeling a little lost. Come talk iron with me! [emoji4] [emoji123]

1) My current lift routine is 4 days of lifting. With 1 day of HIIT and cardio added into my routines to keep the heart rate up. I have 2 days of Arms/Shoulders and 2 days of Legs/Glutes. All 5 days I work on Abs.

2) I actually started out with HIIT to gain the muscle memory, to learn the correct form and to get my strength up (I was pretty weak, especially my upper body). Then I started lifting. I was new to it but I fell in love with it and have made it a huge part of my gym time.

3) My routine was structured with moderate weights and moderate reps. So I would lift slightly heavier than I could with 5 reps. Each work out increasing the reps to 10 and then adding more weight the following week.

4) On lifting days, I aim for 140g of protein and about 80oz of water.

My suggestion, start off with light weights the first week, to get your body back into it and the muscle memory going. Then the next week increase the weights to were there is some struggle towards the end of your rep.

I hope this helps.

I do weights every other day. I had to start at lower amounts when I was able to get back to weights post-surgery. My protein goal is 80-100 as I am still healing from plastic surgery.