I lost 60 pounds and spent 2 years on this journey. I was sedentary and obese then I herniated a disk and it started the dominoes falling to seriously positive reflection and change. I wrote a post about it a bit back. Now, I run about 3 miles 6x a week, lift weights, ski, yoga, today I was indoor rock climbing for the first time! Fit, healthy, and by pretty much every objective measure, an “athlete” (which is SO crazy. It took me months to really accept that. I was never “that girl”. It really took me a long time and a lot of data to come to terms that this is me now. Still sometimes hard to believe. See? I even felt I needed to put it in quotes!). Anyway, there was a lot of discussion on exercise on that thread, so I thought I’d post things I wish I knew about exercise and weight loss starting out and I lived and worked through each one. Maybe I can make your journey a little easier?
1.) You can’t outrun the fork. Exercise will not outpace pretty much ANYTHING you eat. Put it this way- I ran 3.17 miles then lifted weights yesterday. My Fitbit says I burned about 450 calories. That is about 3 cookies. If you’re doing it to compensate or as license to eat more, it just doesn’t work that way. It is part of fitness and healthy weight, but first we need a realistic understanding of the math: the calories out are not as big as we probably wish they were. Don’t be discouraged. Just be aware.
2.) It DOES matter to overall health, so if you are “losing it” to actually get healthy vs fit in your jeans, this is where it counts. A lot. Exercise does everything from improve brain function to enhance mood, in addition to making you look as feel awesome. Eventually. If you are committing to fitness and wellness, this is the reason to commit to exercise. Ya just gotta know your reasons. It’s got to be more than the number on the scale. Find your “why”.
3.) Muscle doesn’t weigh less than fat, but it is more dense. A pound of brick and a pound of feathers weigh the same. The pound of feathers just takes up more space. A pound of fat takes up more space than a pound of muscle. Muscle does burn more at rest and raises your basal metabolic rate (just a smidge), it changes your posture and firmness, and fat tissue can have negative hormonal effects, so the trade off is good. I’d take that pound for pound trade any day.
4.) Women are not going to bulk up- pretty much no matter what. To get “bulk” as a woman, you are going to be working hard. Hard enough that by that point you’re going to be living and breathing the gym, carefully counting every gram of protein with a diet that you plan out meticulously and bulking won’t be a surprise because you’d be training and eating and acting specifically for it. Women doing regular, routine exercise shouldn’t fear this. You can go as heavy and hard as you want- you may get definition and start to see muscles (when you get to about 20% body fat) but you’re not going to all-of-a-sudden bulk up. This should not be a beginners worry.
5.) The scale WILL go up at first. It is water. It takes a few days to a week or two to even out. Stay in it. Keep drinking a lot of water. Your muscles need it as they are repairing. Eventually it will balance back out. Don’t freak out with the scale.
6.) The best exercise to do is the kind you like. That will be what you stick with and look forward to. Start there. See where it leads. Begin with small and attainable goals and make them routine. Walking the dog? Riding a bike? Work out class? Try ballet? Basketball with the kids? Doesn’t matter. What matters is making it regular and routine and fun to you. If it stops being fun, try something else - everything else! But try and do SOMETHING every day. Put it in your calendar. Set a time for it. Make it routine.
7.) Its ok to hurt a little. It shouldn’t be “bad pain” (avoid that at all costs!) but if you can find a way to lean in to “good pain” (being out of breath at the end of something aerobic, sweating, feeling like “a push” when you’re doing it, a bit sore the next day) they can be powerful reminders that you are strong and getting stronger. This was one of my biggest personal hurdles. This is where and why most people quit. Getting comfortable in uncomfortable took practice and for me, lots of encouragement and coaching. Find “your zone” in (manageable) discomfort. Find a way to be thankful for it and feel it.
8.) You don’t lose weight from a spot that you “work on”. You lose it from everywhere. Think about weight loss as draining a bath tub. You can’t drain it from the top right corner only. So, doing sit ups isn’t going drain belly fat. It WILL help in firmness, which makes everything look better. But it doesn’t work to exercise a specific part of your body and expect to lose weight from that part. Old wives tale is that the first place you put the weight on is the last place it will leave. There is some anecdotal truth in that- for me at least!
9.) Create your team and ignore or drop the haters - and you WILL (sadly) encounter haters, even if you are a super awesome and positive person. The trick- don’t hate back. Let it go. Their baggage doesn’t need to weigh you down. People react REALLY weird to other’s weight loss and also weird to starting to work out. People will give all sorts of excuses for themselves as to why THEY can’t exercise and they will tell them to you, along with stuff about how working out doesn’t matter or poke fun at you because they are trying to make themselves feel better. You might feel intimidated by people who are further along on this journey. And some people make themselves feel better by putting others down. Sad but true. Find your way to let this slide off of you. Pretty soon, you will find others that enjoy what you enjoy and you will have a new tribe. Haters gonna hate. Don’t worry about them. You’ve got your own thing going on.
10.) you get to define you, and you get to change. Just because you might never before have been “an exercise person” doesn’t mean you can’t be. You could be a kayaker! A runner! A yoga master! A karate black belt! But first, you have to take the first steps. And then, once you feel (and see in your body) the momentum, buy yourself the new clothes or the shoes. Don’t hold on to the old ones. It’s about mindset- embrace the new you. But don’t expect it to happen overnight. You didn’t put the weight on over night and it won’t come off overnight either. This change is a marathon, not a sprint. Set yourself up for the long haul, celebrate the markers as they go by, and keep your head up and shoulders back!
submitted by
/u/crabcakesandoldbay
[link] [comments]
from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/2NIfrfZ
