Low Impact Aerobics?!
Question: I'm a single mom (to a 4 year old) and I work full time. Needless to say, my lifestyle has caused me to pack on more than a few pounds. Squeezing in exercise between working and caring for a child is almost next to impossible other than the 30 minute walk in the evenings around the block. I recently remembered that I have a 30 minute low impact aerobics video stored in a box of old movies. I thought that if I could do this every evening, my daughter could actually "do it" with me and it's not that long so that she will lose interest and get into something. My question is...will just 30 minutes a day be enough? On the weekends, I can incorporate a bike ride or walk in my day also, but during the week it is just impossible. I know some exercise is better than none, but I have 50+ pounds to get off this old body of mine (by summer) :) Also, any other ideas would be appreciated (I do plan to change my eating habits too)
Answers: I'm a single mom (to a 4 year old) and I work full time. Needless to say, my lifestyle has caused me to pack on more than a few pounds. Squeezing in exercise between working and caring for a child is almost next to impossible other than the 30 minute walk in the evenings around the block. I recently remembered that I have a 30 minute low impact aerobics video stored in a box of old movies. I thought that if I could do this every evening, my daughter could actually "do it" with me and it's not that long so that she will lose interest and get into something. My question is...will just 30 minutes a day be enough? On the weekends, I can incorporate a bike ride or walk in my day also, but during the week it is just impossible. I know some exercise is better than none, but I have 50+ pounds to get off this old body of mine (by summer) :) Also, any other ideas would be appreciated (I do plan to change my eating habits too)
First off, good luck! With an 8-month old daughter of my own, I know how busy life becomes. You really have to make eating properly and exercise a priority in your life, which is definitely difficult for most people to do.
Lucky for me, I'm a personal trainer. I get all kinds of exercise and have no choice but to eat right. People just don't hire fat personal trainers, and being a former bodybuilder, if I don't stay cut, I start to look pudgy, fast...
Enough about me and on to answering your questions. If you don't want to read my whole shtick, doing your low-impact aerobics tape will help you lose some weight, but it may not be sufficient for sustaining the weight loss as your body adjusts to doing the exercises on the tape. You need to keep challenging yourself to keep advancing.
Now for the long answer:
First, you should accept that you don't really need to lose weight. You need to lose fat while adding or maintaining lean body mass. So, from now on, your scale should only be used to help you track your body composition (lean body mass versus fat). Women need to keep their Body Fat % under 25% while men should keep theirs under 20%. Conversely, women should keep their body fat over 12-15% while men don't have the same restrictions and should limit cutting under 5-6% for extended periods of time. You're probably disappointed to hear me say that, but women need some fat in their system to help maintain their reproductive organs. For any men reading this, I would regularly cut down to 2-3% body fat during competition season and still maintain around 8% body fat. Just enough for my six-pack to hang around.
Diet is the hardest part of starting this type of lifestyle change, and is also the most important. Eating right is 80-85% of losing weight. The best diet is actually what the government lists, but I'll be more specific to help you out. You need to eat 40-55% of your calories as carbs, 40% as protein, and the remaining 15-20% as fat.
The tricky part is getting the right types of each. the carbs you can eat doesn't include sugar, high fructose corn syrup and other empty calories. Fiber from whole fruits, vegetables, and 100% whole grains is your new definition of carb.
Proteins need to be lean, like turkey, chicken (without the skin), fish, and whey protein (I love a scoop of vanilla whey powder mixed in with my oatmeal). Fatty proteins like beef should be kept to a minimum. If you're a vegetarian, beans and quinoa or amaranth are good sources of protein, but you'll have to do some research to ensure that you're getting complete protein in your diet.
Most people think that "fat" should be a four-letter word, and that just isn't true. Fats are essential for supporting life. Remember the '80s (or did I just show my age)? Low fat was the way to go, and people were getting fatter, every year, regardless of how much they cut their fat intake. Side affects that I saw in my clients (ok, now I showed my age) were hair loss, dry skin, loss of energy, memory loss, and just plain insanity. Alright, alright, the crazy guy wasn't really crazy. He was juicing behind my back. I dumped him and he tried to pay his tab with a fist to my nose (I don't recommend punching your trainer. It's not nice).
But, I digress... From now on, you need to ensure that the fats in your diet are mainly the essential fatty acids found in cold-water fish, flax seed and other seeds (and cold-compressed seed oils), olive oil, avocados, nuts (almonds, peanuts, etc), etc...
If you have been sold on the "low carb" diet craze, do your body and mind a favor and cycle the carbs. Under no circumstances should you go low carb (30-40% of calories from carbs) for more than three days. Low carb diets suppress hunger, so you eat less. Basically, they're low-calorie diets, which isn't good for you, which I'll get into next.
How much food should you eat? The answer to that question isn't always easy. Most dietitians will tell you that this comes down to a simple "calories in versus calories out" issue, and deep down, they're right. However, not all calories were created equal (like I've already talked about, above). At the same time, not all calorie intakes are created equal. If you haven't been eating enough, your metabolism has slowed down and if you eat the right number of calories, you'll start putting fat on, until your body gets used to the higher caloric intake.
So, your first assignment is to stick a pen and (small) pad of paper in your pocket or purse. Any time something passes your lips (water, gum, food, tic tacs, etc... I mean *everything*) you need to write it down. Do this for a few days to get an idea of how many calories your body is used to eating. If it's too low, you need to slowly increase your caloric intake (20% a week, max) until you hit your magic number.
So, what is your magic number? The number you're looking for is coined TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). You get this number by finding your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) using the Katch-McArdle formula (it's more accurate than the Harris-Benedict Formula if you know your BF%).
Once you have your BMR, you need to make sure that you never, under no circumstances, eat fewer calories a day than this number tells you. If you do, your body goes into starvation mode and nasty things start to happen, like using your heart muscle, skeletal muscles, and other muscle and internal organs for energy. This nasty process is called gluconeogenesis (bet you didn't realize that us muscleheads knew big words like that, huh?), and is one of the reasons why you shouldn't do a low- or reduced-carb diet for more than three days. Remember, you're trying to conserve lean body mass. When you go into "starvation mode," your body quickly slows down your metabolism and starts to store most of the calories you eat as fat. It's an evolution thing that we humans just haven't been able to get past (and I doubt we ever will). Our bodies are fat storing machines, just in case we ever have to go months without food. Since (I hope) you no longer have to scrounge around for nuts, berries, and other edible plants, with the occasional score of some meat, I doubt your body will ever have to deal with what it was designed for...
So, back to BMR. Calculate your TDEE by multiplying your BMR by the exercise multiplier (you'll find it on the web when you search for a BMR Calculator that uses the Katch-McArdle Formula). This is your base caloric intake. To lose weight, you should never eat less than 80% of this number. Consequently, people trying to bulk up should never eat more than 120% of this number to prevent themselves from gaining fat.
Now, since you'll be eating less than your TDEE, your metabolism will slow down on this caloric intake, and your fat loss will stop. Never fear! You just need to trick your metabolism by eating more! To keep your metabolism tricked for extended periods, you can fit in one or two high calorie days where you eat your TDEE or even a little more (that's what I do). If you time your carb cycling so you're on a high carb day (that's what I do) you can even have that pizza you've been craving! How awesome is that?!?! Watch it, though... Not the whole pizza... You don't want all of your day's calories in one sitting...
If you really want to shred the fat off your body, try three days of reduced carbs and low calorie followed by one day normal carbs and higher calorie. The only downside is, you could lose weight too fast on this diet. Studies have shown that when you lose more than two pounds per week, chances are you are also losing lean body mass. So, shows like "Biggest Loser" (which I watch religiously and at the same time hate) got it all wrong. The people on that show who lose 20 pounds in a week are losing muscle and fat. You're not on a TV show that works you out six hours (and more) a day and cooks all of your meals for you, so you really need to protect your lean body mass and limit your weight loss to two pounds a week. The best way to do that is to exercise your heart out and adjust your caloric intake to slow down the weight loss.
Before I get into exercise, I should probably touch on meals, a little. Women do best with five small meals a day, men do their best on six. Each meal needs to consist of fiber, protein, and a little essential fat. I've seen the best results when you get most of your carbs in the early meals, and then taper them down to low carbs with your last couple meals (while tapering up essential fats in the evening to help replace the calories lost from not eating carbs). To be honest, I recommend this to all of my clients and try to have them all avoid the low carb craze. You just miss out on too many important nutrients on a low carb diet, and back when Atkins first came out, I had so many clients insist that I let them go low carb (or would go low carb against my expressed concerns), and then once the depression or weight loss plateau hit (due to nutrient deficiencies), they'd stop working out and would quit my services, thinking I failed them... It was painful to see, but my clients who listened to me had much better results than any other trainer I know who used the low carb approach. So, eat your carbs in the morning, and plenty of them, and make sure that you eat every three hours or so.
Don't worry, I should be almost finished (I should package this as a book and sell it. Eh, oh well).
Exercise is the other important portion of the equation. Since you need to maintain lean body mass, you should always do some form of weight training. Body weight exercises are acceptable (push ups, crunches, leg lifts, &qu
30 minutes would beperfect. here is a poduct at eal store caled Ripped Fuel. its good for energy and dropping pounds. You should try it. It really works
for exercise 30 minutes are ok...take care of your diet
tip====9000 steps per day to lose weight....so count your steps while walking and you see we can not walk more than 5000 step which is approxomately 3 km....