Weight Loss Help for Wife, Can't Exercise

Diet and Nutrition
1

I have been married to my beautiful wife for 10 years,she is 39. Over our 10 years of being together she has gained around 30ish pounds, she weighed 112 when we was married. She has been wanting to loose weight but it’s so hard fron her. My wife has SMA and is in a wheelchair and cant do any sort of exercise.

The extra weight is making it harded to do the small things she can do.She doesn’t eat alot, her worst enmey is diet Mt Dew, and I tell her this.LOL. Can anyone give me any advice how to help her. I know eating 6 small meals a day is the way to go in most cases but not sure in hers. Thanks

2

uwacop, yeah, I’m not sure about 6 meals a day, either. In the last couple of years, I’ve theorized that eating 6 meals a day for a long period of time actually exacerbates, if it doesn’t actually cause, insulin resistance.

I prefer the old model now, pretty much 3 square plus a peri-workout nutrition, but that doesn’t apply to her. Exercise helps with insulin resistance, but that’s not in the cards for her. You could do what I call a poor man’s blood sugar test, which is to buy a glucometer and test her fasting blood sugar to see where she stands.

One thing for sure is that going a longer period of time without a meal increases insulin sensitivity. She’s not a physique athlete, so I’m wondering how she’d fare on a smart breakfast, perhaps something like a MAG-10 for lunch, and the quintessential smart dinner. If you wanted to experiment with some supps, Indigo-3G might have some great results, as might Carbolin 19, both of which would, in addition, be healthful things for anybody to take.

3

Thank you TC for your input, her suger was a lil high but Doc put her on a low dose med, and now it’s staying around 92 fasted. My poor baby doesn’t eat alot, most days she only eats once or twice a day. I went home for dinner today and stir fry her chopped cabbage with lemon pepper with one chicken tender. I do most of ther cooking and we eat pretty clean.

4

Just be sure she has realistic goals in mind.

If she is unable to excercise and her diet is already clean… results will likely come slowly.

5

SMA, as in superior mesenteric artery syndrome? And she gained weight with that?

6

Spinal Muscular Atrophy

7

Carbolin 19 (forskolin) is definitely worth a shot DEFINE_ME and if budget allows, indigo-3G could prove invaluable, or at least beneficial, in theory. Overall, calories in calories out seems to be the name of the game here. Clearly you can’t out exercise the diet, and thus supplements will be of little help unless they directly affect the condition or overall health.

I don’t know much about the condition but would venture a guess that CoQ10 might help as well. As said, encourage her to stay realistic but also upbeat, as stress is one of the biggest negative factors on health.

8

[quote]uwacop wrote:
She doesn’t eat alot, her worst enmey is diet Mt Dew, and I tell her this.LOL. Can anyone give me any advice how to help her. I know eating 6 small meals a day is the way to go in most cases but not sure in hers. Thanks[/quote]

Diet mountain dew won’t have any effect on her body composition. I’d also agree with TC regarding meal frequency

9

Hey boss,

First off, stop with that 6 meal nonsense. There is no proof it works and science has actually shown that it is not when you eat your calories but your average daily calories that determines your bodyweight.

That being said, I would HIGHLY recommend intermittent fasting. Basically you eat for a few hours a day and then you fast for the rest of them. I personally have been doing the warrior diet, (eat for 4 hours, fast for 20) for over a year and I drop fat and get stronger without even trying. Check out Herschel Walker if you want to see the extremes of what is possible for intermittent fasting. I recently put my girlfriend on intermittent fasting after she gained a bunch of weight when she was laid up with a broken leg.

She drank a gallon of water, 1 quart of green tea and some black coffee during the day, used some Garcinia Camboigia Pure to help with hunger cravings and feasted at night.

In 30 days, she dropped 17 pounds, she got stronger and leaner than she’s ever been and truthfully she barely exercised.

You can read more about the Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler
You can also check out Eat,Stop, Eat and the Lean Gains approach as well.

Good luck to you and your wife.

10

[quote]uwacop wrote:
Spinal Muscular Atrophy
[/quote]

Yeah, sorry for the misunderstanding, English is my second language and I suck with the abbreviations. My wife already pointed out what you meant by SMA. One of our friends actually has it (since early childhood).

Indigo-3G and Carbolin 19 sound like some promising compounds for weight loss and overall health.

You could also try a whole foods paleo diet where you dial down the carbs as much as possible while upping the proteins and establishing a moderate fat intake based on what your wife can handle (there are problems with fatty acid metabolism in SMA but mostly in infants)

In your wife’s case, even though she’s stuck with a genetic problem, there may be a possibility this diet would help optimize her cell metabolism and slow her decline (by possibly optimizing SMN2 output). Other benefits would be weight loss and improved overall health, so no reasons to not try it :slight_smile: Since she’s not very active carbs should have a smaller place in her diet anyway.

Your wife may actually do better on multiple small meals spread out over the day if she has trouble metabolizing fatty acids. Trial and error should establish that and another reason why high protein may be the way to go (and personally I think it’s healthier for a cell to metabolize proteins than ferment carbs).

The official jury is still out but ketogenic diets are starting to look like a very promising way to overcome or help overcome a range of very serious illnesses, like cancer, MS, Crohn’s and a myriad of other crap, probably by resetting cells metabolisms to their natural state.
In the case of SMA however there are also problems with fatty acid metabolism, so even though a carby diet is not good for anyone in this case you may have to dial back a bit on the fat as well.

It may be initially difficult (energy level wise) to switch to a high protein paleo diet so be prepared to stick with it for at least 8-12 weeks so your metabolism can get used to it.

For paleo diets: An easy read to start with is Robb Wolf’s book, the paleo solution.

Talk to your doctor about this diet, it may be wise to monitor certain blood levels. (I hope your doc is open to the idea)

Good Luck

11

Thanks you guys for your input . We have been doing 2 small meals a day and that’s keeping her content. It’s just very hard on her plus as she getting older it just that’s much harder. She is my motivation and keeps me pushing hard when I don’t feel like it because as bad as she wants to I know she can’t walk or pick up anything over a few pounds. Thanks again.