(Photo courtesy of 7th Decade Redhead)
I could cite a lot of studies about walking, strength training, cardio and all the positive benefits of exercise, in addition to helping with weight loss, but I’m not going to. You can find those studies yourself. You will also find studies that say you do not have to exercise to lose weight. However, if your goal is to burn more calories than you consume, logic dictates exercise will help your body burn more calories than sitting on the couch. Additionally, strength training will also create muscles, which burn more calories than fat just by existing. So, exercise does help in a calorie deficit weight loss plan.
I truly understand how hard it is. I find it hard to make myself do it half the time and I have no excuse. I’m retired, not working at any job, so I have plenty of time to work out. Some days I want to exercise and some days I have to really force myself. My husband and I belong to a little small-town gym that has lots of young, skinny, fit people. When I first started going there, I felt like an overweight blob. We are always the oldest fogies there working out, too. I’ve learned to ignore those feelings because the goal is to burn calories, not worry about what the buff 25-year old is thinking when she looks at me.
We joined this gym because my husband likes to lift weights and our home isn’t big enough for a weight-lifting area. We also ride recumbent bicycles, for fun (see photo above). We are not hard-core cyclists. I enjoy cycling outside when it’s not rainy or too hot. Otherwise, I’m on the recumbent bicycle in the gym. I decided that two days of strength training and two days of cycling a week was enough for me. I alternate them. There are weeks where I work out more than that, and weeks where I work out less. There are days that I work out on the living room floor with a resistance band and hand weights while my husband goes to the gym. There are days when things hurt or I’m just plain tired, and I sit on the couch instead of working out. Do what you can, when you can, but do something.
My husband is the one who introduced me to recumbent cycling. I love it because the seats are so comfortable. I found it was an exercise I could do for an extended period given my obesity, which was great for me. We consider ourselves ‘bike tourists’ rather than ‘cyclists.’ I ride at a leisurely pace because I want to see cool things, neat places and scenic views. The sports medicine doctor I see for my knee told his staff, in front of me, that our type of bike was the single best exercise for people with knee issues. Lately, our average ride is 10 to 20 miles and takes about 45 minutes to an hour and a half.
We track all our bike rides, whether we ride our recumbent bicycle built for two or our single recumbent bicycles. We use the cell phone app Map My Ride. There are plenty of other cycling apps out there, but this one is free and syncs to My Fitness Pal so my calories burned while cycling get transferred and logged in My Fitness Pal. I also walk and use the cell phone app Map My Walk when I walk. It works the same way as Map My Ride.
When I’m at the gym doing strength training, I use the cell phone app Strong. It’s free, allows you to input three exercise routines complete with set, weight and rep amounts and remembers each workout. It also allows you to update your routines to change weight and rep amounts. It has a database of exercises and allows you to add your own exercises to it. It tracks your workouts and shows you a history so you can look at a calendar and see all the days you’ve recorded a workout, which is validating and encouraging. It has some other functions you might find useful, like a set rest timer.
The only downside for me is that Strong does not sync with My Fitness Pal or Map My Ride. I have to input my cycling data from Map My Ride into Strong as a workout after the fact, which is pretty easy to do in Strong, but it’s extra work. Why do I do this? So I can look at all my exercise in one place, both strength and cardio.
If I’m on a stationary cycle, I just input the data from the bike computer. I don’t try to estimate calories burned from strength training to input into My Fitness Pal. The only calories burned that end up in My Fitness Pal are from Map My Ride and Map My Walk. If you have suggestions or ideas about better tracking for various types of fitness, I’d love to hear your ideas.
I'm not promoting any of these apps, just explaining what works well for me and why. There are many apps to choose from so find one that works for you. I downloaded and deleted a few apps that tracked weight training before I found one I liked.
Do not underestimate the value of looking over your past and seeing how much exercising you have done. Strong lets you look at a calendar and puts a circle on each day that you’ve recorded a workout. That is very validating.
While it is encouraging to have some idea about the number of calories I am burning by walking or cycling. I do not rely on those burned calories from cycling and adjust my daily food intake upward because of them. I view them as an added calorie burn bonus. I try to stick to the calories I’m allowed (or less) on a daily basis without respect to exercise, unless we have done a very long bike ride.
For example, one day we took a trip to ride a bicycle trail, rode three hours and covered 34 miles. It was the longest bicycle ride we’d taken in three years. By the time we finished I had burned more calories than I'm allowed in a day. I did not consider this 'permission' to have a food tsunami. I did, however, have a burger and beer after that ride, but normally I do not exercise and then eat high calorie foods just because I burned some calories. I don’t want my food intake to be dependent on needing to burn calories by exercising that day.
One thing I am doing differently with respect to exercising at the gym this time is stretching. No matter what type of exercise I do at the gym (bike or weights), when I’m finished, I take a mat to a quiet corner, The first thing I do there is all the abdominal and leg work I can’t do using the weight machines. When I’m done with that, I put on some relaxing yoga-type music, and I spend 15 to 20 minutes going through a series of stretches. I start standing, then to my knees, then seated on the floor, and end up lying down flat on my back. I calmly hold my stretches, doing all the ones I can think of until I’m finished flat on my back on the floor. This has made a noticeable difference in my mobility and my mood. I leave the gym completely cooled down and relaxed. It’s worth the extra 15 to 20 minutes I spend doing it. I’ve included a link below showing what music I listen to for stretching.
Find physical activities you and enjoy and do them. It is better to start slowly and increase your activity bit by bit than to do nothing at all. If you hate working out, then at a minimum go for a walk. It will help you burn calories, reduce stress and make you feel good about yourself. Walking is one of the best exercises and has a low impact on your joints. It is a great starting point for those who don’t exercise or haven’t in a very long time. It doesn’t matter how long you walk for when you start. Just get started.
The goal is to help your body burn calories any way you can. The more calories you burn, the quicker you burn fat.
Just remember that if you are doing strength training, you are exchanging fat for muscles and muscles weigh more than fat. This is another scientific truth we can’t avoid. However, muscles are better for you than fat. In the beginning, strength training may slow down your weight loss at first because of this. I didn’t notice that with respect to my own weight loss, but I’ve heard that can happen. Just keep in mind that you are burning more calories and building muscles with exercise than by not exercising.
