How to improve fitness when you are incredibly unfit

[pennypop3]

I'm so unfit. I tried to do some sit ups earlier and felt like throwing up. I think I managed 3.

I can't run. I'm 5'7 and 12 stone so a bit overweight but not massively so. I just don't exercise. I try to walk when I can but with kids and work it's not very often. Im pushing 40 and feel like if I don't try and improve things now it will just get harder and harder.

So where do I begin? Help!

It wasn't meant unkindly, and it reflected the language OP used herself.

There's a lot of evidence to show that your fitness and strength between 40 and 60 is a strong indicator of living well post-60. It's much harder to regain fitness and strength as you get older so OP is doing the right thing in trying to prioritise it now.

I found loads of short exercise videos on YouTube.
You can walk on the spot for however many minutes you want or you can do resistance or weights etc
Whatever you want it’s there.

You just start. I was very fit in my 20s and then a bit fit in my 30s then stopped completely apart from a bit of walking and a bit of pilates. Woke up one morning at 55 and joined a gym that did weights classes. I ain't no Schwarzenegger but I'm much much fitter....I feel better, my shape has changed...and it inadvertently led to me taking my blood pressure and realising it was dangerously high.

I agree, it was seeing a lot of people reaching retirement and then not being able to do the things they’d planned due to mobility and medication restraints that made me get more focused on my physical exercise. Also having a mother who suffered really badly with osteoporosis changes your view too.

I'm another one who recommends Couch 2 5K.

22 months ago, realising that my 3yo could run away from me, and I couldn't catch him, I vowed that I had to get fitter.

I went out early on a Saturday morning, in walking sandals (as I didn't own a pair of trainers), and put the first podcast on the speaker on my phone (as I didn't own a pair of headphone).

The first one nearly killed me. 9 individual 1 min runs. At the end of each 1 min run, I was heaving. But, there was serious sense of achievement, it was the first time I'd run on purpose in 20 years, in school sport.

The next day, I got a cheap pair of trainers and headphones from the supermarket. And I carried on. I'm a stubborn thing.

I've lost 4 stone now, can run for 2 hours without stopping (18km) and will be taking part in my first half marathon in May, to mark 2 years since I started.

I'm tired, and I ache, but for a good reason. I can go out running with the DC on bikes and scooters. I can play chase and tag, and the children can hold their hands around my waist when they hug me.

I never. EVER. Thought that I could be a runner.

Love this for you 🙌

If you have one, chuck the youngest back in a pushchair so you can walk faster sometimes. Those years when they can walk but aren't school age are a pain.

I've started doing walking meetings with my boss, he spends a lot of time commuting and was saying how he doesn't have time to move as much anymore. I suggested a walking meeting and it works really well for us, just laps round the block