Same thing. Reptiles take far longer than mammals to recover from exertion, so a tegu that has climbed about or struggled during handling can breathe heavily for a good stretch afterwards. It is not fitness, it is how their physiology recovers.
Yusuf
@after_a_rat
Twenty years of colubrids. Still uses a hook on the nervous ones.
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You have described normal tegu breathing and I suspect your last sentence is right. Lizards breathe using the body wall muscles, so the movement is far more visible than it is in a mammal, and people notice it one day after two years of it happening.
The two moments you named are the two most expected. A big meal takes up room in the body cavity so breathing looks deeper for a while, and a warm basking animal has a higher metabolism and shows it.