Maintaining muscle with very light weight!?

Hi guys,

I am starting a new medication for a Bartonella infection and this medication is known to cause tendon tears in some people. For this reason I am told to avoid strenuous exercise while on this medication. She said very light weights and cardio are fine. Do you all think you could maintain what you have with 10-20 lb dumbells...just keeping the muscles active?

I fought back hard this year to gain some weight back after being so sick and under weight. I dropped to 185 and recently got back up to 200. I want to go to 210 or 220 but this is a new roadblock.

Rich

Tough question.

If you want to maintain muscle then I would not go heavy on cardio (personally, I wouldn't do any non-weight bearing cardio). If you can only lift light weights then you'll need to adjust your caloric intake so that you don't gain or lose weight by much since the gains will most likely be fat and a loss would most likely contain muscle. If you've been lifting heavy on a regular basis then I would expect some muscle loss. The trick is to minimize the loss.

Good luck!