Exercise, Nutrition, WLS, and Cooking Q & A - 2/17/2014
Early out walking is the absolute best exercise for you to do. And don't worry about how fast, for now keep doing it. I am fairly fit these days and I can run pretty fast but my walking pace is about a 20 minute mile and that is 184lbs lighter than when I started. I got to that speed pretty fast though, so you will be surprised at how quickly things improve. 3mph is a pretty good walk. So much so that I am planning a post for hopefully this afternoon that talks about walking and how we need to do as much of it as we can.
I would suggest that you try some stairs. Nothing crazy and nothing fast. The reason for the stairs is that you can take really good advantage of your body weight to workout the biggest muscles you have and that is in your legs and but. Start out by shooting for 1 flight or if you have some bleachers at your track, once up. Set a goal in your mind to get to 10 flights. Just envision it and don't worry about how long it takes to get you there. If it takes a year it takes a year. It won't but just be ok with your progress but see yourself doing 10 flights. Make each step up count and try not to use hand rails except for balance. Meaning if you find yourself tugging yourself up with your arm rather than just keeping yourself from swaying then you are not letting your legs do the works you are intending. You will get a lot out of this.
On the walking time is as important as speed. You should shoot for an hour of walking per day, actually the metric is 10,000 steps, but an hour should get you pretty close. Now that doesn't have to be an hour in one shot it can be 15 mins in the morning, 15 mins at lunch, and 30 at night and walking the halls of your house or office count.
As for your weights there are probably some things you can do to build some more muscle, but those weights are pretty light for your big muscle groups like your chest and back, so you won't get much if any muscle growth from those, but you can start getting your muscle use to the motion. So go on YouTube and look for an exercise called a kettlebell swing. I want you to use your 10lb weight to do what is basically a kettlebell swing with 1 arm and I want you to do 10 with each side, take a 1 to 2 minute break and do it again. I want you to do this 3 times. This is not an arm exercise, it is a leg, butt, and back exercise. You are basically going to swing the weight between your legs and thrust your hips forward to swing the weight up to about eye level and let it swing back down and thrust forward. On its rise up you are going to clench up your butt cheeks and hold them until the weight comes back down. Again, here we are working your big muscle groups.
With the 5lbs (if you have two do both arms at the same time, if not do them one at a time) shoulder presses. Basically you are going to hold the weight next to your ears and thrust them straight up. You should feel this in your arms, shoulders, and upper back. Once you find that the 5ls are too easy then step up to 10s. Do 2 sets of 10 repetitions with a 1 to 2 min rest between.
Next are bicep curls, if you can easily do the 5s, then use the 10's. I want you to do 10-20, rest for 1-2 mins and repeat for 2 to 3 times. A bicep curl is where you hold the weight in front of you at your side with your palm facing upward and lift the weight up to your chest by bringing your hand toward your shoulder using just you bicep.
Get started with those but I think you will find in the next two weeks if you do them faithfully that you will see a difference in your stamina, your mood, your energy level, your soreness for sure, but I think after two weeks you will be back here asking for more.
Let me know how it goes.
