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Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
This morning I'm working on a meal plan and some slight adjustments to my current gym routine (mostly just adding jump rope to my existing workout). I'm building what I'm jokingly calling a "vision board"--as I mentioned in another recent comment I need to lose a fair amount of weight that I gained in 2024, after being fairly fit (for an old guy) in 2023.
Yesterday I learned I have a social event coming up on March 28th. For context, I could stand to lose about 30lbs. This morning I had the utterly insane thought of "if I had to lose 30lbs in 30 days, would it be possible, and how could I do it without doing something so drastic that it had a disastrous effect on my health?" I took it as a challenge and started doing some research and doing the math for calorie deficits, kcal burning, keeping macros up, and put together a sample plan in a document that I'm printing out and hanging on my pegboard in my home office.
That 1600kcal/day + exercise plan would technically get me to losing 25ish lbs in a month, without starving nutritionally or giving myself an impossible gym routine that I can't keep up with. Realistically, there's no way I'm going to be that orthodox about it, but it's actually not that much of a change in my current good exercise habits as much as it's a reduction of my (very) bad eating habits. So I expect to make some good progress, such that though I almost certainly can't get back to my fighting weight in 30 days, it would be very realistic to get there in 60, 90 at the worst assuming I'm sticking to the program at all. Here goes!
What a project! I like staying fit, but I don't think I have the discipline to count and limit calories (and luckily I've never had to). The closest thing I did was limit what I called Junk Food Servings (JFS). A serving would be a standard serving of ice cream, cookies, cream sauce pasta, etc. I started with an allowance of 5 JFS/week, and gradually brought it down to 3. Even that felt like privation.
Good luck, and I hope you can manage it safely without yoyoing.
I've never seen this weekly discussion before... glad it got started and/or somehow got into my feed!
I've been actually doing a steady routine now for almost two years. My work has a gym (HUGE perk!) and I'm the only one there at 5am every morning. I work out for one hour then head to the showers and am usually at my desk by 6:20. I'm looking for new things to just swap around. I'm not trying to bulk up and the belly fat is beyond help (I keep telling myself that I have a nice 6-pack hidden behind my gutcoozie though!), and at my age , I just want to have strength for just life, and be somewhat toned/fit. Not that a bathing suit is in my future, just a personal goal. (For reference, I'm a mid 40s female, 5'9"/175cm, and on the upper edge of "not overweight".)
That being said, my routine usually consists of 100 bicycle crunches, 30 deadbugs with 5lb weights, usually an additional arm workout, generally about a couple sets of 20-30, and around 20-40 russian twists with a 12 lb medicine ball (mostly until I feel like my back is approaching unhappy). This takes about 10 minutes. I then I'm on the treadmill, usually around 4.3 mph (just under 7 km/hr) at a 3 or 4% incline for the rest of the hour, though if I get there early (i.e. I woke up before my alarm) I will do the full hour on the treadmill because it times out then.
The reasons I'm trying to change things is up is: I have back issues and I also have to watch my knees (I actually run into problems with them first if I do planks, which I need to get back into). My balance is crap, and I'm feeling arthritis in a lot of joints. I suck at yoga in general and most poses I've tried are either impossible to maintain (or even get into) or they don't do jack. But I have a decent set of dumbbells and some machines to work with. Does anyone have any non-yoga suggestions (preferably with pictures or videos) for some stuff I can change things up with? I don't have the space for lunges, which I really would love to do more of, but I get 3 (so 2 one side, one other side) before I have to turn around... the room isn't huge, and it's mostly packed with stuff, and my legs are decently long. Just little things like that, any suggestions?