Anaamika, what are your goals? Are you losing weight? Gaining muscle? Building endurance? If more than one, then tell me which is the most important goal.
Also, what is the longest period of time that you’ve stuck with a work out regimen?
P90X is awesome and you can do it in your living room.
Free options include the Fitness Blender channel on YouTube and a number of full-length Zumba and yoga videos offered there.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I do calisthenics in descending sets, in a circuit of simple exercises. It ain’t fun, but it’s effective and doesn’t take much time. and you only need an exercise mat. Starting out, my routine was to warm up with stretches for 5 minutes, then do 10 lunges per leg, then 10 push-ups, then 10 sit-ups/crunches. Repeat the circuit with 9 each, repeat with 8 each, all the way down to 1. By then end, you’ve done 55 reps of each exercise. Part of it’s effectiveness is that doing one less and alternating exercises means you usually complete the sets, when you’d fail doing 5 sets of 10 straight thru with one muscle group.
Try to keep moving, but if you find yourself out of breath or unable to hold good form throughout the movement, pause for 90 seconds and start again where you left off. Once you can start at 10 and work down without pausing, add a rep at the top. I’ve worked my way up to 20 and I haven’t gone beyond that as doing the 20-drop takes about 30 minutes and 210 reps each seems like plenty, though to work my legs more I added dumbells. Concetrate on your form and and your count because doing two sets of 8 because you forgot to go down one sucks every single time it happens. 
I do this 5 days a week, and run intervals on the weekend. For that, to start you run as fast as you can for 30 seconds if you can, walk for 90, sprint for 25, walk for 90, sprint for 20, walk for 90, etc. Takes about 10 minutes, but it’s a grueling 10 minutes. Watch your form and don’t worry about your speed or distance covered during the sprint. Work up at 5 second jumps until you can start at 60 seconds, which will take the workout to about 25 minutes total, 30 with a cool-down. When you find yourself catching your breath well before the 90 seconds is up, drop back down to 30 seconds, but switch to sprint for 30, jog for 90, sprint for 25, jog for 90, etc. and work your way back up to 60. It will take the same amount of time, but you’ll be covering more ground. The next step is incrementally reducing the 90 rest intervals.
A friend of mine who is very fit uses this religiously. She’s about 5’4" and 120 lbs. Malibu Pilates - Not cheap but well built and it goes on sale a few times a year on HSN. Ebay has them also. It has tons of exercises. They are around $150 on ebay.
She not big on gyms or outdoor exercise so this is her go to.
The problem is there are so many excellent regimens to do in your living room with little or no equipment.
Yes to jump rope if you have the ceiling clearance and floor space. Amazing cardio and the skills building keeps the interest up. Try to build to double-unders.
Jumping jacks, burpees, mountain climbers.
Pushups of various sorts including T-pushups (initially no dumbbell).
Body weight squats; one-legged squats supporting the rear leg on a chair behind you; lunges.
Crunches; L-sit between two stable chairs or if you are core strong off the floor.
Progression from wall walk ups to hand stand push-ups against the wall.
Splurge on a pull up bar and do pull-ups both narrow and wide grip and towel, hanging els, hanging windshield wipers …
Splurge on a balance disc and do squats on the disc and your various dumbbell exercises on the disc. Advance to trying to do parts of them with your eyes closed.
Mix up intensity levels. Mix up selections. The options are nearly endless.
I did a lot of push ups but they got boring and now I’m doing chinups/pullups much harder but i like the results better and not very fond of being near the floor
that is an awesome site…many thanks!!
OP search youtube for fun exercises-you’re bound to find something
Try tracking your food at myfitnesspal.com. Be sure to weigh and measure everything.. Weight is lost through diet, not exercise, so something’s wrong somewhere with yours. Where did you get your recommended calorie intake? I suspect it’s wrong.
Good luck!
Crank the music you love up and dance like a drunken teenager.
I use the website Lose It! And I do measure everything.
I don’t think it’s right to say only one way works for everyone - weight is definitely lost through a combination of diet and excersise.
And someone asked what is the longest I keep up an exercise regimen? That would be now…I mean I have been exercising pretty regularly for a while now, and I do lose some weight, but it’s clearly not enough. I mean like two years or so.
I do dance. I put in a DVD I have of Bollywood songs, and dance, and put on the wrist weights while I do it.
The problem is keeping it up five days a week and not just one or two.
Lots of great ideas here. And my number one goal is just to be healthy. My blood pressure is really low and my cholesterol is great, so I just want to keep that up. Losing weight is a great side benefit, but if I make that my goal that becomes unutterably depressing.
One thing I’ve often noticed with people who have not been active is that they don’t know what 100% effort feels like. They get a little sweaty and feel like they’ve put in enough effort. I’m not saying this describes you, but I would encourage you to ask yourself after each break, “Do I have anything left? Could I do a few more?”
And track your workouts. Move up in weight or reps as things become easier. Also, setting up a strict schedule ahead of time for increases in reps and weights ensures that you move forward.
This is actually exactly why I went to the personal trainer: so I would know what 100% effort feels like. They work you hard.
As they say over at Eat. Move. Improve.:
*I. Diet modulates weight.
II. Exercise modulates body composition.
- Nutrition quality will improve how fast you lose or gain weight.
- Exercise intensity will improve how fast your body composition changes.*
However, watching what you eat isn’t simply minimizing calories, or cutting out as much fat as possible, or eating only fruits and vegetables. To get the most out of an exercise routine–especially one that includes strength training, and all routines should have a significant amount of strength burning–you need to have the correct balance of nutrients to build musculature and connective tissue.
And almost completely worthless for either fitness or weight loss. The conventional wisdom is that purely aerobic training is ‘best’ for weight loss because you burn the most calories doing it. And the conventional wisdom is almost completely wrong. The focus isn’t the calories that you burn doing a particular activity (which even for intense cardio is very modest compared to dietary intake), but rather building up musclulature which in turn raises the basal metabolic rate which causes you to burn more calories over the entire day. Some people–especially women–fear intensive strength training because of the possibility of injury or that it will make them bulky and overtly muscled like women bodybuilders, but the fact is no woman can look like that without extremely intense lifting and a diet/supplement regime that is far from normal. Done properly and with good form, intensive strength training–weight lifting, plyometrics, and body weight training–will tone and strengthen without making one look bulky or masculine.
As for equipment, there are all sorts of things you can buy, some useful, some scams (Hello Total Gym!) but really all you need is a jump rope, some kind of weight (can be kettlebells, a sandbag, sand-filled gallon milk jugs, whathaveyou), and a foam roller (I like the TriggerPoint Grid, not so much because of the purported benefits of the grid pattern but because it holds up so much better than styrofoam rollers and is easily transported in luggage). If you do bodyweight training like handstands you don’t even need that much. Personally, I use jump rope, a couple of sandbags (I like Brute Force Sandbags and they have a “woman’s” size bag, but there are plenty of options, or you can make your own if you are handy) and some gym rings similar to those used in CrossFit-type gyms. For resources there are some good books, but I think pretty much anything you really need can be found at the Eat. Move. Improve. website linked above, which is bar none the most comprehensive online resource I’ve found for nutrition+bodyweight training.
Good luck you to. It’s hard to get in shape (I’m getting back into shape now after spending a couple of years of working 80 hour weeks) but definitely worth it both in short term “feeling good” and long term health benefits.
Stranger
Well yes, if you can eat like Michael Phelps if you swim like Michael Phelps but the underlying principle is the same. If you want to lose weight, it’s (calories burned - calories eaten)/3500 for every pound you lose.
If you want to lose 5 lbs, you have to come in at negative 500 calories for ~ 35 consecutive days. If you don’t hit every day exactly or have “cheat” days and go over, the 35 days could easily double even if it feels like you’re still very overall healthy. That’s a long time and you can’t even really see 5 lbs of difference because excess fat burns off the extremities and works its way towards the core. If you’ve only lost 5 lbs of fat off your forearms and calves over the course of 2 months it won’t register at all both visually or on the scale (given daily weight fluctuations).
If you are serious about having results, it’s going to be ROUGH. I know because I’m 2 weeks in of an concerted attempt to drop some pounds. Monitoring calories like a hawk. Dragging my ass to the gym. Not cheating by having extra meals/snacks, avoiding booze, etc. It’s impossible to stick to. According to the calorie counter I’m only 5 lbs in of an overall 30 lb goal. A lot of the “progress” was completely nullified because of a particularly splurgy long weekend.
Overall here is what I’ve found:
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You’re supposed to be hungry. Stop snacking. You can’t lose weight without being hungry. You’ll probably go to sleep hungry. You’ll definitely wake up hungry. Don’t compensate with “low cal” snacks. You don’t need that apple*, rice cake, handful of mixed nuts, etc. You just don’t. Low cal isn’t no cal.
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Exercise isn’t so much the key to losing weight but rather an enhancement. It builds muscles so you burn more calories in general, it boosts metabolism, it provides a calorie “insurance” of 200-500 calories a day in case you snack/cheat. I’m sure as you’ve seen, a couple of hundred calories is paltry in the food world.
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Drinks. Go diet/sugarless everything. I don’t really mind the taste of soda but I know people that FREAK OUT over unsugared drinks. Get over it. Especially get over it if you’re trying to lose weight. Just give it a couple of drinks and you’ll adjust. Also, as a combination of me being lazy about cleaning out my nalgene and it being healthy, I drink a ton of water now. It fills you up, no calories, and you can get it anywhere. Tea is also a 5 cal substitute. Oh, and booze? Mix with diet, sip on the rocks, and I’ve switched from g&t’s to greyhounds and ginhounds (my pet name for gin/grapefruit).
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Taste test. Sugar is a tricky bitch but not that tricky. Apple -> Baby Carrots -> Celery can easily be ordered in descending sweetness. Lo and behold the calories/100g order goes 50->30->15. I use this to remind myself that fruits really aren’t as healthy (calorically) as it’s cracked up to be.
** I know this comes off as long and ranting. I also know that a healthy lifestyle trumps all of this. However, many people just need/want to lose weight and overvalue exercise. I would say that most weight is accumulated slowly not because of a sedentary lifestyle but simply not giving a damn what/how much to eat/drink.
The rest of your advice is pretty good, but this one is dead wrong, and this is what happens when people count calories without consideration for nutritional balance. You should not be hungry all the time, and in fact that is entirely counterproductive as you will eventually come to a point of “sneaking” extra food whenever you can. You should be be consuming nutrients in the appropriate proportions for your level of activity. For someone doing a moderate level of exercise, consuming calories in a 50:30:20 or 45:30:25 balance of carbohydrates : protein : fat is about optimal, with carbohydrates being from mostly unprocessed low glycemic index sources (whole fruit, vegetables, whole unblanched grains, sweet potatoes, et cetera). If you are really doing a lot of long duration exercise constantly you may want to up the carbohydrates, but realize this also keeps the blood insulin levels elevated, so when blood glucose levels drop and the muscle-stored glycogen is depleted you become ravenously hungry. (And if you satisfy that hunger with carb-heavy foods, you start a vicious cycle of feast and famine.) On the other hand, if a larger portion of you caloric load comes from foods which break down slower and satiate better, you will feel filled for longer and only require small snacks between meals to maintain an even blood glucose level.
Stranger
Two really good apps/programs Fit Day and Lose it!
You don’t need to post your food on here, you can do it there…fitness comes from exercise, but you need to track your food to get serious fat loss going. I lost about twenty pounds on CrossFit and diet, after trying to do it for years with running alone.
Weight loss is a simple equation, burn more calories than you eat.
I’ve been losing, on average, slightly more than a pound a week for the past few months. I’m down over 20 pounds since the beginning of May. I’m male, just turned 39 and have a bad back.
I try to make my days as regulated as possible. My workout is now just part of a regular day. I even have set meals and meal times. I have a protein bar for breakfast (7:30am), I have a slim fast and V8 fruit juice for lunch (12:00pm), a crunchy granola bar for snack (4:00pm), a salad or chicken based dinner (6:30pm) and a yogurt for desert (8:30pm). This is my Monday through Friday meal plan.
On the weekend, I allow myself some more leeway, but only as long as I keep dropping a pound a week. (I went a little overboard this past weekend, but it was my birthday and there was cake!)
I exercise before work and breakfast Monday through Friday.
**Cardio **- Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays (30 mins)
[ul]
[li]5 minute warm up[/li][li]21 minute interval workout (do the following 7 times)[/li][li]-------30 seconds of all out sprinting (if you don’t want to puke when you were done with the sprint, you didn’t go fast enough. Go faster on the next one.)[/li][li]-------2.5 minutes relaxing jog[/li][li]4 minute cool down[/li][/ul]
Body Weight Training Circuit - Tuesday (~20 mins) Do each exercise for as many reps as possible in 20 seconds and rest 10 seconds between each exercise. Do 3 to 4 sets with a 2 to 3 minute rest between each set.
[ul]
[li]Squat Jump[/li][li]Push Up[/li][li]Calf Raise[/li][li]Bench Dip (can use chair)[/li][li]V Up[/li][li]Inverted Pull Up (lay on your back and pull yourself up to a suspended bar or table or some such)[/li][li]Lunge[/li][li]Jump Rope (I don’t use and actual jump rope because I screw it up. I just pretend and jump up and down for 20 seconds)[/li][/ul]
Weight Training Circuit - Thursday (~20 mins) Do each exercise for as many reps as possible in 20 seconds and rest 10 seconds between each exercise. Do 3 to 4 sets with a 2 to 3 minute rest between each set. You can use jugs of water instead of buying dumbbells. You’re probably going to do 10 to 15 reps per exercise, so don’t go too heavy.
[ul]
[li]Dumbbell Squat[/li][li]Jog In Place[/li][li]Oblique Crunch[/li][li]Jump Rope (Again, I just jump up and down)[/li][li]Bent Over Dumbbell Rows[/li][li]Jumping Jacks[/li][li]Upright Row[/li][li]Jog In Place[/li][li]Left Triceps Kickback[/li][li]Right Triceps Kickback[/li][/ul]
I downloaded a free app called “A HIIT* Interval Timer” for my android. I use it for both my cardio and strength workouts. It gives a 3 second audible countdown as you near the end of an interval and a whistle as the next interval starts. That way I can focus on what I am doing rather than worrying about timing myself. And I can hear the audio cues over any music that I happen to be playing on my phone as well.
It has just become part of my routine. Just like my commute to work. I don’t particularly like it, nor do I hate it. It just is.
I’m not guaranteeing anything here. This is what works for me. But hopefully it will inspire you to look for something outside the norm.
*High Intensity Interval Training. This has been the key for me. Slogging it out on the elliptical just wasn’t doing it for me. I needed to add the sprints to my cardio and reduce the amount of time between strength exercises to really burn the calories.
Seconded!
The elliptical trainer is just about the worst exercise device ever invented. It isn’t even clear what it is training you to do except a completely non-ergonomic, output-limited, repetitive motion which doesn’t pertain to anything you would actually do in real life. The only thing I can think of that is worse is a Smith machine (used to “help” you do squats in a way that resists the natural motion of your body to keep the load supported by your transversus abdominis). Nobody should be using an elliptical machine. However, because “health clubs” (which are not gyms) devote the majority of their floor space to these devices they appear to be important and people use them accordingly even though they do little good and potentially a lot of harm.
Stranger
This guy took six weeks doing mostly just pushups and occasionally dumbbells to make a dramatic difference in the way he looked, and used one supplemental protein drink 3X a day, along with a salad. As others have recommended, he did the same by limiting his calories and made sure he burned more calories than he took in. He didn’t waste his time with gyms, and he didn’t spend that much time on exercise, just limiting it to one set of whatever he was doing until he fatigued his muscles. I’m sure genetics also helped play the most crucial role of all, and without that, many doing the same thing are not going to look like he did.
Anyway, I’m glad you didn’t fall for the gym membership, a lot of these gyms try to lock you in and get as much money up front from you as possible, because they know the average person is only going to last a month or two, and some of these memberships have you locked in for up to three years.
As far as the fitness gurus that try to sell you this or that, or get you locked in to a gym, and promise you with hard work you can look like them, there is so much bullshit around the marketing of all of this stuff, it’s best to ignore damn near all of it.