Post-Surgery Success: Nutrition, Movement & Mindset When Weight Bearing Isn't an Option

Worried about losing muscle and derailing progress during surgery recovery? When mobility is limited, even temporarily, it's easy to feel like all your hard work is slipping away.

In this episode, I address a listener who recently had bunion surgery and is now non-weight bearing, concerned about muscle loss while resuming GLP-1 medication. You'll discover what to focus on when movement is restricted, practical nutrition strategies that minimize muscle loss, and why recovery periods can become unexpected opportunities for growth.

Learn how to maintain perspective, focus on what you *can* control, and keep your long-term health journey on track—even when temporary limitations force you to slow down.

References

Ep.108: How to Handle a Medication Pause Without Losing Progress

NEW Premium Podcast: The Obesity Guide: Behind The Curtain

Audio Stamps

00:53 - Dr. Rentea shares inspiration for new recipes she’s loving, including her new favorite: overnight chia blueberry oats.

04:15 - Make sure you’re signed up to the weekly newsletter if you would like to have new recipe ideas in your inbox every Monday (found and tested by Dr. Rentea!).

06:53 - Addressing a listener question about using GLP-1 medications during recovery from surgery and concerns about muscle loss.

09:13 - Focusing on what you can control post-surgery is key, particularly nutrition and protein intake, rather than worrying about temporary muscle loss.

12:12 - Looking for alternative exercises during recovery and why doing something is better than nothing.

13:45 - Keeping perspective on temporary setbacks as minor blips in your overall health journey, not defining moments that determine long-term success.

16:54 - Dr. Rentea encourages daily re-centering and embracing a long-term health perspective.

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

Premium Season 1 of The Obesity Guide: Behind the Curtain -Dive into real clinical scenarios, from my personal medication journey to tackling weight loss plateaus, understanding insulin resistance, and challenges with GLP-1s. Plus, get a 40+ page guide packed with protein charts, weight loss formulas, and more. 

Pre-register for the Sep 30/30 group.

Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing? I can't believe I say this every single episode, but I can't believe how fast time is flying. I am recording this in April, the 30 30 program has started. I absolutely love everybody in this group. It is such a nice community, and I find, I don't know if it's the April 30, 30 round starting or if it's just the fact that it's spring and I feel like everything is possible again, but I'm making a lot more recipes now, not. Craziness, right. But for example, I have been making, I'm just gonna say my little recipe here that I've been just loving recently. So I've never been a fan of overnight oats where it's just oats with some type of a milk and you have it overnight in the fridge. I don't like that taste. However. What I've been doing is, yes, there's a half a cup of oats, but there's a cup of milk. So I've been using Fairlife, which has 13 grams of protein, and then I do a cup of frozen strawberries. So Costco has these, oh sorry, blueberries of cup of frozen blueberries. Costco has this bag that are wild blueberries, which are even better for you. We can have an episode where we talk more about these kind of things in the future, and then I've been adding in there as well three tablespoons chia seed, which is nine grams fiber. And what else have I done? Oh, and then two tablespoons of, I do swerve Brown sugar. It's a zero calorie non-nutritive sweetener that enhances the sweet flavor, but obviously not adding more calories, and it's different than adding some of the other fake sugars to it. So I have just been, I stir this up, let it set a day or two depending on, I'll usually make about two at a time. I'm not a fan of making. Six at a time and then you eat it all week. I'm sure they would taste great. Just personally, it's not my jam now and I don't like eating it cold. I'll actually warm it up for lunch. I do not do well with higher carbohydrate. Things like this in the morning. It leaves me having urges and cravings the rest of day. Also, with the insulin resistance that I have, I just do better with a savory breakfast and stuff like that. Not that there's anything wrong if this works for you in the morning, but for me it just. Ironically, later in the day, I really want this. But right in the morning, no, but I just had it for lunch. I warmed it up in the microwave. It was so good. Now, the only thing I added to this,'cause this has a bunch of great fiber and a lot of other great things it doesn't have more than 20 grams of protein. So I added two cheese sticks next to it. Each of those had seven grams of protein. So you have the 14. From the cheese sticks, the 13 from the fairlife milk, and I forget if there's a few grams of protein in oats and things like that. But the point is, all of this together, such a nice balanced meal, felt so amazing. And I'm speaking to you right now after I had that about an hour or two ago. Just loving when I find something new that's. Refreshing. That really works for me, and I find that when I'm in this 30, 30 group each week, we're sitting down on the Sunday kind of planning reset calls, and I'm thinking about, okay, how has this past week gone? What do I wanna try differently? I am getting back to, I know that spring and summer is coming when I start to make my Mediterranean salads again. So again, if you haven't been following me that long, that's where I cut up things like cucumber, tomato, feta cheese, or feta, depending on how you say it. What else goes in there? I'll do avocado, chickpea, olive oil, a little bit of lemon, some salt, or you know what? Whatever other seasonings you want. And it's just, ugh. It's so great. And if you put it together with a little bit of cottage cheese as well, throw it in a pita again. Amazing lunch. So I've been doing some of these things where I can prep the meal, have it a few times, not too many'cause I get sick of things after about two, three times of having it. But. I just find that I'm enjoying doing a little bit of prep, but I think a big part of it, honestly, is being in a community where other people are trying different recipes as well, and we're caring about our gut microbiome and so it's really motivating, right? Am I the only one? But anyway. Alright, so I've really been loving that and something that I've been thinking about and I want to get your guys feedback on this. So you can answer me in the fan mail that's right under here. You can just leave me an answer to this. I've been debating in the weekly Monday email that goes out where we tell you what podcast is happening that week. I've been debating adding a section in there where I include if there are some recipes that I see that are really good. So I am collecting these all day long online. I am trying a lot of these, like, I'll give you an example. There was a. Viral recipe here. And I know that cottage cheese has been having its moment for about a hundred years. But, but they're where you take a portion of, let's say like good culture cottage cheese, right? They sell these five ounce portions of it that are single serve, which are really great if you're on the go or you're busy at home and you don't wanna worry about how much protein is this? So anyway, you take one of those, you blend it up with frozen fruit, like think blueberries, strawberries, things like that. You put it back in that cup and then you melt a little bit of some. Say like lilies, dark chocolate chips or something like that on top. And then whenever you wanna have it as a dessert, you're breaking that chocolate on the top and you have this sort of like ice cream quote unquote type of flavor. And I've been thinking. What if we, I don't know if I could do it weekly'cause it's a lot to keep on top to like constantly have recipe curation, but I'm thinking that every so often. Maybe weekly. I don't know. I'm finding these things all the time that I can put maybe the recipe that I'm liking, things like that. I think probably we're gonna move the mundane news, the sort of email that goes out to you guys. I think we're gonna. Change it a little bit to things I'm liking. Look at this recipe because I find that that's actually what a lot of you, when you listen to this podcast and you follow me on social, you're trying the different things with me. You're giving me great tips of how to evolve the recipes and what I'm doing. And if you really want simple, easy, you know we're, I'm gonna be honest, I don't really ever exceed five to 10 ingredients. So if that is your energy, where you want. Some of that, make sure that you're on our email list. So again, it's renta clinic.com. Right at the bottom of the first page, there's, Hey, are you on our email list? If not, you get on here. Again, we don't really email you that often. It's once a week on Mondays, and if we ever have anything going on, we'll let you know about it. That's really a good way if you wanna get these recipes and stay in contact.'cause I think that this overnight sort of chia, blueberry, oats, I think that this is something that I think the recipe is finally perfected. Because other times when I was just doing just chia seed with milk or just milk with oatmeal, it just wasn't turning out. But this combination, I can tell when I have a hit on my hands and when it's gonna stick around for a while. So anyway, if you wanna kind of as I. Zig and zag, or like my kid's been saying recently, Oop, juju. If you wanna kind of follow along with that, make sure that you're on the weekly newsletter. So I wanna today answer, there was a fan mail question that I got here, and I think this is a really good topic that, that, that's timely, that let's go over this. So I'm gonna read you the question and then I'll go over some aspects of it. So someone said, enjoying the podcast, can you please do one on GLP ones and surgery, et cetera. I just had bunion surgery and I'm non-weightbearing. Went back on my GLP one after surgery. Parentheses, I had to go off before it because it can mess with surgery, yeah, it can mess with the medications. Okay. Trying to figure out what to do when movement is hard. And I definitely needed this drug. Being off of it was eyeopening, but I am worried about muscle loss. Thanks. Okay, so number one, I have done an episode not too many weeks ago. We'll make sure to link it in the show notes. I think it was early March timeframe. Again, we'll make sure that we link everything in the show notes, renta clinic.com/blog. You can always find previous ones that we've done and I talked about the mindset of having to stop a surgery, how hunger goes up, how to quote unquote, get back on track afterward, like how to create that ladder to get back. But you bring up a slightly different aspect that I think it's good. I talk a lot online about this, but we haven't talked on the podcast about it, which is this concern about afterward losing muscle mass when you are non-weight bearing, and some aspects from that. Today we'll talk more about the post procedure aspect and. How to not worry so much about this muscle loss or what you can do, but know in general with holding the medication, hunger, going up, getting back on it, all that kinda stuff. I would go to that other episode, so this is kind of like a part two if you would. Now, the first thing that I want to stress is this. Muscle loss is going to be expected with certain times in our life. Number one, if we're having a procedure and we're not able to keep up with the lifestyle changes that we had used going into that. So for example, maybe you were strength training two to three times a week, maybe you were really. Walking with a weighted vest a few times a week. You had these things in place. You were getting a lot of protein in, you were all these different things that you were doing to help with your, muscle mass preservation or building it. And now you're not able to do that. And here's the thing I wanna tell you. I need you to zoom out and to keep in perspective what a small amount of time this is. So all of my patients do this they'll just have had. Knee replacement surgery or something like that. And they're thinking, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna be losing weight this next month or two. And they're really worried about that. And you know, my main concern, my main concern in these times are you recovering, you recovering the best you can, part of recovery. Is listening to what your doctor says. So whether it be an ortho doctor, whoever it is, we wanna listen to what they're saying. And a huge part of that is gonna be nutrition. This is the most important time for you to get protein and really keep up with your calorie needs and listen to what the requirements are that your surgeon or whoever it is, the nutrition team, whoever's. Giving you that. So number one, we focus on the things that we can control and we let go, completely let go of the things that are out of our control. So the first thing I would focus on is nutrition. You have control over that. You can bring protein rich things in the house. They can be easy as well. Let's say you can't get around as well and you think, oh my gosh, my family's really not gonna be making me all the things. Get on your phone, make an order where the groceries come to the front door. Hire someone to stick'em in your fridge. Hire someone to help prep for a week or two if that's something that's really in the way. But number one, focus on your nutrition. That will get you so far. That is what's in your control. If you're noticing, now this is a bunion surgery, which is different, but some people have even more involved surgeries and let's say. You've lost a lot of weight. Now you have a lot of loose skin, and you had, let's say a tummy tuck, a breast lift. You had that proverbial mommy makeover when you have lost over a hundred pounds and recovering from these surgeries can be incredibly hard. Let's say you've had a colon resection, let's say, hip, knee, all these kind of things, you're gonna be out, quote unquote, just mentally, physically, emotionally. There's gonna be a period of time where you need to recover. This is normal. I need you to prepare for this. This is expected, but we can't think that, oh my gosh, I'm not exercising and focusing on all the deficits, not the time. Not the time I need you to say what is in my control. Okay, so nutrition you can do. So I would really focus on can you get that protein in? Now when you've had these big surgeries, the reason I brought up all these surgeries, sometimes appetite is down afterward, so sometimes there are some pain medications involved, and just as your bowel movements are not really working great, if you're on those medications, the same thing that happens is your appetite can be blended. And so one of the things we wanna do is, is it a protein drink that we can put in there? Are there little easy ways to get this protein in I always mention cheese sticks, right? Because it's, so there like a cheese stick is two three bites, right? But when you have that, you are able then to just go ahead and move on with your day. So are there easy ways, like I was just mentioning that single serve cottage cheese cup where it's already there for you or I've been loving recently. I think I've mentioned chobani and Oikos, although Oikos is the flavor I really like, they have these little mini yogurt protein drinks that are. Specifically with Ocos, there are about 140 calories and I think 23 grams of protein. Again, it's two, three sips. Super easy to get down. So how can we get this nutrition down? And from the beginning we care about that. Okay, that's number one. Number two, I would think about, okay, beyond protein, are there any other things that I can do? So let's say that, uh, I'll give you an example. I had a coaching client in the past, and this person was. Doing amazing was doing all the things and then they broke their ankle and they were non-weight bearing for six weeks. One of the things you look at, are there any other things I can do? Alright, so I'm not gonna be able to walk around or do squats or wall sits or these kind of things, but. Could I do something with my upper body? Can I in a chair hold a few pound weights and it, it won't have as much impact? Because remember, we have a lot more skeletal muscle on the lower extremity compared to the upper extremity. Meaning you doing arm exercises does not get you as much as when you do leg exercises. Now, that's not to say that we're gonna ignore the arms. We wanna be strong, but my point being put, it's something. And so this is where you'll see. Can we use some light upper body weights? Can we use a band? Can we use like an exercise bike for the upper arms? Is there something that we can do like that where we can still do a little something? It's not the same as what you were doing before, but it's a little something. So where you're gonna get that idea, it's gonna be from the surgeon or whoever you're working with, you're gonna say, Hey. What do people do in this scenario, given the type of surgery that I had because forget this surgery name for a second, but all of you're gonna be in a different circumstance and you say, given this, what are examples of what you hear your patients do? And they will tell you, alright, I hear them do X, Y, Z. So that is what I want you to look into. Okay. And then thing number, so we started out with, you're gonna focus on what you can control. Nutrition is likely a big one. And then are there any other movement based things that within your constraints, even if it's an armband for your upper body a stretching band, what are the things that we can do and then you really need to be patient because if you zoomed out in the grand scheme of you working on your health for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, this is the smallest blip ever. Okay? It's a few weeks. It is not in any way diagnostic of your long-term results. And I need you to have that perspective in mind because I think this is such a big thing. Everybody freaks out and I do the same thing. By the way, I recently hear, again, you hear me talk a lot about period, but this is just with women. Hormones really play a big part in things. But the pre period hunger for me, those three to four days leading up to it, unreal, unreal. How much I'm hungry and it doesn't matter how much protein, all these different things I do now. I have found typically for me and patients. Upping the carbohydrate intake is really helpful. I'm talking like nourishing carbohydrates, like, you know, sweet potatoes, quinoa, brown rice, things like that. If they're having urges and cravings to pick dark chocolate, 80% or higher. So there are some really tactical things that you can do, but then also there's this acceptance of. I'm not gonna let these three, four days a month define me. Again, that's not gonna be the thing that's gonna determine if you have results or not. It's majority of all of the other days, all the other meals, what are you doing? And you one or two or three meals leading up to your period, that's not gonna derail the rest of you. So I want you to have this perspective. It doesn't matter if it's a few weeks post-surgery, it doesn't matter if it's you go on a vacation to Europe and you're gone a few weeks, it doesn't matter if you. Somehow got off track or, or Lord forbid, something like a death in the family occurs, or you are supporting that person as they're on hospice and you're just trying to survive taking care of them. I've unfortunately walked through with my patients all of these scenarios, and it's devastating when you're sitting there trying to take care of family members that are taking their last breath. The last thing on your mind is how you weigh. I mean, that's like the last thing. And of course, that's totally irrelevant. But all we're focused on is just how can we get you through that period? And then there's a period later where you, you start to come back. I always say, you orbit back to planet Earth, right? And you're like, okay, now coming back to me, what is needed for my health? But that is what I just wanted to say, is that. Yes, you probably are gonna lose some muscle, but it's not beyond recovery. You're gonna get it back really quickly. You're gonna do the best you can, and then you're gonna rebuild after that. It's kind of like when people get the flu or COVID and they're sick for a week, and then that next month when we do the InBody, which is the body composition scale that I use in my clinic. When we do that, of course they've lost some, but within that second month and third month, it's all the way back to where it was, if not even surpassed it because they put more energy into recovering that and they're long-term not. Quote, unquote down muscle. So I really want you to focus on, this is gonna be a two to three month blip. It's not gonna define my long-term progress. It's totally fine. This is not gonna be something where I can't get past it. You can definitely get past this. This is not defining, so whatever the scenario may be, you always want to say, today I am restarting. I am gonna do the best I can. What is possible for me, I'm always about thinking about what are two things today that I can do that will help support my health For me this morning I was, I got to that high school walking track, I walked a little bit over an hour, and then I've been really doing a great job with fluids. And then of course, what else happens with that? Oh, there you are. And you wanna prepare the chia, blueberry, oat overnight thing, right? And that's prepared. And, oh, here I am in the. The food delivery comes where we have the eggs and the cut fruit and it's like all the things are suddenly humming along, right? And it's, it starts because I'm just anchoring myself every single day. And what are those things that are gonna move the needle for me? For me, it's always hydration and movement, and then all these other things fall into place. And I think it's because you just take that moment to prioritize yourself. You're still working hard, you're still doing all the things that are needed, but you're just anchoring in what matters. So that's the same thing I want you to do post-surgery. You say, my job is to get better. By the way, procedures are needed all the time. Whether it be something for the back, the feet, the eyes. I mean it's just all the time there's something happening. And so we need to learn to work with these things to flex with these life scenarios.'cause that's really where we're gonna have the biggest progress. And I know I talked about a lot of these type of scenarios, a little bit more sort of on the clinical side. If you didn't get a chance yet to get that. Season one of Our Premium podcast, the Obesity Guide behind the curtain. We'll make sure to, again, to link that in the show notes as well. And there in 16 episodes, I really go over a lot of different scenarios because these are the kind of things of course it's not rocket science, what we're doing, although I say that all the time and honestly. So many people, which I just got a message the other day and I wanna say thank you always when you guys let me know how you find me and what an impact it's made. Someone said that they finally have given up Weight Watchers because they realize that there's actually a logic to what I'm talking about and how much more success they're having and how, by the way, the people that find me, it's always that they have some type of scientific background. Or they have confidence in the scientific process and they realize, yeah, this makes a whole lot more sense to worry about protein and fiber and just be like following numbers and working with myself much more and not just like randomly counting points and things. And I'm always very appreciative of that. And so while I say it's not rocket science, I definitely have some processes and things that I've refined over time. I know. Very quickly in the clinic, how to get people where they want to go. So we don't need to mess around with a hundred things that don't work. I've really figured that out. But at the end of the day there's a big mental aspect and how can I keep going and not get in my own darn way? I had this happen again with the pre period days when I was so hungry and then I thought, oh my gosh, and here's a scale, it's up a pound or two. It's like, no, it's not. You had more carbohydrates than normal. You also lifted some weights, which you weren't doing before.'cause you saw that your skeletal muscle mass went down some, because again, whenever I'm dealing with a lot of hunger, I try to cut back on. Strength training, and sometimes I just veer too much in the opposite direction. So it was all the things. It all came together and I said, you just need to not go into the spin out. You just need today. Get up and refocus. I was talking to friends about how the next thing we're gonna come out with here on the podcast, it's a total motivational series. I don't know if that's season two of the Premium podcast or if it's gonna come out on here. We'll have to see. But I think if you every day could refocus and recenter yourself and say, I can do this and I'm gonna pivot a little bit, but I'm not gonna overcorrect, I'm not gonna do 10 new things at once. I'm gonna pick one or two. I'm gonna solidify them. I'm gonna keep honing it in. I'm gonna be committed to the long-term process here. Not today, not tomorrow, not a week or two. Not that summer trip, but truly that year, after year after year. I can stick with this. I can bust through it. I'm willing to bring in whatever tools are needed. I'm a really big fan of this. This is why I say over time, I've really pivoted from just mindset, weight loss coaching. For fat loss to really including medications because I just saw that some people, no matter how much they were putting in, there was a disease process at play and they need some help. And so being open to saying, okay, and I'll get whatever help I need on that side, but then my part is that I'm gonna keep troubleshooting this and every day refocusing. And yes, I know it's hard, but I can do this. If you are gonna stay in that zone, you are gonna get so much more done. All right, so if you've been loving this podcast, I wanna ask you a huge favor. Please leave a review wherever you are listening to this or share this episode with a friend, someone that does not know about us yet. And the reason I say this is that if we're not able to get out to other people, I. No one's able to find our podcast. So if you leave a review wherever you're listening, that would help out so much. That's how we're able to keep delivering this podcast if you're sharing it with people or leaving us, hopefully a five star review if you're loving this. Alright. I hope you are having a great. Springtime here, and that you're really just enjoying that. Hopefully the weather's a little bit better by you. You're able to walk more. You're able to take advantage of this and that every day you recenter and no matter what life is putting in front of you, you zoom out and you think in this scenario. What is me showing up as my best? And when you're non-weightbearing, it doesn't mean you walking at that point what it does mean is I can take care of my nutrition, I can maybe do some journaling. Maybe you do the mindset work during that time. Sidebar, I have had so many. Coaching clients where they made the most massive progress of their life when they had periods where they were put out by some type of surgery, whether it be a carpal tunnel surgery, breaking an ankle, you name it. Because they take those six weeks to just dive deep into what was going on for me mentally that was getting in the way with X, Y, Z. They don't view it as a setback. They view it as an opportunity to really dig deep on what's going on. It's like, okay, I'm being slowed down for a minute, but what is happening in these other areas? I hear this time and time again, it sounds so cheesy, but it's always viewing it as a growth moment, a learning moment, something where you can really take something out of it that's gonna get you so. Far I hope you have a great rest of the week that you leave us a review wherever you are loving this and we'll talk soon. Take care.