Help me escape my fat suit!

NKearney50

Hi there,

I have been inspired by all on here to get motivated and lose the 3+ stone I have put on over the past 5 years.

I am 46.
I am 12 stone.
I am 5 foot 6.
I gave up smoking 5 years ago and then I piled on the weight.
I have worked for the past 5 years basically sitting on a sofa for long periods of time.
I have done very little exercise.
I am starting the menopause!
I was 8 and half stone up until 5 years ago.
I am now feeling quite down and depressed and very uncomfortable with how I look and feel.

I am a vegetarian and do not eat to excess.

I currently have a cross trainer, an ab cruncher and a racer bike at my disposal.

I am looking for some advice or some guidance as to how to begin a program.

I want to try and lose some weight and start some fitness myself before joining a gym etc.

Any feedback would be really appreciated.

NKearney50

Yesterday I did 7 minutes on the cross trainer in the morning after breakfast.

I had a bowl of Fruit and Fibre and one slice of toast with margarine and half teaspoon marmalade. Cup of tea with no sugar.

For lunch I had one slice of bread with 2 thin slices of cheese and a cup of tea.

During the afternoon I had a handfull of grapes.

For dinner I had one egg and 2 slices of toast and 4 thin slices of cheese with a glass of water.

Then had one cadburys cream egg (Valentine treat).

I then went for a 15 minute cycle.

Then I stretched for 10 minutes.

That is the most exercise I have done in years. A bit soar today but looking forward to getting on with it.

Any feedback would be great.

Thanks

G86

Hey

I'm a vegetarian too, and like you I thought that I ate pretty well, until I actually sat down and looked at what I was eating. My diet consisted mainly of carbs such as pasta/noodles/potatoes - which in isolation are grand but not when your whole daily diet is full of carbs already! You should take a few days to log your diet on fitday.com, I don't do it regularly, but a few days of it helped me to get a rough idea of what I needed to eat more of/cut down on. I try to stick between 150-200g carbs a day now, compared to 400g+ which is what I was taking in before:eek: That might not seem very low, but it's a realistic figure to aim for imo if you're a vegetarian, as you're already pretty limited. Also, I'd switch the fruit and fibre for the likes of Porridge or even weetabix/oatabix if I were you, or maybe an omlette since you eat eggs.

Exercise-wise, to start with the most important thing is to just do something - anything that gets you off the couch! It's great you have some cardio equip at home, sure you could be doing some intervals on the cross-trainer when you're watching Corrie! I'd definitely suggest joining a gym, because you'd really benefit from adding some weight training to your workouts too. I'm not going to go off on a big spiel about the lifting weights, but I'll just say that it's definitely something you should look in to!

gymfreak

Great to see another new log!:)

NKearney50

G86 many thanks for your comment.

I would not feel confident enough just yet to join a gym.

I am going to drag the cross trainer into the kitchen later.....a few spurts throughout the day may help me.

I spent most of the evening trying to put an exercise plan together.

Do you think exercising for 30 mins a day is enough to start with?

I have also put together some new low fat recipes.

Looking forward to a cycle later tonight.

Thanks again.

G86

NKearney50 wrote: »

G86 many thanks for your comment.

I would not feel confident enough just yet to join a gym.

I am going to drag the cross trainer into the kitchen later.....a few spurts throughout the day may help me.

I spent most of the evening trying to put an exercise plan together.

Do you think exercising for 30 mins a day is enough to start with?

I have also put together some new low fat recipes.

Looking forward to a cycle later tonight.

Thanks again.

Of course it is, just make sure you work hard for the 30mins! I'd aim to do intervals if I were you, maybe start off with a 10min warm up and then go hell for leather for 20mins - e.g. 2mins high intensity/1 min low intensity. I haven't done intervals on a cross trainer for a while, but that's what I used to do. If you're doing it right, you'll be wrecked by the end of it.