Thread: Say you were bed-ridden for a week

Hypothetical question I thought about earlier today...

Suppose you got quite sick with a stomach bug or something similar and were unable to keep solid food down very well for about a week. Let's also suppose that while sick you rested completely and hardly left your bed at all.

For the sake of workable numbers, in this scenario you're a trained individual with a BMR of 2,500 calories, only consuming 500 per day in the form of liquids (some of this protein but not anything close to your normal minimum). That deficit over 7 days would amount to 14,000 calories, in terms of fat loss, 4 pounds. In the event that you're not hardly moving at all, to what approximate extent would you incur muscular atrophy as well as fat loss?

While I'm not planning on getting sick like this, as an anomaly situation it makes sense as a possible outlier since the orthodoxy regarding protein consumption assumes an individual is training appropriately and therefore destroying his tissue; if you're not hardly even moving at all, however, does the same requirement exist for lean mass retention?

Lots of fluid loss overall and likely some neural efficiency loss, as well, but would you really stand to lose much solid muscle if you're not even tearing it down? Could the body prioritize utilizing fat over muscle as a source of energy if you are sick?

Homeostasis

Your body doesn’t like to hang on to extra muscle, with time it will atrophy.

You will “feel” like you lost a lot of muscle but in reality it would be some water weight.

Keep in mind it’s not only some muscle you will lose, around half would come from bodyfat. Would break down muscle into amino acids then into glucose.

Originally Posted by Xpiro

Would it not be ideal to drink tons of protein shakes and, if solid food is impossible to keep down, take lots of omega 3 supps? Whole milk with the shakes since fat minimum likely can’t be reached with that alone. And by tons of shakes I mean above and beyond your protein minimum. Not that I plan to get sick like that either, but I may be confined to bed post-surgery at some point in the future so I’ve been wondering about this. And **** 2500 BMR is like a dream.

When I was very ill most of December I just ate what I could, which wasn’t much and lost quite a bit of weight. I didn’t care about calories or protein just was trying to eat food that sounded remotely possible and that was available at the hospital that fit my doctors orders what I could have. I ended up getting iv dextrose to get my sugar up and benecalorie

Post surgery I wouldn’t pound protein shakes, even more so if your on pain medication which will make it hard enough to chit as it is. One week isn’t a lot of time and there are ways to just get calories which are important for healing.



What kind of surgery are you getting op?

You were bed-ridden for a week.