Health & Fitness
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Newbie Workout Question
I am currently recommitting to working out and wanted to find a place where I could ask questions, gain motivation, and essentially keep health and fitness on the brain.
Before having a baby, my problem areas were my butt and thighs -- and I knew how to deal with them. My daughter is now two, and I am still holding on to a significant amount of weight in my midsection. I know I've heard that cardio is the only way to trim down my waistline but was wondering what type of workouts would be beneficial to me (walking versus running versus the elliptical and how long would constitute a "good" workout).
Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks for motivating me with your posts!
Re: Newbie Workout Question
I generally try to eat balanced meals (lots of vegetables and whole grains). I've just started using my Weight Watchers cookbook to prepare healthy dinners. In the morning (I used to skip breakfast) I've been forcing myself to eat a Quaker Instant Oatmeal and usually do soup or salad for lunch and have a Chobani yogurt and almonds in the afternoon for a snack.
I think my biggest problem is that I am an emotional eater and chronic evening snacker. I have a history of doing well with my eating during the day and when night came I would snack on anything salty and crunchy that I could get my hands on. The past few days, when I've wanted to eat in the evening I forced myself to go to the kitchen and chug a bottle of water and that seemed to help. I just started to use an app on my phone where I enter what I'm eating and have been staying within my calorie range.
The biggest challenge for me will be sticking to a healthy diet. Over the summer I completed the Insanity DVD's but did not see the results I wanted because my eating wasn't under control. I need to say goodbye to excuses when it comes to my diet and exercise. I feel like the past two years of my life have been full of excuses in this regard. Time to "woman up."
my personal lifestyle blog
Hi there...good for you for making the commitment to be healthy...in regards to overall weight loss, a combo plan is key- cardio, strength training and eating well. A great way to torch calories is interval training...upping the intensity for a short period on and off...so if you are a walker, walk for 5 minutes and see if you can increase your pace to a jog for 2 minutes..back to walk, back to jog, and so on and so forth, you can google interval training and find lots of examples for biking, elliptical and other cardio exercises. Jumping rope is cheap and easy!. Strength training doesn't require too much equipment, you can do simple weight bearing exercises like squats, lunges, pushups and planks. Youtube has a lot of great tutorials to demonstrate form. I teach group fitness classes and started teaching b/c they were what helped keep me motivated when I was a gym member. Its a supportive environment that really helps you focus.
hope this helped and good luck!
Like PPs are saying, diet is priority number one. You can work out 2 hours a day, everyday, and it won't do anything if you're diet is not in check. It sounds like you try and eat healthy, but there is a lot of snacking. Similar to weight watchers (but free) start tracking your calories. There are apps or websites, I use myfitnesspal (app and website) and I know a lot of people recommend spark people as well. When I started actually tracking my calories, I considered my diet to be pretty healthy. I could not believe how much I was overeating. I have since lost 40 lbs and I know this is primarily to getting my calories and my overall diet in check.
As far as exercises you really just have to figure out what would be a good work out for you and not always do the same thing. The elliptical is good if you are new or getting back into exercise because it's non-impacting. Minimum 30 minutes, I would suggest (maybe start out with 20 for the first few times) and go at a pace that gets your heart rate up. the elliptical tends not to be as intense as running so you really have to pay attention to your pace and resistance and make sure you are truly pushing yourself. Check out some classes too if you belong to a gym. I love spinning/indoor cycling. Unfortunately there is no way to spot reduce, your body gains and loses weight where it wants to. Lifting weights promotes fat loss and actually increases your metabolic rate, so you will burn more calories when you are not working out, and no you will not bulk up. So I suggest getting some weight training days onto the schedule as well. Good luck!
my personal lifestyle blog
my personal lifestyle blog
Don't be intimidated at all with group fitness..you will find (unless the class specifically is for advanced athletes) there is a huge range of ages, ability levels, shapes and sizes. I teach spinning and have ppl from high school through age 82 with a whole lot of abilities in between. Everyone is there to have fun and be healthy, def. not to judge. Give it a try and find something you like...if music and dancing is enjoyable look in to Zumba. I have NO rhythm but regardless I had a blast doing it (even when everyone was boogining to the right and I was going left)...do what you can, I brought my 67 year old mom who isn't totally fit but loves dancing and she did about 20 min and then we scooted out. No one notices -they are all focused on the instructor anyway. Have fun and good for you!
As everyone suggested already, group workouts are a great way to get going, cardio is key. Try to mix in some light weight training, if you don't know what exercises to do or how, ask a friend you are comfortable with that knows or set up a session with a trainer.
As far as late night snacking and emotional eating, you are NOT the only one who does that. I used to have a lot of issues with that so I stopped buying unhealthy foods. If you don't have ice cream in the freezer, chances are you won't eat some after a rough day.
Last, I have always found that I am more consistent to my diet and workout schedule as long as I give myself a break. Its ok to take a day or 2 off from working out each week (especially when starting out in the gym, sometimes 3 days can be enough that your body will need time to recover depending on your fitness level). I also give myself 1 cheat meal and 1 cheat snack each week. This way I'm not making a whole day out of it but it still satisfies the sweet tooth or the urge for comfort food every now and then.
Good luck!
Hey there!
My mid-section has been my major problem my whole life despite me being (in my opinion) in decent shape...I started doing Pure Barre about 5 months ago and it has transformed my body....highly recommend it for a "different" work out...focuses on core like i've never experienced before...you still need to mix it up and do some cardio on other days but its a MUST to transform the mid-section!
well that's good news-you know where you need improvement
i get very tempted to snack in the evening too so i started keeping healthy snacks around-apples, fruit, etc.... that way i can still have a snack, it's just not going to be one that I'll regret later. and it's ok every once in a while to have a real snack. i buy the very small containers of Edy's light ice cream (i think they're the double churned ones). It's like one very small scoop of ice cream in it's own container. As silly as it sounds I use a very small spoon to eat it-makes it last longer !!
you might also want to watch the soup and yogurt for lunch. get the lowfat yogurt and make sure your soup isn't a high-cal/fat one.
good luck!! you're off to a good start!!