Exercise Gurus! Please help me with my exercise regime!

[RGPargy]

Hello

I used to fit and healthy 10/12 years ago as I lost 7.5 stone and would work out at least 5 times a week, doing cardio 2 or 3 times and body pump 2 or 3 times too.

Fast forward to 2009 and i'm now massive (again!) and have put back on all the weight i lost way back then, plus more. I have two things that i blame this on. One is giving up the gym and the other is that i crash dieted all those years ago, which obviously did me no favours!

Anyway, less of the history lesson! I'm now in a good routine of going to the gym again but at the moment 3 times a week is all i can manage as i work 2 days and weekends can be difficult to juggle DD and DP and the gym. I would love to do more and am working on sneaking in another morning at the weekend.

So my question really is this. In order to lose weight, do i either do pump, cardio, pump or should i do step, weights, step? When i first joined i would just use the x-trainer for my cardio as i wanted to get my fitness up a little before braving a step class after all this time out of the gym. I would really struggle to do 20 minutes on the x-trainer.

So i have been going to step classes at least once a week which seem to have got my cardio fitness levels up quite a bit because when i went on the x-trainer yesterday, after 20 minutes it hardly felt like i'd warmed up, let alone done a work out so i continued for another 20 minutes and really "gave it some".

What i'm worried about tho is losing my level of cardio fitness after doing so well in 2 months, but i really do need to lose the weight and tone up.

What should i do?? H E L P ! ! !

Anyone???!

bumping!!

I'm no expert, but am trying desperately to lose weight myself and have experimented a lot with exercise:

1 - Cardio is great, and I'd keep the step class but little and often is most effective - can you fit in a 20 min brisk walk every day ?

2 - Definitely do Pump or some sort of weight training - builds muscle that speeds up your metabolism so you burn more fat and look toned

3 - I've had a bad back recently so couldn't do all the Body Combat / Body Attack classes I am used to - needed to do something, so I grabbed some books / DVD's from the library - Pilates for weight loss / Pilates for back pain / a crap yoga DVD - did those at home - DVD workouts are generally less than 45 mins.

The books were great for helping me focus on strengthening problem areas and I know the exercises well now, so just fit in 10 or 15 mins when I can - really makes a difference to muscle strength and tone without getting you out of breath

The main think I learnt was that my weekly regime of 5 cardio classes / 2 weights / one strength / one pilates was just too much - my muscles never managed to recover between sessions and my weight loss stalled. Doing something every day is more important.

apparently 'interval' training for 20 mins is really good. (on treadmill or cross trainer or whatever). in other words: warm up for 4 mins, then go faster for 2 mins (to about 6 or 7 on a scale of one to ten) then as hard as you can for one minute. Repeat the 2 mins/1 min thing 3 more times. Then cool down for 4 mins. All that adds up to 20 mins. It goes really really quickly! And is supposed to be more effective than just going at the same speed for the whole time.

Joolsiam - thanx for your reply. I've got loads of exercise DVDs/videos etc but i'm not disciplined enough to do them so that's i really must do my exercising at the gym at the moment. I've still not done the two DVDs that i asked for as Christmas presents!!!

thursdays and Fridays are deffo out for doing any type of exercise other than walking to/from the station as these are the 2 days that i work. I leave at 7.30am and dont get home til 7.15pm, which leaves me with about 30 minutes to see DD before i have to put her to bed and then i have to make dinner. By the time we eat it's about 9pm (really bad, i know), then it's a bit of TV/laptop time and bed!

I am going to try and go to the gym on Sunday. There's a step class that i want to go to and i have already ear marked my DS to look after DD in the morning so that DP can get his lie-in.

SugarSkyHigh - Yes i've heard interval training is good too. I might give that a go when i'm next on the x-trainer and see what happens.

I use an exercise bike and after reading sugarskyhigh's post, it is more or less what I've been doing - interval training- on the bike (just didn't realise that was what it was called!).

It is going well, have been doing it for three months now (3x 30 min sessions per week). Definately worth a shot!

I would also suggest if there's one piece of equipment you really enjoy working on at the gym, when not consider buying it for your home and that way you'd save on a gym membership and have more time to just get on with the exercising in the home - no travelling to consider.
I'd be lost without my exercise bike!!

Good luck