Thread: Hernia diet...advice wanted

Hi guys,

I got a call from a friend of mine last might who gave himself an inguinal hernia. He has surgery scheduled for October, but in the meantime, according to their BMI charts he is overweight (he's 225 with about 15% BF, so by no means unhealthy) so they have told him he needs to lose 20 pounds or they will not operate.

The doctors in their infinite wisdom put him on a 1000 calorie a day diet to basically have him lose weight. I told him to tell his doctors that they were on crack and he will lose muscle mass in huge amounts while on the diet he described to me. He has been doing it for two weeks, lost 5 pounds (mostly due to water)...but 30 pounds off of his bench because he has no energy (go figure).

My plan is to provide him with a simple cutting diet that gets his calories back up and also gives him the proper macro ratio that he can save some of his muscle mass. I know what I would suggest to him, but I'm interested to hear what some of the nutrition gurus on here would suggest. He trains with weights for 60 minutes 3-4 days per week and does minimal cardio, normally he eats around 3000 calories per day and his former ratios were 40/30/30 P/C/F. Any takers? I told him I would have an answer for him today, so unless anyone can provide insight I'll do it myself.

He should go ketogenic at 90% maintenance (in his case, about 2500-2700 cals a day). 15 pounds will come off fairly quickly (if you include water weight loss) and he can get on with his operation.

I'm also not so sure he wants to be maxing out on any particular exercise. Probably not the wisest thing to do. But I digress. The important thing is that he loses the weight and gets that operation ASAP.