Fat loss exercises even you can do....
Today's Post: Tuesday, 1-12-2010
1. If you are totally out of shape and over 60 pounds overweight, you may need to start with walking and going to a gym twice a week or getting some graduated but light dumbbells for use at home.
You may simply now be too heavy to do the more advanced exercises that use jumping until you have built up some strength in your legs and lost down to being 40 or 50 pounds overweight or less or doing both things.
But, you can stop drinking all soft drinks including diet drinks; and simply stop eating foods made from refined grains; and simply stop eating foods that contain high fructose corn syrup. Surprisingly, dumping that stuff actually makes you a bit LESS hungry and by itself may cause enough fat loss to enable you to do more advanced exercises. For example, the average person that heavy can often lose 40 to 60 pounds with that one step. (For example, I no longer ingest that stuff & am still 15 pounds overweight and 32 pounds overfat. I shudder to imagine the shape I’d be in if I did ingest that stuff and was 40 to 60 pounds fatter!)
In addition, you should begin today or by the end of this week to start doing regular exercise.
Dr Al Sears teaches a version of interval cardio called PACE. Even though I like his work and recommend it to you if you want to get more specific advice, see www.alsearsmd.com , even without using it, you can make use of the principles of interval cardio to start from where you are and take small but regular steps to improve from now on -- and to both rapidly -- and for most people, more safely than using many kinds of longer cardio, get into far better shape. It may take a year to really make a huge amount of progress. But you make fast progress literally from the first week or two.
Suppose you are so heavy you can only take about 5 steps before you get a bit out of breath.
That’s actually no problem in terms of getting better.
a) Do something like this: get by a doorway or wall it’s safe to lean on for support. Then take 2 steps away and 2 steps back. Then rest for 10 or 20 seconds or a bit longer if you need to. Then repeat that a second time and a third time.
Next time, the following day, try to take 3 steps away and 3 back. Once you can do that all 3 times increase it to 4 steps. After that take 5 steps away and 5 back. Don’t rush it but keep doing just a bit more each time. And be sure to stop and rest until you feel rested enough to do the next set.
Then after a couple of weeks start doing more sets each time. Then when you can do 8 sets each time, go back to taking more steps.
Eventually you will be able to walk outside for at least 20 steps and be able to rest by simply standing still.
Later, you will be able to walk without stopping for up to a mile. When you begin to approach that, walk briskly until you feel a bit out of breath then slow way down until you feel rested enough to walk briskly again. In the initial stages it’s OK to stop for a few seconds instead. But within a few weeks you’ll begin to be able to just walk more slowly for a rest.
b) Consider joining a gym or at least visit one to learn about 10 or 12 exercises you can do for your arms and upper body that use dumbbells. (Dumbbells give you better increases in strength and muscular control than the machines. In addition, any exercises you do in the gym with dumbbells, you can do at home. You have to be pretty well fixed for funds to install the machines in a home gym. But you can get the dumbbells on eBay used or buy them new at Sears for far less money.)
The wonderful thing about this is that in the early stages, you do NOT need to be lighter already to do them safely. In fact, you can do many of the best dumbbell exercises while sitting down on a chair.
Once you know how to do those exercises, you can get a small set of single dumbbells of weight you can do now ranging in steps to about 3 times that much. (You can always get more later.) This won’t take up much room since you only need one of each.
Then, for each exercise do a few repetitions with your left hand and the same number with your right hand for each set. That will give you enough rest between arms you will eventually not need any more time between sets. That makes your exercise session take less time.
Start with a weight you can do at least 5 or 6 repetitions, or reps, with and do them in good form. Then try to add just one more each rep on most days you exercise. But if you begin to have to work hard to add one more, it may take a couple of weeks to add the next one. The important thing is to use the next size larger dumbbell for 5 or 6 reps once you can reliably do 12 reps with each hand.
(Important note, while walking & other interval cardio exercises can be done 7 days a week, strength training with dumbbells should be done every other day because you make a good bit of your progress on the rest days when your body builds more muscle or stronger muscle after each exercise session. No rest days equals much less progress and benefit. Plus it’s a waste of time.)
Remember, the more walking you can build up to and the more weight you can use in your dumbbell exercises the more muscle tissue you’ll have and the more calories you’ll burn while you exercise and even for quite a while after you exercise. This means you can lose fat without having to cut calories enough to get too hungry to continue. That helps make it possible to lose all your fat AND keep it all off.
(If you are that overweight also see #3 below.)
2. If you have already begun exercising or did regular exercises once when you were younger and are in good health now – and you are 40 pounds or less overfat, you may be able to lose fat faster and in shorter interval cardio sessions.
There are 3 ways to do this. The reason you can’t be too heavy is that all 3 involve jumping.
Here are the 3 exercises.
Jumping jacks. Skipping or jumping rope. --and Jumping on a mini-trampoline.
If you are still a bit too heavy or your feet or knees won’t allow the slightly harsher impact of jumping jacks or jumping rope – and you can afford $160 or so, consider a mini-trampoline. The “Urban Rebounder” available at www.urbanrebounding.com works. In fact, as of today, they were on sale for $89.95 with a stabilizer bar to hold onto for safety and 6 workouts to try.
But if you are a bit less heavy and have a hardwood floor or carpeted wood floor at home, jumping jacks and jumping rope also work.
These are also the two exercises you can do right away. You need no equipment at all for jumping jacks and good quality jump ropes are available at your local sporting goods store for $25 or $30.
But, be prepared to start more slowly than you might have expected! All jumping exercises are quite intense and vigorous. In addition, jumping rope requires you to gradually learn to do them rhythmically and in a controlled way. Both things require a bit of time to master.
I speak from experience since these two are the ones I realized I could add in four sessions of 5 to 10 minutes each every week & where I had times to fit them into my busy week. My hope is to add about 9 pounds of muscle in my butt, lower back, and legs and lose about 14 or more pounds of the 32 pounds of fat I intend to lose – over a year’s time.
I can already do interval cardio on my daily commute by running for a short distance and then walking briskly and repeat for a bit over half a mile each way, two times a day, including almost always running up the ramp to the trains I take. And, I can do over 50 pushups reliably.
Guess how many jumping jacks I now do at the beginning!
I started with 3 sets of 14 with a short rest in between sets and called it a day.
I now do those two days a week.
When I was a kid, doing 50 jumping jacks was easy. And, since I’m not totally out of shape I was shocked to find them so difficult at first. But the good news is that I think this also means that by gradually building up to 8 sets of 98, a number I like better than 100, and doing each set of 98 fast in a minute or less, I may reach my fat loss goal because that’s SO much better than I can do now. In addition, running up the ramp to the train will be ridiculously easy and I’ll not need to catch my breath a bit at the top as I do now.
I’ll use the same system I just recommended for a beginning walking program. My next goal is to go up to 4 sets of 28. (I did 3 sets of 21 last time.)
And, my initial jumping rope experience was even worse. I’d do one and then land on the rope or not jump in time. Each time I did that I’d start over immediately. I think the most I’ve done without messing up is about 3 or 4. In addition, I’d have to stop briefly to move back to the spot where the rope has enough clearance because the jumps moved me forward instead of leaving me in the right place. And, I’m still at two sets of only14.
But I’ll soon get a better jump rope and get used to it and by the end of the year I expect to be doing 8 sets of 98 in less than one minute each just like the jumping jacks. And, again, that’s so much better than I can do now, that encourages me to think that once I’ve done it, I may well reach my fat loss goal.
And, if I can do it, most of you can also.
The really good news is that most people can fit in sessions of 5 to 15 minutes a few times a week. And by using strength training with dumbbells and jumping exercises, you CAN gain muscular weight and lose even more fat weight. And, THAT will remove INCHES of belly fat off your waist. (My own goal is to lose over 4 inches off my waist this year.)
These two kinds of exercises also will make sharp improvements in your HDL cholesterol level and in your ability to avoid too high levels of blood sugar.
3. What if you would exercise but have no time?
The chances are excellent you watch more than 10 hours a week of TV. You won’t want to stop watching some shows or events. But if you stop all the ones that are OK but not great -- & record some for watching later, commercial free, you can watch the equivalent of 15 hours of TV in 10 or less and have a lot of the time you now spend watching TV for exercise and do it while keeping much to most of the TV watching you like best.
Two other thoughts to keep in mind to motivate you to do this –
a) You burn more calories sleeping than you do while watching TV; and a large percentage of the ads on TV are for foods that pay the makers for making you fat.
b) The National Registry for people who have lost over 30 pounds and kept them off for over 5 years finds that almost all those people watch 10 hours a week of TV or less while the average person comes closer to 30 hours a week of TV watching.
Today's Post: Tuesday, 1-12-2010
1. If you are totally out of shape and over 60 pounds overweight, you may need to start with walking and going to a gym twice a week or getting some graduated but light dumbbells for use at home.
You may simply now be too heavy to do the more advanced exercises that use jumping until you have built up some strength in your legs and lost down to being 40 or 50 pounds overweight or less or doing both things.
But, you can stop drinking all soft drinks including diet drinks; and simply stop eating foods made from refined grains; and simply stop eating foods that contain high fructose corn syrup. Surprisingly, dumping that stuff actually makes you a bit LESS hungry and by itself may cause enough fat loss to enable you to do more advanced exercises. For example, the average person that heavy can often lose 40 to 60 pounds with that one step. (For example, I no longer ingest that stuff & am still 15 pounds overweight and 32 pounds overfat. I shudder to imagine the shape I’d be in if I did ingest that stuff and was 40 to 60 pounds fatter!)
In addition, you should begin today or by the end of this week to start doing regular exercise.
Dr Al Sears teaches a version of interval cardio called PACE. Even though I like his work and recommend it to you if you want to get more specific advice, see www.alsearsmd.com , even without using it, you can make use of the principles of interval cardio to start from where you are and take small but regular steps to improve from now on -- and to both rapidly -- and for most people, more safely than using many kinds of longer cardio, get into far better shape. It may take a year to really make a huge amount of progress. But you make fast progress literally from the first week or two.
Suppose you are so heavy you can only take about 5 steps before you get a bit out of breath.
That’s actually no problem in terms of getting better.
a) Do something like this: get by a doorway or wall it’s safe to lean on for support. Then take 2 steps away and 2 steps back. Then rest for 10 or 20 seconds or a bit longer if you need to. Then repeat that a second time and a third time.
Next time, the following day, try to take 3 steps away and 3 back. Once you can do that all 3 times increase it to 4 steps. After that take 5 steps away and 5 back. Don’t rush it but keep doing just a bit more each time. And be sure to stop and rest until you feel rested enough to do the next set.
Then after a couple of weeks start doing more sets each time. Then when you can do 8 sets each time, go back to taking more steps.
Eventually you will be able to walk outside for at least 20 steps and be able to rest by simply standing still.
Later, you will be able to walk without stopping for up to a mile. When you begin to approach that, walk briskly until you feel a bit out of breath then slow way down until you feel rested enough to walk briskly again. In the initial stages it’s OK to stop for a few seconds instead. But within a few weeks you’ll begin to be able to just walk more slowly for a rest.
b) Consider joining a gym or at least visit one to learn about 10 or 12 exercises you can do for your arms and upper body that use dumbbells. (Dumbbells give you better increases in strength and muscular control than the machines. In addition, any exercises you do in the gym with dumbbells, you can do at home. You have to be pretty well fixed for funds to install the machines in a home gym. But you can get the dumbbells on eBay used or buy them new at Sears for far less money.)
The wonderful thing about this is that in the early stages, you do NOT need to be lighter already to do them safely. In fact, you can do many of the best dumbbell exercises while sitting down on a chair.
Once you know how to do those exercises, you can get a small set of single dumbbells of weight you can do now ranging in steps to about 3 times that much. (You can always get more later.) This won’t take up much room since you only need one of each.
Then, for each exercise do a few repetitions with your left hand and the same number with your right hand for each set. That will give you enough rest between arms you will eventually not need any more time between sets. That makes your exercise session take less time.
Start with a weight you can do at least 5 or 6 repetitions, or reps, with and do them in good form. Then try to add just one more each rep on most days you exercise. But if you begin to have to work hard to add one more, it may take a couple of weeks to add the next one. The important thing is to use the next size larger dumbbell for 5 or 6 reps once you can reliably do 12 reps with each hand.
(Important note, while walking & other interval cardio exercises can be done 7 days a week, strength training with dumbbells should be done every other day because you make a good bit of your progress on the rest days when your body builds more muscle or stronger muscle after each exercise session. No rest days equals much less progress and benefit. Plus it’s a waste of time.)
Remember, the more walking you can build up to and the more weight you can use in your dumbbell exercises the more muscle tissue you’ll have and the more calories you’ll burn while you exercise and even for quite a while after you exercise. This means you can lose fat without having to cut calories enough to get too hungry to continue. That helps make it possible to lose all your fat AND keep it all off.
(If you are that overweight also see #3 below.)
2. If you have already begun exercising or did regular exercises once when you were younger and are in good health now – and you are 40 pounds or less overfat, you may be able to lose fat faster and in shorter interval cardio sessions.
There are 3 ways to do this. The reason you can’t be too heavy is that all 3 involve jumping.
Here are the 3 exercises.
Jumping jacks. Skipping or jumping rope. --and Jumping on a mini-trampoline.
If you are still a bit too heavy or your feet or knees won’t allow the slightly harsher impact of jumping jacks or jumping rope – and you can afford $160 or so, consider a mini-trampoline. The “Urban Rebounder” available at www.urbanrebounding.com works. In fact, as of today, they were on sale for $89.95 with a stabilizer bar to hold onto for safety and 6 workouts to try.
But if you are a bit less heavy and have a hardwood floor or carpeted wood floor at home, jumping jacks and jumping rope also work.
These are also the two exercises you can do right away. You need no equipment at all for jumping jacks and good quality jump ropes are available at your local sporting goods store for $25 or $30.
But, be prepared to start more slowly than you might have expected! All jumping exercises are quite intense and vigorous. In addition, jumping rope requires you to gradually learn to do them rhythmically and in a controlled way. Both things require a bit of time to master.
I speak from experience since these two are the ones I realized I could add in four sessions of 5 to 10 minutes each every week & where I had times to fit them into my busy week. My hope is to add about 9 pounds of muscle in my butt, lower back, and legs and lose about 14 or more pounds of the 32 pounds of fat I intend to lose – over a year’s time.
I can already do interval cardio on my daily commute by running for a short distance and then walking briskly and repeat for a bit over half a mile each way, two times a day, including almost always running up the ramp to the trains I take. And, I can do over 50 pushups reliably.
Guess how many jumping jacks I now do at the beginning!
I started with 3 sets of 14 with a short rest in between sets and called it a day.
I now do those two days a week.
When I was a kid, doing 50 jumping jacks was easy. And, since I’m not totally out of shape I was shocked to find them so difficult at first. But the good news is that I think this also means that by gradually building up to 8 sets of 98, a number I like better than 100, and doing each set of 98 fast in a minute or less, I may reach my fat loss goal because that’s SO much better than I can do now. In addition, running up the ramp to the train will be ridiculously easy and I’ll not need to catch my breath a bit at the top as I do now.
I’ll use the same system I just recommended for a beginning walking program. My next goal is to go up to 4 sets of 28. (I did 3 sets of 21 last time.)
And, my initial jumping rope experience was even worse. I’d do one and then land on the rope or not jump in time. Each time I did that I’d start over immediately. I think the most I’ve done without messing up is about 3 or 4. In addition, I’d have to stop briefly to move back to the spot where the rope has enough clearance because the jumps moved me forward instead of leaving me in the right place. And, I’m still at two sets of only14.
But I’ll soon get a better jump rope and get used to it and by the end of the year I expect to be doing 8 sets of 98 in less than one minute each just like the jumping jacks. And, again, that’s so much better than I can do now, that encourages me to think that once I’ve done it, I may well reach my fat loss goal.
And, if I can do it, most of you can also.
The really good news is that most people can fit in sessions of 5 to 15 minutes a few times a week. And by using strength training with dumbbells and jumping exercises, you CAN gain muscular weight and lose even more fat weight. And, THAT will remove INCHES of belly fat off your waist. (My own goal is to lose over 4 inches off my waist this year.)
These two kinds of exercises also will make sharp improvements in your HDL cholesterol level and in your ability to avoid too high levels of blood sugar.
3. What if you would exercise but have no time?
The chances are excellent you watch more than 10 hours a week of TV. You won’t want to stop watching some shows or events. But if you stop all the ones that are OK but not great -- & record some for watching later, commercial free, you can watch the equivalent of 15 hours of TV in 10 or less and have a lot of the time you now spend watching TV for exercise and do it while keeping much to most of the TV watching you like best.
Two other thoughts to keep in mind to motivate you to do this –
a) You burn more calories sleeping than you do while watching TV; and a large percentage of the ads on TV are for foods that pay the makers for making you fat.
b) The National Registry for people who have lost over 30 pounds and kept them off for over 5 years finds that almost all those people watch 10 hours a week of TV or less while the average person comes closer to 30 hours a week of TV watching.
Labels: at home exercise, exercises for effective fat loss, exercises for people more than 40 lbs overweight, exercises for weight loss, how to lose over 40 pounds with just 3 steps
posted by David at 2:10 PM
1 Comments:
Sunday, 1-17-2010
Good day, I'm David Eller, the blogger who writes this blog.
My key health goal for 2010 -- or New Year's resolution for this year -- is to lose back 14 pounds on the scale I intially lost and gained back of the 30 pounds I lost -- AND to lose enough more fat from my belly and add enough muscle to lose 4 inches or more from my waist.
(At least I have kept off 16 pounds of the 30 I initially lost.)
Since this 1-12 post has my struggles with my new exercise plan to add four 5 to 10 minute sessions, it occured to me it might help some people who a-successful-after-getting-good-results description at the end of the year might not help.
So, each month in the comments on this post, I'll post my progress and struggles so you can see the process of how starting slow and gradually overcoming obstacles works.
I hope that will be more inspirational and helpful to you than just telling you I did great at the end of the year.
Also, I measure my weight once a month and my waist measurement as well.
This morning I did that.
Since I've just barely begun my now four components of my fat loss plan to reach my goals, I would have beeen completely happy with no progress yet.
To be fair, I've not yet done that much -- though I have begun to take some of the right actions and sustained them for a few days.
As of my session this afternoon I'll do in a few minutes, I'll have only done my new extra 4 sessions a week of jumping, interval style cardio for 2 weeks. Plus each of those sessions had less than an eighth of what I plan to build up to per session of actual exercise.
My calorie restriction plan is not completely in place yet and I've only done it about as long.
And, my number of glasses a week of red wine cutback by 20 % per week has just run for a single week so far.
So, how did I do since last month before I started this new plan?
Mixed review.
I did indeed NOT lose any at all any off my waist measurment. (That's the more important but more difficult of my two goals.)
But, much to my considerable surprise considering how little I've yet done, I DID lose 2 pounds.
In addition, I can feel that my leg and buttock muscles have been worked hard and are beginning to respond. And, I AM feeling better phsyically and mentally.
I'm up to 3 sets of 21 on the jumping jacks; & during my last jump rope session, I actually did 6 in a row without messing up, not once but twice.
(Note that to avoid injury and burn out, I'm being careful to add just a tiny bit each time to my workout from one time to the next. I'm NOT trying to double what I did last time as I might have been foolish enough to try when I didn't know how it would backfire.)
Wish me luck for next time.
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