If you fall into the category of people who, like myself, never played a sport, never saw gym class as anything but pure torture and struggled to figure out how anyone could sustain any cardio activity for more than 5-10 minutes, this post is for you.

Step One: Evaluate Your Options

Walking is the go-to exercise for most morbidly (or super morbidly) obese people, presumably because it's easy and everyone knows how to do it.  While that may be the case, sometimes the path of least resistance doesn't necessarily equate to best the best thing for you... or your joints.  If you find that walking is leaving you with achey hips, knees and ankles, you might want to consider trying something different to start out with until you can drop enough weight so that walking isn't so taxing on your body.

I've been a fan of the elliptical trainer since they first arrived on the gym circuit scene back in the 90s... my personal preference is the Precor EFX (the old school style with stationary handgrips).  Although it's not no impact like swimming or water aerobics, it is low impact and easy to learn, so if you haven't used one before, there's no time like the present!  You move the foot pedals as though you're cross-country skiing and adjust the incline and resistance to suit your workout needs, which brings us to...

Step Two: Excercise "in the Zone"

This is where I should probably point out that whole thing about don't start any exercise program without your doctor's consent, because if you follow the advice I'm about to give here and drop dead of a heart attack, I don't want your family coming after me.  So there, you've been warned.

One of the biggest challenges I faced when figuring out how this whole exercise thing worked was learning how to recognize when I was "in the zone".  Having had no formal exercise background to draw from, I resorted to research to help me figure it out.  Eventually I ran across a book Oprah wrote with her personal trainer, Bob Greene called "Make the Connection"..  In a chapter where he discusses exercising at the right level of intensity, he offers this super handy guidance:

Picture a scale from 0 to 10, what follows are descriptions of how you should be feeling at each level.

0. This is how you feel when at rest.  There is no feeling of fatigue, your breath is not at all elevated.  You will not experience this at all during exercise.

1. This is how you feel working at your desk or reading.  There is no feeling of fatigue, you breathing is not elevated.

2. This is how you might feel while getting dressed.  There is little or no feeling of fatigue, your breathing is not elevated.  You will rarely experience this low level while exercising.

3.  This is how you'd feel walking across the room to turn on the television.  There is little feeling of fatigue, you might be slightly aware of your breathing, but it's slow and natural.  You might experience this right at the beginning of an exercise session.

4. This is the feeling you'd get while slowly walking outside.  There is a very slight feeling of fatigue, your breathing is slightly elevated, but comfortable.  You should experience this level during the initial stages of your warm-up.

5. This is the feeling you might get while walking briskly to the store.  There is a slight feeling of fatigue, you are aware of your breathing and it's deeper than in level 4.  You should experience this level near the end of your warm-up.

6. This is the feeling you might get when you're walking somewhere and are very late.  There is a general feeling of fatigue, but you know that you can maintain this level.  Your breathing is somewhat deep and you are aware of it.  you should experience this level in the transition from your warm-up to your exercise session and during the initial phase of learning how to work at level seven or eight.

7. This is the feeling you get when you're exercising vigorously.  There is a definite feeling of fatigue, but you are quite sure you can maintain this level for the rest of your session.  Your breathing is deep and you're definitely aware of it.  You can carry on a conversation, but you would probably prefer not to.  This is the baseline level of exercise that you will maintain in your sessions.

8. This is the feeling you might get when you are exercising very vigorously.  There is a very definite feeling of fatigue, and if you asked yourself if you could continue for the remainder of your session, you think you could, but are not 100% sure.  Your breathing is very deep, you can still carry on a conversation, but you don't feel like it.  This becomes the feeling you should experieince only after you are comfortable reaching a level seven and are ready for a more intense workout.  This is the level that produces rapid results, but you must learn how to maintain it.  Exercising at this level is difficult for many people.

9. This is how you would feel when exercising very, very vigorously.  You would experience a very definite feeling of fatigue and if you asked yourself if you could continue for the remainder of your session, you rpobably could not.  Your breathing is very labored and it would be very difficult to carry on a conversation.  This is a feeling you may experience for shor periods when trying to achieve a level 8.  This is a level that many athletes train at and it is difficult for them.  You should not be experiencing a level 9 on a routine basis and should slow down when you do.

10. You should not experience a level 10.  This is the feeling you would experieince with all-out exercise.  This level cannot be maintained for very long and there is no benefit in reaching it.

Bob recommends doing a minimum of 20 minutes in level 7 or 8 in each exercise session.  While it does take some time and effort to get there, once you're able to maintain that level of activity, you WILL start to feel that burst of energy you hear so much about from people who rave about what exercise does for them.

So... how do you get there?

Step Three: Establishing Your Rhythmic Cadence

I'm a big fan of working out to music, so much so that I actually create playlists with songs that I've assigned elliptical speed values so that it starts with slower songs for the warm-up and cool down phases and progresses to more upbeat songs for the actual "level 7" phase. 

Whether you listen to music or not, you need to establish a regular, even cadence in your breathing in order to start to work towards exercising at levels higher than what you're used to.  I've found that no matter the resistence level I'm using, if I take one breath in that spans a forward movement for each foot, that does the trick.  So breathe in... (left forward, right forward)... breathe out... (left forward, right forward)... breathe in... (left forward, right forward)... lather, rinse, repeat.  When I'm moving faster, my breathing also picks up in proportion.

The next time you start a workout, make a point to concentrate on keeping your breathing even and steady.  If you're having trouble with the one breath in for every 2 steps rule, slow down.... you're pushing yourself too hard.  Start out slow at the lowest resistance/incline level and experiment with gradually increasing resistance/speed to see where you start noticing the sign posts of each level as described above. 

NOTE: Don't shoot for level 7 right off the bat... if you're just starting out, try to get to a point where you can maintain level 5 for 20 minutes.  Once you've mastered that, push a few of those minutes up to level 6 each day until you've made the change over to doing level 6 for 20 full minutes.  Take the same approach to achieve level 7.

So, that's it.  If you walked into this post not knowing where to start or what physical signs to look for when it comes to exercise, you now have at least some semblance of an idea on what you need to do... all you have to do now is get out there and do it!