Injured but I need to lose weight urgently

D

dottyk

0
Hello All,
This morning I walked for almost 1.5 miles and after some 30 minutes I had a little pain in my upper calf of left leg. I did not do any physical activity for the rest of the day. I slept in the evening after returning from work and woke up an hour later and found that my caf pain increased a lot, Now I am limping.
To start with my background I weigh 168 pounds. I had 0 physical activity, but I have a event for which I wanted to shed off some pounds in next 6 weeks. So for the past 4 days except today I've been walking / running for 15 miles a day combined with 30 - 45 minutes of weight training and lost 2 pounds successfully. Now all of a sudden I am unable to do any more cardio. In past 4 weeks I reduced my diet to 3 protein bars (280 cals / 20 g protein each) and 3 egg whites a day.I suspect my BMR to be very low so eating less alone will never help me.

Please Please help me and please give suggestions on what to do. It can be anything from pills to diet suggestion / exercise suggestion / any other suggestions like sauna etc... Please I am in a very desperate situation.
 
Hello. I am not a doctor, don't play one on tv, and didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so my advice is probably worth what you are paying for it. The pain in you calf is probably a combination of a strain and shin splints. Going from zero activity to 15 miles a day of running is a lot of strain on muscles used to doing nothing. My advice there would be to start over and try walking 30 or so minutes a day. Also, make sure that you stretch properly before starting out. I'm sure that you do, but it's important to loosen your muscles up and prepare them for a workout before you actually start abusing them.

Secondly, and probably more importantly, is your food intake. You can eat all the protein you want, but without carbs, your muscles can't use the protein. Our muscles rely on the sugars in carbs to work. I don't care what Dr. Adkins says, this is fact. Also, eating a lot of protein, with little or no calcium, means your body will start robbing the calcium from your bones. And who wants that? My advice, again for what it's worth, would be to seriously examine your diet. An all protein and nothing else diet is not good for your body. There are so many essential nutrients that you are going without, that your body needs to function properly.

My advice would be to go easier on the activity, at least in the beginning, and believe it or not, up your calorie intake. Sounds counterproductive, but if you restrict you calorie intake too much, your body goes into a sort of shut down mode because it thinks it's starving. And if it thinks it's starving, it will fight tooth and nail to hang onto whatever fat is on your body now.

Trust me, this comes from someone who lost almost 60 pounds this summer and fall. I tried limiting my calories to less than 1000 per day. And after an immediate few pounds of loss, I was getting nowhere. I upped my calories to around 1800, good calories with lots of nutrients and as little fat as I could get away with, and the pounds came off. I hope atleast some of this helps.

In the end, weight reduction is all about the metabolism. And the best ways to raise you metabolism are exercise, drinking water, adding muscle mass, and believe it or not, eating. Good Luck to you.
 
Last edited:
I'd say get your nutrition in line first. That, more than anything else will help you lose weight regardless of what exercising you might do. I think there's stickies around the forum for what to get at the grocery as well as figuring out your calorie requirements.
 
dottyk you need to do some serious reading on health, nutrition, weight loss and exercise. There is a lot of information on this site if you spend the time to find it.

Ok so my reply to your post is this: WHAT?!?!?!?

Ok so you are telling us that you consume 3 power bars @ 278 calories, and 3 egg whites @ ~20 calories for a total of 894 calories per day? That's called a crash diet and man will you feel sorry about it later.... No ones BMR is less than 1000 calories, plus you were exercising...I can't even imagine how tired you must feel.

You went from 0 physical activity to walking/running 15 miles/day and you're surprised you got hurt? Were you stretching at all? I'm surprised you could even walk to be honest...i wouldn't be able to and I do run on a regular basis.

You didn't lose 2 pounds in 4 days. You likely have less water in your body which made you lighter.

We need more info if you want help: How tall are you, are you a male or female, what's your typical day like, is your description of your diet accurate or just a broad example, whats your weightloss goal?
 
Also you say you went from 0 activity to walking/running 15 miles a day and doing weight training? That's a big leap for your muscles, they're probably in shock and I'm not surprised you injured yourself. You need to start more gradually to give your body time to adjust! If you're working out you need to definitely intake more calories than you are, and more diverse foods than you are - forget "power bars", you need veggies, fruits, meats, real food. There's a lot of good nutrition information on this site.

As others said, you did not lose 2 pounds of fat in 4 days. If you lost anything, it would be water. Also keep in mind that our weight fluctuates as much as 5 pounds throughout the day just from eating, burning calories with our daily activities, etc. You could weigh one thing in the morning, and something 5 pounds different in the evening, but have lost/gained no real mass. Just stuff passing through as it were. The fastest you can expect to lose weight in a healthy manner is 1-2 pounds a week if you do everything perfectly, probably a little slower in most cases.
 
Thanks everyone.

I am a male, 29 years old. As you guys told me yes, I think my muscles were not able to cope up / were shocked and hence the injury :(.

Today I went to work and as my work is sedentary, I did not have the need to move around much. But my calf - ache got lessened a bit atleast I was not limping this evening. I was able to walk a little i.e to my car and from my car with very less pain but I walked very slowly.

As for my diet, whenever I eat more than some 1300 / 1400 calories I seemed to gain weight, ofcourse those were totally sedentary days.

I hope I will recover from my injury in a week and as you all suggested I will increase my calorie intake and consume my calories from natural food rather than from power bars.
 
My food generally consists of -

3 Egg Whites / Oat Meal with water. - Breakfast
1 or 2 cups Green Tea.
Turkey / Chicken Breast / Tuna Sandwich.
1 or 2 cups Green Tea.
3 - 4 Bread Slices with Chicken Patty..

My current weight 166
Goal - 132
 
I will tell you right now that losing 36 pounds in 6 weeks is completely unrealistic. That is the equivalent of losing 6 lbs per week, which means a calorie deficit of 21,000 calories/week or 3000 calories/day. As your BMR is only about 1800 calories this is obviously impossible to do. Healthy weight loss occurs with a deficit of 500 calories/day or 3500 calories/week which is 1 pound of weight/week lost.

If you believe you gain weight when only eating 1300-1400 calories/day then you quite possibly have a thyroid issue which would effect your metabolism. I'm not a doctor so you should get it checked into.

Are you practicing RICE on your injury?

Rest
Ice
Compress
Elevate

Rest it by not running

Ice it using a compression wrap

Use something to keep it from swelling (compression)

Elevate - keep it up so there's less blood flow to the area

Are you stretching? have you tried doing any calf exercises?
 
firefreak said:
I will tell you right now that losing 36 pounds in 6 weeks is completely unrealistic. That is the equivalent of losing 6 lbs per week, which means a calorie deficit of 21,000 calories/week or 3000 calories/day. As your BMR is only about 1800 calories this is obviously impossible to do. Healthy weight loss occurs with a deficit of 500 calories/day or 3500 calories/week which is 1 pound of weight/week lost.

If you believe you gain weight when only eating 1300-1400 calories/day then you quite possibly have a thyroid issue which would effect your metabolism. I'm not a doctor so you should get it checked into.

Are you practicing RICE on your injury?

Rest
Ice
Compress
Elevate

Rest it by not running

Ice it using a compression wrap

Use something to keep it from swelling (compression)

Elevate - keep it up so there's less blood flow to the area

Are you stretching? have you tried doing any calf exercises?
Click to expand...


Hi Firefreak,
I am Resting and stretching. I will use Ice and Elevation from now on. I also thought that my 36 lb weight loss in 6 weeks is totally unrealistic. But do you think atleast half could be possible ? I mean 18 lb in 6 weeks with cardio and weights for 4 weeks (Assuming my calf recovers in 2 weeks and I can start doing cardio again in 2 weeks).

Or may be from the calculation you mentioned above looks like I can lose 6 lbs by reducing calorie intake and may be doing cardio for 4 weeks (run / jog spending 500 calories / day) would burn another 4 lbs so a total of 10 lbs can be my target. Right ?

And is there any other safe way to lose weight / water just for the occassion day and may be it is OK even if I gain back those few pounds because it is water that is lost.
 
dottyk said:
Hi Firefreak,
I am Resting and stretching. I will use Ice and Elevation from now on. I also thought that my 36 lb weight loss in 6 weeks is totally unrealistic. But do you think atleast half could be possible ? I mean 18 lb in 6 weeks with cardio and weights for 4 weeks (Assuming my calf recovers in 2 weeks and I can start doing cardio again in 2 weeks).

Or may be from the calculation you mentioned above looks like I can lose 6 lbs by reducing calorie intake and may be doing cardio for 4 weeks (run / jog spending 500 calories / day) would burn another 4 lbs so a total of 10 lbs can be my target. Right ?

And is there any other safe way to lose weight / water just for the occassion day and may be it is OK even if I gain back those few pounds because it is water that is lost.
Click to expand...


You're weight loss goals and time table do not work together and are unhealthy. if you want to be at 130 lbs 6 weeks frmo now you should have started months ago.

i do not recommend trying to lose the few pounds by dropping water weight. its not the same as losing fat and probably won't make you look any skinnier but it will certainly make you feel like crap and is certainly a dangerous practice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top