Exercise Advice?

[Tex]

*pokes gut* Eh. I'll admit it. I don't wanna be big anymore.

I recognize the fact that exercise is important for the developing body, and also helps improve cognitive functions as well. Well, in my honest opinion, I quite like the state of my cognitive functions already, but something HAS to be done about my belly.

I'm going to be doing some research on my own, certainly, but I also want to ask you awesome people as well. What sort of at-home exercise is best not just for weight loss but strength as well?

I have several dumbbells, all below 20 lbs, and I am interested in yoga. I am also starting a sorta-thing where I'm walking every day.

Thanks in advance for advice and whatnot!

Edited March 15, 2015 by Vanamonde

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

Get a treadmill, but some warning: DO NOT RUN AT MAX SPEED!! I did, and I still have scars on my knees. Most painful thing I've ever experienced, and I couldn't unbend my legs for a week.

[Tex]

Ah, but there's another issue... My family is broke XD

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

oh, well... I got nothing!

[Voidryder]

First thing you have to have is the desire. And you're got that. 90% of the battle.

Second thing you have to realize that it will take time, so stick-to-it-ness is needed and plenty of it.

Third, start in moderation. Most people start too hard and burn out before seeing any real results.

Fourth, you don't need a lot of money to exercise. Stairs, hills, flat terran are all execrise equipment. You just have to use them. But you may need good shoes if you're planning on running or cross-training, unless you're going to start a type of martial art.

Fifth, you're mostly likely going to have to change your diet. Ramp up the veggies, lower the carbs. Research the American Heart Association website.

If you haven't exercised in awhile, start low-impact - no running, no jumping jacks, no deep knee bends, squats or heavy weight lifting. You'll get there later. Do a lot of slow and gentle stretching to begin. Warm, loose, flexible muscles don't injure as often. And you'll actually start toning yourself just by stretching. Slowly add light barbells into your stretching routine.

And walking everyday for about 20 to 30 mins at a brisk pace -- you should still be able to have a conversation with someone without gasping for breath - is a very good start.

Now, go google healthy weigh loss and read. Do not go for the quick or fad diets or super-duper boot-camp exercise programs. The fad diets are just that fads. And the more extreme exercises, you'll get to them eventually.

Last thing, enjoy yourself and have fun while you're working out.

Good luck.

[ZedNova]

I have been exercising lately to get ready for the national guard.

Some basic things i learned so far:

1) If you haven't exercised much before, the first time to start YOU WILL HURT, so don't go all out when you begin, ease yourself into it with light exercises.

2) Do not exercise muscles that are still sore, wait until they are no longer sore.

3) After you can exercise without getting sore, do short bursts of exercising throughout the day. (I typically do 30 pushups, 30 situps, 4 times a day. I'll lift weights about twice a day.)

4) After you start exercising you're gonna start eating more. Don't force yourself to eat more because you are exercising, just let your body decide how much energy you need to consume and adjust your meals accordingly.

5) Don't burn yourself out. It's easy to get discouraged (and in my case, lazy).

I don't know how relevant this is since i am trying to gain muscle, not lose weight. But it's something

[Tex]

Yes, these are good suggestions, thank you both.

[pincushionman]

Another thing to do is deliberately choose non-lazy ways of doing things. Park on the opposite end of the parking lot, so you have that additional distance to walk. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, given the choice. My family has activities at church a mile-and-a-half away on Wednesdays, and when the weather is good enough we bike there instead of driving. Gives us about 20-30 min. worth of extra exercise a week, which isn't much, but it all adds up.

[Sampa]

Get yourself a trainer. They will help you stay on track as well as make sure you do not do more than you are able to physically and initially.

Also, visit your doctor for recomendations on a diet regimen. What you eat will always affect how well you work out!

[Camacha]

Go do a sport, meaning that you should do something you enjoy. That way you have fun and get healthy. Pulling weights and getting bored is a good way of quitting quickly. Unless you really enjoy that, of course.

Shooting hoops with some friends can be very cheap, and making such an arrangement would mean you have to do it regularly Be creative!

[RainDreamer]

Let me share with you something:

-----

Neuroscientists have figured out a way to control your hunger. How? By installing a device into your brain and reprogram your eating habit, literally.

Now, the surgery goes something like this:

You lie on an operation table. They put your head inside a huge clamp to immobilize your head.

Then they put some topical anesthetic on your scalp, and then proceed to drill through your skull to get to your brain.

Now, at this point, you may have noticed I did not mention they put you to sleep with sedative. BECAUSE THEY DON'T.You are required to be wide awake during the procedure. As there is no pain receptor in the brain, you won't feel anything when they probe it. But you will feel the pressure on your skull as the drill make its way through the only protection you have to your squishy, vulnerable, but all-so-important brain. (thinking about it, it is almost no different than doing trepanning in the medieval age huh)

Why are you required to be awake though? Because that is how they figure out if they got to the right place. They will drill 10 centimeters into your brain, on both hemisphere, which will take about an hour to do, to reach a point in your hypothalamus (called the lateral hypothalamic area) where it regulate your metabolic function and your feeding behaviour, and they will simulate those areas with electricity. As the region of the brain regulate your feeding behaviour is right next to the region that regulate your body sense of hot/cold, they will ask you (who is still awake the whole time, remember) whether you feel hungry/full or hot/cold to know if they get to the right place as they poke around your brain. Once they got to the right place, they install, well, lemme quote the article:

lender leads tipped by a row of electrical contacts designed to non-destructively deliver mild electric pulses to a specific location. The leads are connected to a compact, battery-operated pulse generator in a fashion similar to a heart pacemaker.

Kind of interesting they specifically mention that it is "designed to non-destructively deliver mild electrical pulses", isn't it?

The total operation last 3 hours, and after that, they will put you inside an enclosed metabolic chamber as you recover and study your metabolic rate, and play around with the programming of the device until they get a satisfactory result, achieving total control of how you eat (they can even make you feel nauseous by just tweaking the current a bit), and turn off your craving for food as they like. Congratulation, you are now "free" from obesity.

-----

So, do you feel like exercising now?

Note that while I intentionally written this in a scary angle, the actual procedure is done really carefully and the chance of serious complication that result in paralysis or death is less than 1%. The result is also stellar, with patients report weight loss after 9 months, and one of them report that she no longer has to fight constant hunger anymore, and her binge eating score has reduced from severe to normal range. Also, this procedure is only done for patients who are morbidly obese and no other method can save them, even gastric bypass surgery. It is for people who truly can't control themselves anymore and require technological intervention on their behaviour.

But hey, what is wrong about installing a device in your brain that can control your very basic instinct to feed, eh?

Edited March 15, 2015 by RainDreamer

[Camacha]

But hey, what is wrong about installing a device in your brain that can control your very basic instinct to feed, eh?

Surgery on a body that is in essence healthy is always a bad idea. This sounds like a absolute last resort life saving operation, not something that should be attempted when discipline and self control could also do the trick. And yes, that is hard sometimes, but that is no reason to start cutting up your body. Mastering those traits of self control will make your life better in many respects. That takes practice and work, but will reap massive rewards across the whole range of life skills.

One percent change of something sounds like a good bet to take, except when it comes to paralyses and death. Dying that way is almost as stupid as that model that died during butt surgery.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Camacha

[RainDreamer]

Surgery on a body that is in essence healthy is always a bad idea. This sounds like a absolute last resort life saving operation, not something that should be attempted when discipline and self control could also do the trick. And yes, that is hard sometimes, but that is no reason to start cutting up your body.

One percent change of something sounds like a good bet to take, except when it comes to paralyses and death. Dying that way is almost as stupid as that model that died during butt surgery.

I meant that sarcastically, in case you didn't catch it.

There is no reason to do something as drastic as this when simple exercise would suffice. It is only for morbidly obese patients who all other methods has proven ineffective, even gastric bypass surgery, and let me quote what it entail, because it sounds scary enough without me writing it up:

There are two steps during gastric bypass surgery:

• The first step makes your stomach smaller. Your surgeon will use staples to divide your stomach into a small upper section and a larger bottom section. The top section of your stomach (called the pouch) is where the food you eat will go. The pouch is about the size of a walnut. It holds only about 1 ounce of food. Because of this you will eat less and lose weight.
  
• The second step is the bypass. Your surgeon will connect a small part of your small intestine (the jejunum) to a small hole in your pouch. The food you eat will now travel from the pouch into this new opening into your small intestine. Because of this, your body will absorb fewer calories.
  

They reroute the path of food going through your body and regulate the amount of food you eat by physically staple your stomach. And if even that doesn't help, then electrode in brain would be the final choice.

So...how about it OP? Do you feel a sudden desire to exercise?

Edited March 15, 2015 by RainDreamer

[Frozen_Heart]

Yeah I need to read through this thread as well. I used to be very fit but now I can't even run 100m or lift a 10kg dumbbell. Strangely I'm also underweight rather than overweight. :/

So time to try to motivate myself to get running again... Yeah that's gonna be fun. :/

[NovaSilisko]

It's critically important to change your eating habits as you start an exercise regime. Most organized diets are kind of silly, the fact here is simple: you will lose weight if you expend more calories than you take in. Simplest advice I can give here is more protein, fewer carbs. Carbs make you feel tired and therefore less willing to exercise. And just less food in general. I'll tell you from experience, don't ever exercise on a full stomach. It's not pleasant.

Edited March 15, 2015 by NovaSilisko

[Tex]

So, do you feel like exercising now?

Note that while I intentionally written this in a scary angle, the actual procedure is done really carefully

But hey, what is wrong about installing a device in your brain that can control your very basic instinct to feed, eh?

Hah, I laugh at scary surgeries. I understand how brain surgery works, and in fact I'd be interested to see how it affects me from my own perspective, on my own research already I've seen tests where they electrically stimulate parts of the brain and different actions or memories trigger automatically. Cool stuff! Not very scary for me, though, sorry XD

[RainDreamer]

Hah, I laugh at scary surgeries. I understand how brain surgery works, and in fact I'd be interested to see how it affects me from my own perspective, on my own research already I've seen tests where they electrically stimulate parts of the brain and different actions or memories trigger automatically. Cool stuff! Not very scary for me, though, sorry XD

Well, while the surgery itself isn't scary, I think the possible application of such devices can be quite frightening. It can turn a person literally into a slave of the one controlling the device.

You want to eat? No you dont. Go starve. Serve me, then I can let you eat if I feel like it. I can make you puke out whatever you eat, then make you so hungry you eat your own puke. *shudder*

While it is an amazing advance of medical technology, it is also a really dangerous one. We still have a lot of ethical problems to work out before these things are ever used widely. And that is not even mentioning more advanced application relating to memory and conscious thoughts.

But anyway, did you feel any more motivated to exercise, even if you didn't find it scary?

[Tex]

But anyway, did you feel any more motivated to exercise, even if you didn't find it scary?

Motivational inspiration comes second, perhaps something I can remember when I consider giving up. But as it stands, I've got the incentive, I just want to know how best to do it.

[Sampa]

Oh, and also, you should find yourself an accountability partner to make sure you keep doing what you need to be doing. Also, it would be a good idea to do something fun at different milestones to reward yourself.

[RainDreamer]

A friend is always nice. Simulate reward center by giving yourself a reward after exercising: giving your self some gaming time/relax time, doing something you like, etc. No food reward, especially junk food. it will just give more calories than what you lost.

[Sampa]

A friend is always nice. Simulate reward center by giving yourself a reward after exercising: giving your self some gaming time/relax time, doing something you like, etc. No food reward, especially junk food. it will just give more calories than what you lost.

I think that there should also be important goals or milestones set up for BIG rewards such as doing something you have never done before but wanted to do.

[KerbMav]

Are you on the Warband forums, too? A similar thread popped up over there - must be the "pre-swimming-suit-season", eh?

1. Do not eat more than your body needs - might require some over the thumb calorie calculations. Change your meat-vegetable ratio towards more vegetables, reduce noodles, rice, potatoes - although potatoes are less a problem actually.

2. Do not eat (significantly) less than your body needs, your basal metabolic rate - starving your body will make it eager to save calories and pack provisions for the next bad season. (Stone age programming that is still active in our cells, because it got us here over the last millenia.)

3. Sports, train your muscles - more muscles mean more calories burned even while doing nothing, but they have to come from somewhere.

3.a. Forget about the BMI, it is rubbish, the Terminator - in the 80's at least - was not obese, was he? Measure your body fat intead, a tape measure around your hips, pinch your tummy, bounce infront of a mirror and look how much keeps bouncing.

4. Sports, train your cells - regular endurance training has been proven to help prevent diabetes (from being overweight) and heart problems - even a fit-trained chubby lives healthier than a skin-n-bones couch-potato!

5. Give your body enough rest - only train every other day or rotate endurance and muscle training - your body needs time to rebuilt itself to the new activity. After your training you should feel exhausted, but not half dead - stress (i.e. to much for to long of anything) comes in all varieties and is never a good thing.

6. Do not resist every urge of your sweet tooth, if you give in at last it will be disasterous usually - just enjoy smaller treats more intensly: e.g. let chocolate melt in your mouth instead of chewing down a whole bar. And invest a bit more in real chocolate, meaning more cocoa, less sugar.

7. Avoid soft drinks and juice, at least water down the juice, but develop a taste for water rather. Sugary drinks are suspected to influence your insulin production more negatively than similar doses of other sweet food.

8. Do not do this for some weeks or months, change your lifestyle. Loosing weight over a short period of time and gaining it afterwards repeatedly is unhealthy and the trend usually points upwards regarding body weight. A family feast once in a while is nothing to be worried about if you are a good lad the rest of the time.

[Tex]

Thanks a million, everybody! I shall definitely be incorporating these ideas into my schedule.

Also, I hope other people can benefit from this too!

[RainDreamer]

I think that there should also be important goals or milestones set up for BIG rewards such as doing something you have never done before but wanted to do.

Gamify exercise huh. Why not? Collect points (calories burn), upgrade (exercise equipment) and achieve ever bigger rewards! If you can, get some people in this set up. Like your significant other. Or friends. They can give you rewards for your effort and you will also feel recognized for what you did.

Just that, those big rewards shouldn't be eating a whole tub of ice cream.

[11of10]

When you start to push yourself, really breaking sweat, you might start feeling calm, incredibly calm and focused. I had that experience, and it's great. I haven't noticed that anybody mentioned it, but at least for me, it was almost all the reward I needed.

Good luck!