I'm about 2 months out from open heart surgery (got my aortic valve replaced with a mechanical one due to a congenital...

Op, you don't lose weight by exercising. You lose weight by counting calories and eating below your TDEE.

You do burn calories while exercising but the rate is really not significant. Just don't eat them in the first place.

Jesus, this wasn't the response I thought you'd get. What a bunch of dicks.

Essentially what they've said is right though, you can lose weight just by counting calories and eating less. Many people are worried that they'll starve or somehow that its unhealthy but that's not true. As long as you make sure you're losing weight gradually then it's fine (don't drop to like 500cal/day or some shit like that). Many people also seem to think that being hungry means you should eat - that's bullshit, if your body was giving you the appropriate hunger signals then you wouldn't be overweight. Improving your diet is a combination of reducing the amount, improving the nutritional quality and retraining your perception of hunger/satiety.

In terms of exercise. The greatest post-op survival and quality of life is in patients who undertake vigorous physical activity 3 days/week or moderate physical activity 7 days/week. Vigorous physical activity might be a solid 1 hour of 6mph running, vigorous/maximal effort swimming, competitive football or rugby, martial art sparring, water polo, skipping. Vigorous physical activity is serious effort. Moderate physical activity is anything that gets you out of breath.

Of course, you'd probably need to work up to that but anyone who says you shouldn't aim high because of the surgery doesn't know the data.
Just in terms of survival - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27056969

Thanks user. I've been completely incapable of more than laying in bed and only getting up to piss for a couple years, I couldn't even work because my body would just shut down. I'd sleep 18-20 hours a day too.

I'm definitely cutting my calorie intake and eating healthier for sure, but I'd like to supplement that with being physically active. Not necessarily deadlifting or anything, but riding my bike around. At the very least I want to because I've not even been physically capable of doing that for years and it just feels good.

My TDEE is like 3200 so I'm going to try coming down to 2600-2700 for a while on top of biking for an hour or two every day. Does that sound okay for where I'm at? I'm two months out now so my sternum is healed enough to get clearance for that, the concern was if I had an accident or not and it cracking my chest open again.

>3200
What the fuck. Something went wrong in your calculations methinks.

Pierce?

Oops I set it to higher activity, it's 2700. So I'd want to be shooting for 2100-2200 intake then?

That sounds reasonable. Its not a perfect calculation so heres what you do.
Strict calorie counting with my fitness pal
Weight yourself as soon as you wake up, everyday. Write down your weight everyday, keep a journal.
Follow the deficit you have there and youll see if its working by your weight decreasing or increasing. Then you can make adjustments to it. You dont want to be on too much of a deficit or to little. I hope you get better user.

I mean the tdee calculation itself not specifically yours.

Thanks user! Hopefully one day I'll be at a good weight.

Were all gonna make it breh.

OP if I were you I'd find a doctor who looks like he lifts or is Veeky Forums and ask him. Don't take the advice of the summerfags on here. You've had the most invasive surgery possible.

Don't talk to a dyel doctor because they will just tell you to walk more. Find a doctor who really knows his shit for what you need.

Shouldn't your consultant refer you on for cardiac rehab? You should be working with trained health professionals with a gradual return to fitness rather than listening to morons like me on an online message board

Well he can listen to the nutrition advice, unless you mean to say he shouldnt count calories.

This guy knows what's up. Aim for your 2000cal goal or whatever but if after a few weeks your weight isn't going down then it's a sign you need to lower your calorie intake.
>All these bitches be saying they can't lose weight 'cause of their thyroid or their metabolism or whatever ... everyone loses weight if they're burning more energy than they're taking in. "Metabolism" just means you need to re-adjust your diet to below the standard calculations.

>Don't talk to a dyel doctor because they will just tell you to walk more. Find a doctor who really knows his shit for what you need.
Good advice too. Med school doesn't include a lot of training in exercise physiology and a lot of GPs would be overly cautious about not stressing your heart. You want to find someone with an interest in this area.

Also this. Cardiac rehab should be a standard part of any post-op followup.

Don't listen to Veeky Forums. The advice here are for people who haven't gone though serious surgery or have some sort of defect.

I would advise reading the sticky for a foundation then speak with your doctor.

Don't kill yourself on accident after a group of professionals fixed you up.

Lastly read the sticky. If anything I assume changing your diet for a 500 caloric deficit should be safe, but again talk with doc.

you just had open heart surgery
you need and you should speak to your doctor about exercising and whatnot, not /fit

but in order to lose weight, you don't have to exercise, you can lose weight by just eating less

you need to exercise to build muscle mass

speak to your doctor about losing weight though, who knows, it could be an important factor in your post-op recovery to, i dunno, make sure you eat enough