Newbie here. Overwhelming amount of contents. Help!

lucidchroma
lucidchroma Posts: 57 Member
edited December 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
1. Is increasing metabolism with adding small amount of calories every week or so possible?
2. If I want to lose around 10 lbs and look smaller but not squishy like I am right now, how much should I aim to lose a week? ( I have a lot of time, can be a year long)
3. Can getting smaller and having defined arms, shoulder is possible with home workouts? I don't have access to a gym.
4. There are so many home workouts and most of them are so fast, I feel I have difficult time engaging the muscles or doing it with proper form. It feels like cardio. Is there a program/programs that is based on strength instead of HIIT or do this for 30 seconds and do another one for 30 sort of regime? I mean, I want to follow something for 6 months and progress over time.
5. How can I build my core strength?
6. How much cardio is too much?

Thanks beforehand ...

Replies

  • hipari
    hipari Posts: 1,367 Member
    I feel you on question 4... I really dislike HIIT as well. It’s often quoted as the ”most effective” workout, but in my opinion the most effective workout is the one you like and do consistently.

    Defining your arms and shoulders is definitely possible with home workouts. Do you have the resources to get some equipment? Things like a set of dumbbells and a resistance band could really help you reach those goals. If not, bodyweight will also work and you can improvise to make weights out of household objects.

    Unfortunately I don’t have any great recommendations for non-hiit home workouts since I personally work out at the gym. But you can definitely build your core strength at home too, and YouTube is full of great workout videos.

    Cardio: I think it’s too much when it’s no longer fun, it exhausts your time manageent or energy levels to the point where you struggle with the rest of your everyday life, or you start risking injuries. Also, you need to eat back those exercise calories.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    When you're talking about increasing your metabolism, why do you think that is something that needs to happen? Typically, the only way to increase your metabolism is to increase the number of calories your body is using. We can do this -- although to a milder degree than many think -- by increasing the amount of muscle in our bodies. The best way to do this is just to move more -- movement increase the number of calories we're using each day.

    Do you have a reason to think that your metabolism is compromised?
  • lgfrie
    lgfrie Posts: 1,449 Member
    This won't answer all your questions, because I'm not qualified to weigh in on strength training, but here's two points to consider.

    Yes, 10 lbs is feasible for just about anyone to lose -- who has 10 lbs of fat to lose. If you have a year, that's not going to be difficult. A half pound per week is feasible for anyone who has weight to lose, so you should be able to easily achieve that in 20 weeks. Go to the MFP Goals tool above, enter your age, weight, height, etc, etc, tell it you want to lose 0.5 lbs per week, and it will tell you how many calories to eat. Eat that many calories, not more, not less. It's that simple, and it works.

    I can't say how much cardio is too much cardio, but I do an hour a day, sometimes a bit more, and that doesn't seem like too much. I've researched this topic and the consensus seems to be that 30-60 mins of moderate intensity cardio is about right, assuming you don't have health issues that would impact that, and that's assuming moderate cardio with a sheen of sweat but not dripping, and the ability to hold at least a stilted conversation during the workout. It'd be quite tiring and unnecessary to do a full hour of high intensity, dripping-in-sweat, unable to have a conversation cardio.
  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 989 Member
    If you only want to lose about 10lbs, set MFP to lose at a rate of 0.5lb a week.

    You can definitely tone up at home. As @hipari says, getting dumbbells might be useful but you can improvise with bottles of water, cans of baked beans (or whatever), shopping bags loaded with books etc. It might be worth typing 'bodyweight' in to the Search box and reading some of the threads on the forums for ideas.
  • lucidchroma
    lucidchroma Posts: 57 Member
    @hipari I am thinking of getting rings and resistance bands. I am unsure of dumbbell ranges and which are going to be useful for me. With cardio, I have noticed I get pretty hungry after cardio and I tend to make poor food choices when I am hungry.

    @janejellyroll My maintenance calorie according to MFP is 1420 and on most sites it is somewhere around 1350. Assuming I want to lose 10-12 lbs in about a year, which is about 1 lb a month, 1420-117/1350-117 = 1303/1233 calories a day which seems a little on the lower side. I was thinking if I could eat around 1400-1500 and compensate the daily 120-ish calories from exercise. Since I think I would be happier around 1500 calories. I am open for suggestions. I kind of do not want to feel deprived the entire year with dieting.

    @lgfrie My maintenance calorie according to MFP is 1420 and on most sites it is somewhere around 1350. MFP won't let me lose .5 lbs a week. Then it has to go under 1200 calories. Its around .4 lbs a week with 1200 calories. I am afraid to eat less. I ate 1200 calories back when I was younger and I only think about food then and end up eating food I normally would not eat. Its the restriction that kind of plays game with my mind. My self control goes out of whack.

    @Strudders67 Thank you. I will look into the search bar. That's a good idea yes.
  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 989 Member
    MFP is designed such that you are expected to eat the calories that you're allocated plus your exercise calories.

    I was in a similar situation to you. When I came to MFP, my maintenance calories calculated at under 1450. It didn't really matter what rate of weight loss I selected, I got 1200. Exercise on top of that meant I was typically eating around 1500. It got much much slower as my deficit got smaller and smaller, but I reached my goal just as lock down happened. My maintenance calories at my new weight are 1340, which isn't a great deal different to what I've been eating for the last couple of years. Two hard boiled eggs or a mini babybel cheese as a snack and that's my extra 140 cals accounted for!

    I will say that I've never felt deprived. I eat the same foods as before, but in different quantities. Because it worked for me, I have smaller amounts of rice / pasta / potatoes and more veg instead.
  • lucidchroma
    lucidchroma Posts: 57 Member
    @Strudders67 I am ok eating around 1500. I did not know that you can eat the exercise calories. So I thought on top of eating 1200, I need to exercise to burn calories. Don't get me wrong. I like exercising. But the notion of having to burn 300 calories had put me under the pressure. I am small, burning 300 calories is not as easy a task. Haha. And I think I am not choosing a smart combination of intensity and duration. Since I am not exhausted while working out but then I am exhausted the entire day after working out. I will stick to an hour long moderate pace workouts. I also need to mention, some days I eat whole food, and there are days where I just grab and go. The grab and go are those days where I eat 2000+ calories and don't feel satisfied too. I need to dial down my weekly average calories.

    @AnnPT77 Thank you so much for the detailed answers.
    1. I have to move more and need to try eating more nutrition dense food.
    2. I was looking into recomposition. I am ok with slow progress. I know I have fats in places but I am ok with the weight that I am in. I am trying to find a balance of where I can eat around 10500 calories a week, look smaller than I am right now, be leaner and be strong enough to do things like proper 10-15 push ups, maybe handstand, pull ups someday in the long run.
    3 & 5. Thank you millions. This is exactly what I was looking for but did not know where to look.
    7. Thank you again.
    9. I am experiencing this, It's fatiguing at your current fitness level, on a cumulative or immediate basis. I am ok while doing it but afterwards I am exhausted the entire day.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,079 Member
    Look at a proper starter bodyweight routine, not at fast youtube videos. There's a list of routines around somewhere here, but some include bodyweight warrior, the Reddit recommended routine (https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness), convict conditioning and a few others.

    I've just started with the RR, mixing and matching a bit with other routines because I don't have the necessary equipment/type of flat for every workout. I do have a push-up bar, thus that helps. And I have totally sore muscles everywhere today. So I guess it's doing something :D
  • lucidchroma
    lucidchroma Posts: 57 Member
    edited June 2020
    @yirara Thank you. After a few research and getting overwhelmed and sweaty while scouring for a good workout, I have decided to give this a go, https://youtube.com/watch?v=KzuUs3c-Ajg :smile:

    Along with 3 more exercises of recommended routine and learning these two, https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dt_zQnxYrXM and https://youtube.com/watch?v=MGVxq5sZWrQ&t=480s

    I can do the crow pose, not the crane. And my push up is very weak. I have terrible core strength.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,079 Member
    Oops, I wanted to write pull-up bar, not push-up bar. *sigh* early mornings...
This discussion has been closed.

Categories