Personal Trainer Consultation (I've got questions!)

I spent a very interesting hour last night consulting with a personal trainer with whom I plan to start working out next week.  My plan is to do two sessions a week with him and then supplement that with other exercise.  He's a lovely guy, Scottish, with a really gentle energy.  My little papillon who is afraid of most men (at least initially) took to him at once, which is really saying something given that Mark (the trainer) is a big, strapping guy (of course, it's all solid muscle--he's really fit, as you'd expect).

We went over what I'm currently doing when it comes to diet and exercise.  I told him I take in between 700-800 calories a day and that I exercise six days a week, typically doing 3-3-1/2 miles on the treadmill and over 10,000 steps total daily.  Obviously, I also told him about my surgery.  He took it all in and then spit out with he thought would be appropriate for me as we work together.

- He says my calorie count is way too low.  His example was that a six year old child needs 1,200 calories in order to function and be healthy.  He said, "I know you're hoping to lose more weight, but I would suspect you'd like to be bigger than a six year old child."  He wants to see me up at 1,200-1,500 calories a day.  (I'm not quite 16 weeks out from surgery.)

- He wants me to eat five times a day.  I currently only eat three times a day.  I'm still not really hungry and as my energy is good, I haven't seen a reason to eat more.

- He tells me that while my exercise regime has worked for me for now, it won't very soon.  He says that cardio alone actually becomes counterproductive past a certain point.  He also says that exercising six days a week is too much.  He'd rather see me workout four days a week--two days with him, basically doing interval training (plus some other things like weights and stretching); one day a week on my own replicating the workout he gives me, and then a day where I could do some cardio (my treadmill routine).

He's the expert.  He's certified and been doing this for a while.  I like him and I want to trust him--particularly as I'm going to be paying him a fair amount of dough to do this.  But the increase in calories and the decrease in cardio makes me nervous.  I've been losing weight fairly well and regularly for the last 16 weeks.  I fear getting in to bad habits by eating too much too early (he's encouraging me to eat more protein drinks [perhaps one more a day] and to feel free to eat good, wholesome foods that might at first appear scary to dieters--good fats, full fat cheeses, etc.).

Does anyone else have experience like this when it comes to adding more intense exercise to their regime?  How did it work out for you?

My personal thoughts are to listen to him for exercise and follow your Dr.s plan for diet  l.  He doesn't have training with clients that have had WLS.  I think his advice to eat 5 times a day is good. And his exercise routine sounds a lot like my trainer suggested.  Interval training is really big right now.  

Thanks.  One of my challenges is I really don't have a diet plan.  My surgeon's food plan was very loosely structured and now that I'm on a regular diet there really aren't any guidelines at all.  The instructions simply say, "Introduce regular food as tolerated."  So I've been following a lot of what I've read here.  So far it's been working pretty well, but who knows now that more activity is being added into the mix.

Granted I'm pre-op, but my trainer emphasizes weight training as well. He feels that it's more productive to put on some muscle mass since it'll help burn more calories as well as be generally beneficial (resistance training helps for bone density as well). It's also important to periodically change the routine, since the body adjusts to it.

My husband is a personal trainer. Keep in mind that interval training raises your heart rate as well. You will see that you will not really have much of a break in between and you will break out in a sweat...or at least I do. You will also find the results AMAZING! I started losing inches even though the scale was not going down as fast as my measurements were.

That all sounds good!  I know I'm going to be as sore as anything.  But if training gives me back a waist, I'm happy to deal with a little pain.

You will be happy. My husband has 3-6 WLS patients as clients. They love their results. He just has to keep reminding them sometimes that measurements are important along with the scale- NOT just the scale. A pound of muscle is more compact than a pound of fat.

I am always slightly wary of nutrition advice from personal trainers.  What they say may be perfectly reasonable but there's a lot of bunk information perpetuated as fact.  Their dietary training is not extensive in general, much less for the needs of gastric bypass patients.

As for his specific recommendations:

- I think his six-year-old analogy is total crap.  That child is growing and it's just really a nonsense analogy.  However, if you are doing truly intense exercise multiple days per week then you probably do want to increase your calories a bit.  At the very least make sure you get an extra 20g of protein or so (80g or so) on those days.

- I do not believe there is any solid evidence of a substantial benefit to eating 5 times per day.  It can help keep hunger at bay but there's nothing magic about it.

I think he picked the eating five times a day thing as a way to get me to up my calories.  I told him I'm not really very hungry and tend to eat no more than 1/2 cup per meal, so I'm pretty sure his solution was to simply eat more frequently instead of eating more at my three usually scheduled meals.

Using your treadmill daily is an excellent thing after surgery.  Do not let him talk you into giving that up.  Getting in your 10,000 steps is excellent.  Your calories will increase naturally as your pouch grows bigger.  The calories that will be absorbed will also increase as the body learns to overcome the effects of the bypass by growing more villi, the hairlike appendages that hold food in contact with the intestines so that the calories can be absorbed.  You are not going to waste away or end up weighing less than a six year old child. 

Our bodies and needs are different from people who have not had surgery.  You have 18 months or so after RNY when your body is malabsorbing food and you need to use that time to lose as much weight as you can.  Right now the weight will come off no matter what you eat, but that will only last for a while.   Building muscle is an excellent thing to be doing.  Adding extra calories that you don't want is not a good idea.  You can help your trainer get experience in training a post-op person.  Help him understand your special needs while he works on getting you a healthy muscular body.