Exercise ideas

[CleverQuacks]

Hi all,
I am on a mission to lose weight. I have been following healthy eating for a week and lost 4 pounds which I feel is a good start. However I know I need to increase my activity levels! I am horribly unfit and obese so i need to start small. I am also a single parent to a 6 week old with no involvement from his dad so i need exercise ideas that I can do with him around. I am going to start walking for the school run but I would like something I could do at home. Can anyone recommend any online exercise classes or videos I can do at home? Something very basic and easy to start with.

One of the best things is just general movement. Things like cleaning the home - if you want a challenge then set a timer and do as much as you can in that time to push you to move quickly. Things like wiping skirting or ceilings add bend and stretches. If you have stairs then adding in reasons to go up and down them more often.

Lots of phones measure steps if you want to take your average now and then see how much movement you can fit in.

There are lots of exercise classes on YouTube- everything from an introductory 10 minutes warm up to exercises for different parts of the body. Great for doing at home as frequently as you can fit in.

Either Popsugar or Hasfit. Both on YouTube and plenty of different styles, difficulties to choose from. Also Yoga By Adrienne or Lottie Murphy Pilates if you fancy something less cardio based.

Do you have a garden? How about skipping? Pop the LO in the pram with you outside, the fresh air will be good for him. And you can skip away for ten mins 2/3 times a day and gradually increase.

is a great one to start with OP, there is lots of advice on there too about postpartum exercise in particular.

Could you go for a longer walk before/ after the school run too? Even an extra 5 minutes would be good!

All you need to do is walking, which is easy for you to do with a baby. Get a Fitbit and aim for at least 10,000 steps a day. Even if you’re stuck indoors, you can do some jogging on the spot or running up the stairs if you have some. If you can get some dumbbells for strength exercises every other day too, that will also make a huge difference.

I used to be so sedentary and some days would struggle to even walk 2,000 steps. Now I do about 13,000 a day. I also do weights every other day, just 20 mins at a time using a circuit I found on YouTube. It’s ironic because when I was bigger, I was paying £30 a month for gym membership. I cancelled it at the start of lockdown and now my exercise regime costs me zero (apart from a one off cost of £50 for the weights) and I’m 3 stone lighter!

Good luck with your weight loss journey.

Just bear in mind that 'you can't outrun your fork' - weight loss is at least 80% down to diet. Dr Jason Fung, writer of 'The Obesity Code' would say it's 95%.

Exercise is undoubtedly good for your general health, but don't focus on it as a way of losing weight. Unless you're going to do something significant, like running 5K most days of the week, you have to do a LOT of exercise to lose weight.

Sounds like you've got off to a really good start with your diet though!

Yes that’s true about diet but exercise is often underrated for its effect on weight loss. My exercise (basically just walking) makes a 500 cal a day difference to my total daily energy expenditure compared to if I was sedentary. That’s a whole pound a week and double the rate of weight loss than if I didn’t exercise.

Sure, if I ate 3000 cals a day, I wouldn’t lose anything despite my exercise. But because I do keep active (which has so many health benefits beyond weight), I can eat 1800 cals a day rather than 1300, which is a heck of a lot easier to stick to over a long period of time and, for me, has absolutely been key to success.

Also, my weight gain happened when I got a new sedentary job. That was the only thing that changed, not my diet. I’d always had episodes of binge eating since I was a teen but being reasonably active meant that I still stayed a normal weight. When that stopped, BAM, the weight piled on. I binge much less these days since losing weight but I have to accept that it’s probably something that I will never 100% be rid of so I need something where my body can tolerate the odd day of veering off track and won’t respond by instantly piling pounds on.

But 500 calories a day is 90 minutes of brisk walking. That's a lot of walking to fit in every day, especially for a single parent of a 6 week old!

Yup, that’s about it. It doesn’t have to all be in one go and can include things like jogging on the spot or up your own stairs at home. With a small baby it’s not too bad because you can walk when the baby is in the pram. If OP takes a longer route home on the school run and presuming she does it twice a day, that could be a good chunk of her steps done (depending on how far away the school is). It’s how much we should be moving anyway to keep healthy. It seemed a lot to me when I had an inactive lifestyle but now I hardly think about it - I just do it. Wouldn’t have been able to lose weight without it imo.