Easy Exercise: Workout from the couch!

So last week I told you about walking, have you started yet? (Read here for a refresher)

It's one of the most simple things to implement in your healthy lifestyle, especially when you are just starting out. 

Hand in hand with walking, or any form of cardio, goes resistance training or weights.

Weights aren't scary, and they're not just for bulking up. Weights, when done properly can be an excellent fat burner and you don't have to go to the gym to start!

It doesn't get much easier than the way I started with weight training....

Floor exercises

One night, after the kids had gone to bed, and it was TV time, I laid down on the floor and started stretching. I found it really invigorating.  Then I would do a few sit-ups, leg lifts, planks, pushups and any other exercises I could think of while rolling around on the floor- you do get a feel for it!

After doing that 3-5 nights a week for a few weeks, I stepped it up a level.

I bought some dumbbells. You can get them from Kmart, eBay (I am obsessed with online shopping) or from any sports store.

I started with 2.5kg dumbbells. 


Here are some of the exercises you can do while sitting on the couch with dumbbells, watching TV:

Seated Lateral Raise Sit with good posture holding light-medium dumbbells at your sides. Keeping the elbows slightly bent and wrists straight, lift the arms up to shoulder level (palms face the floor). Lower back down and repeat .

Overhead Press  Sit with good posture holding light-medium dumbbells in both hands.  Begin the move with arms bent to 90 degrees, weights next to the ears (arms should look like a goal post). Press the weights overhead and lower back down.

Bicep Curls   Sit and hold light to medium dumbbells. Curl the weight up toward your shoulder and release. Avoid swinging the weights and keep the abs engaged.  (Source http://exercise.about.com) I found it was easiest to sit on the floor for those, and mix it up between the dumbbells and my sit-ups and other exercises. Sounds pretty lazy doesn't it?! There are so many different floor exercises you can do. You can look them up online for inspiration or you can even make them up.  I know I did! After you master the dumbbells, you can introduce more weights, I bought a full set of dumbbells, a medicine ball, a kettle bell and a theraband. The more you do it, the better you feel, and the more addicted you get to it! I find its best when I work hard doing one exercise, then swap to an exercise that uses completely different muscle groups and keep alternating exercise.  Rather than do heavy weights at say 12 reps, its best to use lighter weights but do 20 or 30 . This raises your heart rate and burns fat while also toning muscle. So, combine some basic floor exercises with your walking and you will start to see the benefits, not just in extra weight loss but your energy levels increase, you'll find it easier to get out of bed in the morning, and you'll start to feel your muscles toning and an overall sense of wellbeing. I was looking for the 'motivational' meme that went like this: then I found that this one does a bit better for motivation!

Read More

Every Step You Take

For nearly the whole first year of my weight loss, I didn't exercise.
I was initially losing between 4-6kgs a month and I thought 'Cool! I don't even need to exercise!

But I was wrong....

I didn't find that out until I went to my osteopath with a sore back late last year. I was so disappointed as I though my back pain would have subsided after losing so much weight.

While he was happy to hear about my weightless progress, he explained to me just how important it is to exercise while losing weight.

As I lose weight, by not exercising, I am also losing muscle, and therefore getting weaker. My muscles are not getting the workout they were used to when carrying my old weight around.

Although it made perfect sense to me, it came as quite a shock to me as i always somehow assumed that if I ever needed to, I could just get up and run 10kms with ease now that I'm so much lighter...

Well that's certainly not the case!

Simply put, exercise can be broken up into two different categories, cardio exercise and resistance training.


Cardio is walking, running, skipping anything that keeps you on the move. Resistance training is muscle strengthening, generally from lifting weights or using your own body weight for resistance to build muscle.

Both of these are as important as each other, not just for weight loss but for general health as well.
I hear a lot of women don't want to lift weights as they don't want to 'bulk up'. Unless you spend 20 hours a week at the gym, that's not actually going to happen. You will begin to tone up and also increase muscle mass which in turn helps burn more fat.

In the past, when I would jump on the latest crash diet, I'd always join a local gym,  convinced that I would be in there every other day working out, and I would ....
...for at least 2 weeks.

So, after I heard from my osteopath that I needed to exercise, I knew going hard and hitting the gym wasn't going to work for me long term.

I started by walking. I bought a FitBit which is pretty much a fancy pedometer that counted my steps and relays the info back to your phone app. By counting my steps for the day I was also able to count how many calories I burned, which automatically syncs into the myfitnesspal app.
(I love technology!)

My goal each day was to walk 10,000 steps. Having the FitBit clipped onto me was a great incentive to want to take the stairs, or park further away at the shops so I could reach my target each day. If I'd had a lazy day, I'd walk around the block a few times at the end of the day to make up for it.

You can buy a basic pedometer from eBay for $10 so you really don't need the top of the range one, although it's good motivation when you have the fancy equipment like the FitBit.

Obviously, there are so many different levels of fitness to consider, but at this point I'm just sharing what was my introduction into exercise.

I will go into detail next time about my simple, yet effective resistance training regime, and list a few exercises you can do at home too.

Read More

How Many Calories: Coffee

Have you ever ordered a skinny latte and wondered how many calories is in it, or whether it's even worth the roll of the eyes from the barista? Feel silly when you add 2 sugars into a skinny cappuccino?
Check out this calorie comparison to see how coffee stacks up.

The first thing I noticed about this is that sugar, in the grand scheme of things is not as bad as I thought. Milk is what makes up most of the calories, and a full cream latte has more calories than a skinny latte with 2 sugars.

If you're not aware of how calories work just yet, I'll put it into perspective for you. The average person who is trying to lose weight should be eating around 1200-1500 calories a day... two full cream coffees take up over a 3rd of your recommended intake.

I know I'd rather save my calories for food!

Let me know what you think and if this will change how you have your coffee from now on.

Read More

Calorie Counting

I've been overweight ever since I was a little kid.
I remember at primary school, mum sent me to school with carrot and celery sticks in my lunch box, rabbit food I think is the correct term.
My best friend was a skinny kid whose mum gave her freddos and meringues every day. 

The world is so unfair!

Most of my life I've blamed genetics for my weight which although may be true, isn't an excuse to be fat the rest of my life.

I tried Lite n Easy about 5 years ago, I'm sure you've seen the ads. They drop off a weeks worth of frozen food and by eating the controlled portions of food, you lose weight. I was on the lowest calorie program, 1100cal a day, and after 8 weeks, I still hadn't lost weight, but I'd spent nearly $1000 on frozen food. 

I didn't understand the science behind weightloss, so I cracked the sads and came to terms with the fact that I would be fat forever.

When I first started losing weight this time around, I started by counting calories. For my weight and daily activity level, I calculated that I needed to consume 1200 calories to lose weight. After 3 weeks, I was getting impatient so I reduced my intake to 900 calories, and low and behold, I finally started to lose some weight. 

Health professionals will warn you not to eat less than 1100 calories a day or your body will go into starvation mode and won't burn fat. As long as you don't drop your calories by half or by any drastic measure, you should start to see results. Think of people who've had lap band surgery and can only consume a few hundred calories a day. Their bodies adjust and begin to work with what they're eating so their bodies will still burn fat.

To work out the right caloric intake for you, this link provides a great calculator :

CALORIE CALCULATOR

Counting calories is a great way to keep track of what you're eating and really understand how good or bad certain foods can be.

Calorie counting is the basis of many dieting programs like weight watchers because it works exactly inline with how your body works... consume less calories than you expend. 

So, I highly recommend downloading an app called myfitnesspal or visit their website where you can log your food everyday and it will count your calories. Start with the suggested daily amount for your current weight and daily activity level, and try sticking to it. If you find you're not losing weight, reduce the amount of calories by 100-200, and try that out for a month. 

Don't start too low to begin with . Firstly because losing weight too fast can make your skin really saggy, and trust me, you want to avoid this as it doesn't bounce back as easily as you'd like. Secondly, by dropping your usual intake drastically, you're starting on a crash diet that you may not be able to maintain, remember we're in this for the long haul!
So start a gradual decline until you find you're losing 0.5-1 kg a week.

If you find you aren't logging your food every day, still try and keep going for about a month, or until you have a basic understanding of how many calories are in each type of food.
It acts as a good deterrent when you know that a meat pie has 600 calories and can take up half of your recommended daily intake!

There are other apps that do the same thing but I find that my fitness pal is great. You can add friends and you can see what each other ate that day, and there are forums in the app too. You can also log your exercise and it will tell you how may calories you've burned.

My tip for today, if you find yourself waiting for the microwave, elevator or egg timer and no one is around? Do some squats! More on exercise next time.

Read More