Anyone in here work out regularly? I've got some questions...

[mjr]

Ok, we recently bought some fitness balls. You know the big ones that you inflate and can do exercises with.

One for me, one for the Mrs. They are weighted so that they don't roll away.

We're also probably about to come into possession of an elliptical machine.

Now, I'm wondering the following (I'm a little impatient):

1. If we start working out with the fitness balls, say 3x per week, how soon could we see results? I don't regularly workout and have a pretty sedentary job, but I need to so I figured this would be a good way to do so.

2. How long should I shoot for on the elliptical to start, and what sort of results could I expect from that?

Any thoughts, tips, or advice would be helpful. :-)

[Kheldarson]

What do you mean by start to work? They begin working as soon as you start using them

If you're asking about noticeable results, that's dependent on your overall fitness level, history of working out, etc. But you should definitely feel a difference in your workout within two weeks to a month, in that it gets easier.

Oh, and 30 minutes of aerobic exercise is a good place to start, if you can handle it.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I would start walking while you wait for the elliptical to show up. Maybe google some beginner elliptical workouts to start with, and/or see what sort of workout settings the machine has. If you aren't used to working out, shoot for 30 minutes at a slow pace and listen to your body; if you get too tired or sore, slow down or go for a shorter time. Or break it up into two or three sessions (say, 15 minutes in the morning and 15 after dinner or something like that) while you build up endurance. You don't have to do it all at once.

[iradney]

It's 20% what you do, 80% what you eat. You can work out every single day, but if you're over indulging in processed foods, all that hard work will be hidden by fat and water retention.

HIIT is a pretty good workout (High Intensity Interval Training). A lot of it can be done with your own body weight as well, massive plus. Just youtube it

As for how long and how hard, listen to your body. If you're uncomfortable, but not in pain, keep going. Try and aim for breathless conversation level for the first couple of weeks - you know, where you can still chat with the missus, but you need to take a breath every 3 - 4 words. A lot of people try to go too hard too fast when they begin, and hurt themselves.

Always warm up before a workout - some jumping jacks, on the spot jogging and light walking for a few minutes, for e.g. Stretch after a workout, as it does help with stiffness and soreness, and the added flexibility is a bonus.

[Sapphire Silk]

What do you mean by start to work? They begin working as soon as you start using them

If you're asking about noticeable results, that's dependent on your overall fitness level, history of working out, etc. But you should definitely feel a difference in your workout within two weeks to a month, in that it gets easier.

Oh, and 30 minutes of aerobic exercise is a good place to start, if you can handle it.

30 minutes may be too much. 15 might be more reasonable. Ellipticals can be pretty intense.

You want to have a combination of cardio and strength training. The ball and elliptical combined will give you that. I've used both.

The trick is to get the discipline to actually use them. Start small and work your way up. With the ball, if you can find someone who uses one to show you how, that would be helpful.

Listen to your body. If it hurts, don't do it. Do expect to be tired and sore.

iradney is on the money with food. Cut the processed carbs and sugars. Eat fresh fruits and vegetables. I like to drink a protein shake after a workout as a restorative.

Drink lots of water. Sip it occassionally during long workouts to avoid dehydration.

Set a schedule and stick to it for your workouts. Consistency is key, and increasing intensity as time goes on. If you have to take a break for any reason (happens; illness, travel, etc) start slow when you go back to working out.

Mix it up. Do different kinds of exercises every week. Your body will plateau; mixing it up will challenge your body and make it easier.

You may actually gain weight as you replace fat with muscle. Expect this. Don't focus on pounds; focus on body fat.

I've lost quite a bit of weight since I started working out. I'm stronger than I was, and my pants are falling off because I've lost in my hips and thighs. My shirts are largely unchanged; I haven't lost there even though my core is much stronger than it was. Don't get frustrated or discouraged. It will take awhile to get the results you want.

Good luck!

[Seshat]

Sapphire Silk is (unsurprisingly) absolutely correct. The specific bit I want to emphasise here is about muscle-weighs-more-than-fat, so don't trust the scales. It does. Also, you'll be drinking more water, so you might put on water weight. Again, no big deal.
Two people who weigh the same, but one has water weight and muscle weight, and the other has fat weight, the first is much, much healthier.

Instead, there are two good measurements you can use. Get a tape measure. Track your waist, and your waist/hip ratio measurements. Put the tape measure loosely around your torso, then wiggle your hips and waist until it settles into the natural narrowest part of your torso. Hold it snugly but not tightly, while standing in a good posture. If you can get two fingers between the tape measure and your waist without pushing to do so, that's good. Track that measurement.

(If you don't know 'good' posture, ask any friend who is a physiotherapist, is a military instructor, or teaches martial arts or fitness at a gym. I would like to assume that doctors and nurses all know it, but I'll bow to Silk for that one.)

For the waist/hip ratio, take the same waist measurement and then in the same posture, put the tape measure around your hips. At the same snug-but-not-tight, find your widest hip measurement. Even if your high hip measurement includes a fat roll around your lower belly. (High hip is near the top of the pelvis - the pointy bit is called the 'iliac crest' and the wide high hip measurement is usually about there.)
Your low hip measurement is usually near the wide part of the butt and thighs, and yes, we're measuring the butt fat here. (Also the butt muscle, which will build as you do lower body work.)

Take the waist measurement and the larger of the two hip measurements, and divide the waist into the hips.
BTW: You will notice that there are several different concepts of what 'the right way' to measure the waist and the hip are. I've used the ones I'm most familiar with, which is measuring for sewing. As long as you're consistent, you'll get consistent results. Consistency is most important for this.
Note: as long as you use cm/cm or inch/inch, the units don't matter. If you try to divide cm into inches, you'll screw it up.


As you get fitter, the waist will become leaner and the waist muscles (aka 'corset muscles') will become stronger and hold your abdominal organs in place more firmly. Your hips will become leaner, but your butt muscles may well become larger: regardless, the waist/hip ratio will gradually change.
You're aiming towards about 0.9 for men, and 0.8 for women.
Once you're close to that, have your doctor take measurements every six months or year or so, using either the WHO-approved or your national medical association's method. They can then compare their measurement to the WHO/national table, and tell you how well you're doing on a national/global scale.

You'll start to see changes fairly quickly - within weeks. There will be periods of time when the changes seem to go the wrong way, ignore those. You want to watch the overall trend. If you have a week or two when things are going wrong, it means nothing. If you have a month when things go the wrong way, bring your measurements to your doctor.



More in the next post.

[Seshat]

So much for tracking.

Now.

You're going to feel a sensation which might be new to you. It's the sensation of muscle growing. Some people find it a 'pleasant pain', some describe it as a 'burning' sensation. Don't ask me to describe it - my fibro-affected body means my sensation of it is atypical.

Now that you know what it is, learn to like it. It's a good thing to have happening! As with olives, anchovies and 'hot' spices, it's an acquired taste; but once acquired, LOTS of people really, really like it. Talk to sports enthusiasts (who don't have fibro) about learning to like that sensation, if you need help with it.

As for 'how do you know exercise is working' - any time you feel that sensation, you're adding new muscle.
Any time you do exercise and don't feel that sensation afterwards, you're preventing your existing muscle from 'atrophying'. Your body will break down any muscle you're not using, and use the bits and pieces for other things. So yes, any time you don't do enough exercise in the course of a week or so, you're losing muscle.
So every single time you exercise, it's working. You either add muscle, or prevent the loss of muscle.

Once you recognise muscle-building sensation, any post-sport sensation which doesn't feel like it could signal a problem.
Example: I kept giving myself 'shin splints', which is apparently a rather nasty problem in the lower leg and which is common to people with tight calf muscles or who don't stretch enough before walking/running/etc. Doing elliptical work will probably also put you at risk for them.
Pain (not 'muscle building sensation' but actual pain) in the shin area is a major signal. I also felt it in my ankles, especially around the achilles tendon.



How much exercise to do:
Any.

More helpfully (but equally seriously)

If your elliptical machine has a heart rate monitor, ask your doctor for a heart rate to aim for. Start by doing two minutes on the elliptical at that heart rate: longer or shorter if your doctor has a suggested time.
If your elliptical doesn't have a heart rate monitor, experiment until you find a speed at which you can speak, but not sing. Use that speed.

With the fitness balls, also start with two minutes. Figure out how many reps of how many exercises you can do in two minutes.
Yes, this is really slow, but you specifically mentioned being sedentary. Two minutes is slow enough that it should be safe, but please do ask your doctor for a suggested amount of time.


Every week, listen to your body the day after exercise. If you feel good, with no aches and strains and pains from exercise other than muscle-building-sensation, add 20%. Either more reps or more exercises on the balls, and more time on the elliptical.

Maintain the doctor-recommended-heart-rate or the can-speak-can't-sing on the elliptical; and if you've had to increase your speed or the resistance on it to maintain that, don't add time on it that week.
Also, once you've increased on the elliptical for a few weeks, ask your doctor if the recommended heart rate has changed. I think that different levels of cardiac fitness call for different heart rates in cardio exercise - but in this, I'm rather shaky, so if your doctor says I'm wrong, I'm wrong!


There are two other potential cases in the post-exercise assessment. One is that you don't actually have aches and strains and pains, but the muscle-building sensation is intense and you're feeling like your breathing/heart isn't really up to any more. The other is that you actually feel bad, but there's nothing actually wrong, you just feel bad and possibly in pain.

Correction. Three other cases. The final case is injury. In that one, you go to a doctor; and you do whatever the doctor recommends to prevent atrophy while the injury is healing, and don't do whatever the doctor says will make the injury worse.


So. In the case where your muscle-building sensation is intense, and your heart and lungs aren't up to adding 20% - don't. Next week, you do the same level of exercise as you did the preceding week. Not less, not more.


In the case where it's just plain obvious that you jumped up 20% too soon, because e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g is telling you that you overloaded and overstrained and it aches and mumma make it go away ... drop back 20%.
Avoid doing this very often, because whenever you do it you'll be allowing a certain amount of atrophy. But sometimes you jumped up too soon, or you're right in the middle of a physically strenuous time in your life, or you've got the flu, or ....


Anyway, the +/-20% technique was taught to me by my pain physiotherapists: they actually only allowed dropping back when the chronic pain flared into an acute phase. Still, the technique works.



Once you get to your target waist/hip ratio, blood pressure, body shape, body mass, or whatever you and your doctor agree on; discuss with your doctor whether or not to keep adding-20%. You might want to change to a maintenance level of exercise instead of an improvement level.

If doing maintenance, record what you'll use to track your current state of fitness. (Discuss that with your doctor.)
Then stop doing the add-20% part of the rule. Instead, stay on your maintenance exercises, except when the conditions occur that cause you to drop-20%.
If that happens, resume add-20% until you get back to maintenance level.

Yes, you'll be exercising forever. The good part is that once you're on maintenance, it doesn't cost you much effort, not even breathing hard. No struggle to breathe, not much sweating, your heart isn't having any trouble with it, la-la-la this is easy.
And anything that uses the muscles you've strengthened is also easy.

[Sapphire Silk]

Seshat (as usual) has a lot of great suggestions.

I just want to add a couple of things.

Target Heart Rate: It is possible to overdo it with cardio. Exceeding your target heart rate means your heart won't have time to fill the ventricles during intense physical activity. This will decrease your cardiac output (stroke volume x HR), and can make you dizzy, weak, and even cause fainting. In severe cases you risk chest pain and even heart injury. This is why people with health problems are advised to speak to their physician before embarking on a physical program, and to be monitored from time to time to make sure everything is going safely.

So if you have heart problems, high blood pressure, diabetes, or are morbidly obese, see your doctor just to check in and let him know what you are doing. He can help you keep track of your body weight, and adjust any medications as necessary as time goes by.

However, your target heart rate is easy to calculate. Take your age in years and subtract it from 220. This is a rough number.

For most activity you want to be within 50-85% of your target heart rate. Your target heart rate is your maximum. If you hit your THR you should rest a minute or two and let your heart slow down.

So, for example, I'm 49. So my THR is 171. As a general rule I would not want my heart rate to go above that number, and as a general rule while working out I want my heart rate to be between 86 and 145 beats per minute.

Now 86 is a normal heart rate for many people. So you'll want to be closer to the upper number (for me 145) at first. However, you may find as time goes on your heart rate actually starts to slow down to what we call an athletic heart rate.

The normal heart rate is 70-100 bpm. Athletes often have a much slower heart rate (around 60 or so typically) because their heart are healthier and work more efficiently. If your normal resting heart rate is 85 or so, you'll eventually slow down to the low end of normal. Once you really get fit, you might get a bit slower. This is OK as long as you don't develop symptoms (highly unlikely, if you do you probably have other issues your doctor should evaluate you for).

Check your resting heart rate in the morning when you first get up. Your heart beats more slowly at night. Then get a sense of what it is later in the day. When you exercise you want to have it high enough to get some benefit.

Medication may affect this. I take a beta blocker for high blood pressure; it slows my heart rate and so it's hard for me to get above 120 . . . and I don't really want to. It would be too fast because of the medication.

Weight loss:

You don't want to lose more than 3 lbs/week. More than that is unhealthy; it probably means you are metabolizing muscle not fat, which is the opposite of what you want to do.

You'll probably lose a lot at first; up to 30 lbs in the first six months or so. You'll feel great and be really excited. People will notice.

Then you'll plateau. The loss will stop, though you should not gain especially if you've changed your diet.

What to do?

Mix it up even more! Add a different activity, like cycling, martial arts, weight lifting, swimming or more. The differences in activity type will challenge your body more and help you get back on track.

Figure out what your target weight is based on your height and body frame. Stay within that target; don't try to lose more. You may get to a point where you look too thin even though you're in your target range; then you simply maintain with regular activity of some kind and a healthful diet.

It gets harder the older you are, so good habits while you're young are easier to maintain. But anyone can get fit and lose weight at any age. You just have to be consistent and patient.

[Seshat]

Thank you, Sapphire.

Shall I mention that Sapphire Silk is absolutely correct about the plateau issue? Your body seems to 'get used to' using certain muscle sets, and giving it a bit of a kick by giving it other muscles to use seems to make the difference when you hit the plateau.


On the topic of when to stop, Bast has been too thin, so I can give some ideas for problems she had.

- the palms of her hands and soles of her feet lost their cushioning layer. It's a very thin layer of fat, but it's supposed to be there. It's all but invisible (if you're a healthy weight), but without it, you're walking on knives.

- she lost her insulation. Swimming, she chilled even in a warm pool. She got cold even in spring and autumn, much less winter.

- she couldn't sit or lie down comfortably, because she was too boney.


Once your waist/hip ratio, BMI, blood pressure, active heart rate or whatever measure you're using starts approaching the healthy range, check with the doctor who's been with you throughout your exercise and weight loss progress. Work with them to find your healthy range.

[Sapphire Silk]

I do want to add one more thing.

There are a lot of products on the market that are advertised to help people burn off fat faster. Many of them are caffeine based. This can be dangerous. I just heard that people are ordering pure caffeine powder online and mixing them with energy drinks like Monster, mostly to get a high.

Caffeine is a stimulant. It can get your heart racing too fast, and rest won't relieve it. I strongly urge folks not to dose up on caffeine to artificially get aerobic. It's way too dangerous.

Back when ephedra was still legal (it's banned now because of the heart problems it was causing) I had patients in the ER who took too much and went into Supraventricular Tachycardia with heart rates approaching 200 beats per minute. We had to medicate them with a specialized medication (adenosine) or do electrical cardioversion to get their hearts back to normal. With this new fad on caffeine powder dosing, I see the same problem cropping up in the future.

So, don't do it! Simple regular physical activity combining cardio and strength training and good dietary choices is the ONLY way to healthfully manage your weight.

[Seshat]

..... if there ever is some sort of magical adipose-tissue-reducing-powder, I'd love it. Of course, it'd probably be contraindicated with my galaxy of existing medications.


Oh!

Sweat management, intertrigo, blisters, oh my.

Pharmacists are your BESTEST FRIENDS. They have a wide range of antiperspirants and barrier creams for sweat management: honestly, my recommendation is to apply a barrier cream to clean skin, exercise your ass off, and then rinse off the sweat. You're planning to exercise at home, so there'll be a nice handy shower to get clean in; this should prevent sweat accumulation from causing you skin problems. The barrier cream is there for backup.
A barrier cream provides a waterproof (or water resistant) layer on the skin surface, thus preventing stuff like sweat (or urine) from damaging the skin. Some of the most effective ones I've found are in continence care or baby supplies, and sold as nappy (diaper) rash ointments.
Antiperspirants, of course, are intended to reduce or prevent sweat in the first place. They must be applied to dry skin to be fully effective. Given that you will have a shower nearby, I personally feel you're better off letting your body sweat-cool when and how it wants to: but I have no real medical reason for that, just personal instinct.


Intertrigo is an infection of the skin folds: underarms, groin, under breasts, under fat folds. I even managed to get it under my chin once! Sweat management will reduce the likelihood of you getting it. If you find the skin in the folds abrading, or find it gets infected, talk to a pharmacist, doctor, or a nurse/medical professional who can diagnose minor ailments. You'll probably be given a fungicide or antibiotic (bacteriocide) cream, a pain reducing cream, and a recommendation for a barrier cream.
DO talk to a professional: using a fungicide on a bacterial infection, or vice versa, is useless at best.


Blisters and bruises and so on...

Pharmacy again. There are ointments to help bruises heal, something called 'moleskin' which is magic for preventing blisters, and all sorts of other potions and notions. Also, ask here: we have enough sporting folk to know about all sorts of tricks. Athletes pass this information among themselves, and we sedentary types just aren't in the gossip ring: but there's plenty of athletes in CS who would be happy to help we sedentary ones get athletic.
(Bast, btw, is my athletic friend with the goss.)

[fireheart]

One trick with blisters for your toes is to get some Pawpaw ointment or something along those lines and smear it in those places. Acts like a lubricant and stops those areas from rubbing.

[mjr]

Ok, time for me to do a little follow-up.

First, thanks everyone for the great advice. It will be heeded.

Secondly, I do think at this point it's more about how I look/feel than what a scale says. Though if I could drop about 30 or 40 pounds, and get back to my "playing weight" first, that might be a start. I realize I'll gradually build up muscle in the process, so if I don't get down to it, but I'm losing the fat and gaining muscle, that's cool with me.

In High School, I tipped the scales at a massive 165 pounds or so. But that's when I was playing (American) football, and VERY active. A lot of running and weight lifting. I even powerlifted my sophomore year.

I think ideally if I could lose enough fat and gain enough muscle, somewhere between 175 pounds and 180 pounds would be good for me. I'm 5'9" tall or so, and according to a lot of what I read, even THAT would make me overweight, even if I'm in shape.

But I have a kid and a family to think about, so I need to get myself healthier.

[Sapphire Silk]

One trick with blisters for your toes is to get some Pawpaw ointment or something along those lines and smear it in those places. Acts like a lubricant and stops those areas from rubbing.

I use Moleskin to prevent blisters in areas I know are prone to blistering. You can get it at any drug store. You cut out a piece to go over the area (you'll know because the area feels "hot" before you blister) and cover with with the moleskin. It reduces friction and prevents blistering.

Good socks are a must. I like the SmartWool socks I get at REI. Wear gloves on your hands to prevent blisters; I use a fingerless glove for riding my bike that works great.