Hi, I know i’m a new poster on here, but i’m hoping someone will be willing to help me with this. I’m also hoping this doesn’t count as asking for medical advice either.
I’m very over weight, just under 26st, so i’m starting a diet (again) tomorrow. I need to start doing some exercise too, but i’m not sure what would be best that is within my capabilities. Last time I went to the gym with a friend but the only machine I could use for more than 5 minutes was the excercise bike. Even then it was 15mins excersise, 5 mins rest repeated 3 or 4 times which doesn’t seem like it would be much use. I could go for a walk, but it would have to be about 30min max because I get out of breath.
Basically, I was hoping someone could suggest something effective, yet not too demanding for me to do until I get fit enough to do normal weightloss exercises. Even better if it’s something I can do fairly quietly indoors. I don’t have a problem with doing difficult exercises, but i’m assuming it’s not worth it if I can only manage a few minutes.
When I was still over 300 lbs, I started with water aerobics. If you can find a place that has those nearby, it’s great exercise. You get as much or as little as you want out of it. I pushed myself hard on it and it didn’t take me very long to work up to harder exercises out of the water. The great thing about water aerobics is that it is very gentle on the joints – which is always a good thing when your poor body is already hurting in the joints!
Standard disclaimer: talk to your doctor, blah blah blah. Good luck!
It is worth it, because the only way to build up your strength is to do it for as long as you can and then next time, do it a little longer. If you keep doing the exercise bike for 5 minutes at a time it won’t be long until you can do it for 10 minutes at a time!
Same goes for walking. 30 minutes of walking would be great. Just keep at it and soon you’ll be able to do much more. Do that every day, even twice a day, and you’ll be surprised at how well you do.
My personal nemesis and triumph is the military press at the gym. You have to push your arms straight up, and when I started I could just barely manage to do it 12 times, with no weight on it, just the bar. Now I can do 40 before I have to stop! Hey, I’m a weakling, but it’s a stronger weakling than I was.
Actually, it can be just as effective to do several shorter workouts instead of one long one. I’d say 15 minute stretches on the exercise bike with rests in-between is a great way to start. You can always build from there and try to increase the amount of time you can ride at once. Also, 30 minutes of walking is nothing to sneeze at. When I first began trying to lose weight, I started out with just 20 minutes of walking several times a week. Here is an article that talks more about splitting up workouts.
Thanks, I’ll have to look into that. Unfortunatly the nearest swimming pool is a 30min bus ride away, but if there’s one not long after work I might be able go on my way home.
What I meant was it is worth doing 5 mins of x instead of 15mins of y. For instance I can do 5 minutes on the rowing machine or 15 minutes on the bike. You are right though, eeven though I only went once or twice a week before, for an hour at the most, I did get better on each machine, even if that only mean doing 7 minutes instead of 3 on the elliptical machine (i think thats what it’s called, the one that looks like skis).
Thats something else I meant to ask. As i’m mainly trying to lose weight at the moment, do I need to include weight training, or just focus on cardio stuff. Most of the stuff i’ve read suggest doing equal amouts of both, but they’ve been focused on general fitness rather than specifically weightloss.
If your only problem with walking for 30 minutes is that it leaves you out of breath and not that it hurts your legs I’d stick with the walking.
Walk from your starting point for 15 minutes, turn around and come back. When you can do it without being winded slowly increase your distance.
Before I did Turbo Jam, I was a big fan of in-home walking. You can do it in complete privacy, you can do it in any weather, you can make it as easy or as difficult as you’d like, and you don’t need any special equipment other than a DVD player.
If you can do 15 minutes on the bike three or four times, that’s 45 minutes to an hour of aerobic exercise. That’s a perfectly acceptable amount of exercise, even with the 5 minute rest periods. It’s not as good as doing it without the breaks because you won’t be keeping your heart rate up for as long a time, but it’s still a solid beginner’s workout. Hell, I wish I could still do 45 minutes on an exercise bike!
If you can work some weight training in there, you’ll really be doing well.
You’ll get more benefit with the bike. Building endurance should be your primary goal right now. Also, you want to get past the glucose-burning stage and into the fat burning stage. 5 minutes won’t do that.
According to a study I read some years ago in Prevention magazine, your body can’t tell the difference if you do 30 minutes of aerobic exercise all at once or in 3 - 10 minute intervals (or 6 - 5 minute intervals).
So go a head and walk, it’s easy, cheap and you can do it anywhere. 5 minutes at a time if that’s all you can manage as many times a day as you can. You’d be surprised how quickly the little stuff adds up.
I also don’t think your body cares which aerobic exercise you do so if you can handle the bike for 10 minutes and then rowing for another 10 go for it!
Sounds like you’ve got a gym membership so talk to the trainers. There should be people there available for general questions and advice.
Good luck to you and pop on over to the SDMB Weightloss thread we’re a bunch of losers!
WEeight training is ideal for losing weight because when you stop doing cardio exercises you stop burning calories but with weight training, you continue to burn calories for a period of time after.
When I was over 300lbs I invented a little walking game I called the “Stick”.
I would take a small stick, really small maybe a pencil size. And start walking, when I got tired and wanted to go home I would place the stick in the ground in an out of the way place and walk home. The next day, I wasn’t allowed to quit until I had picked up the stick and moved it further along the path. When I had finally lost enough weight to begin jogging, I used the same method and within a year I was going over 5 miles to reach the last place I had placed the stick. Weights came later, treadmills, biking and all other stuff eventually occured, but the little stick got me started.
Something that’s helped me recently is that I bought a pedometer. The ones I looked at ranged from $5 to $30, and I bought a mid-priced one, around $15. It counts steps, distance, and calories burned at my current weight. It was quite an eye opener the first few days I used it, and it has turned into something of a game to try to top yesterdays steps/distance/calories.
I picked it up three weeks ago, and have gone from 3000-4000 steps per day on my days off (8000-9000 on work days) to almost 20,000 on average per day. I’ve lost 6 pounds. It sounds like a lot of steps added, but it was easy once I started walking when and where I could. The little things you always read or hear about are quite true: take the stairs instead of the elevator, park further away from the door, walk to the bank if it’s only a couple of blocks away, etc.
Full disclosure: I have also tweaked my eating habits very slightly. I’ve slowly been removing one thing at a time, ie: I was vegetarian for ten years when I was younger, so knowing it was something I could handle, I slowly stopped eating red meats a few months back, then poultry… I’m currently what would be considered a pesco-vegetarian, as along with fish I still eat eggs and dairy. Depriving myself in the past has only led to utter failure. And while I’m certain that a little extra self-control would see the weight come off even faster, I’m eating a Cadbury Caramello bar right now.
I haven’t weight myself today. Gimme a sec…
Make that a grand total of 7 pounds. I’m going to go mail some stuff at the nearby post, about four blocks away.
Good luck, no matter what you decide to do. But I highly recommend the humble pedometer.
Build extra exercise into your daily routine. You mentioned the bus earlier, so I would recommend getting off one stop earlier than your normal stop. If you work in an office building take the stairs down at the end of the day instead of the elevator. That kind of thing can add a lot of activity to your day with very little effort on your part.
I have beagles. we walk in the park every day or they make my life miserable. They will not let me take a day off. Nordberg is 3 years old and has never gone a day without a walk. Quincy is 10 and he wont go if the weather sucks.
Do you reccomend any in particular, or should I just pick one at random. I can’t order from her site from the uk but it looks like most of them are on amazon uk.
Thanks, I’ve just posted over there.
Ok, would it be enough if I just bought some dumbells and did some exercises at home, or do you mean a proper gym workout with all the different weights and machines they have. Either way, does anyone know of any websites that explain exactly what you’re supposed to do.
I’m going to try that sort of thing. I already have a 10-15 minute walk from work to the bus stop, but I’ll try to add the extra 5 mins between bus stops where I switch buses. I only get the bus twice a week though, I get picked up the rest of the time.
I may have been exaggerating when I called it a gym . It’s at the YMCA, they have a room with
3 bikes
2 treadmills
2 rowing machines
2 elliptical machines
weights
and some sort of weight machine in the middle.
There’s no trainers or anything there, you just go in and use the machines. I did try and persuade my friend, who was the one who wanted to start excercising, to join the proper gym but, despite the fact that he saves more money than I earn each month, he said it was too expensive. I wish we had gone now, he probably wouldn’t have given up if he’d paid all that money, and i’m too embarressed to go on my own.
Do both, but both within your current capabilities. As Inner Stickler mentions, muscle burns calories even during rest, so if you build up muscle you lose weight even while resting.
Two or three sets of 8-10 repetition of the basic exercises is a good start.
[ul][li]Leg Press []Bench Press - use dumbbells at first[]Lat machine pulldowns[]crunches[]biceps curls[][]Shoulder Press[/ul][/li]
Then aerobics of some sort. Your cycles of fifteen minutes on and five minutes off is actually quite good. Ideal is to use different machines each time.
Stick with it. It can be done. My brother lost 115 pounds almost twenty five years ago, and has maintained it ever since.
. It’s at the YMCA, they have a room with