Start Gym

LiliRose2707

Hi, I’m starting gym tomorrow, I signed a membership including a trainer for two sessions of 30 min each. Anyone work out at a gym? How much you training in a week, do you have a trainer, what your gym workout, do you work out alone? I. A bit nervous for tomorrow.

sijomial

Don't compare yourself to others unless those others are in exactly your position, that I train up to 14 hours a week indoors and outdoors without a trainer is more than likely a useless comparison for what you need/want to do!

Instead think about your goals and how you are going to get the most out of your two 30 min sessions.
Give the trainer something definite to work with. Please, please, please don't say "get toned" or "lose weight"!
(I've seen the same trainer give a brilliant introduction to the big compound lifts and also a completely useless cookie cutter routine to a different person - because one client had a definite goal and the other gave the very strong impression they just wanted to turn up.....)

What are your precise goals?

Strength? What kind of strength? To ultimately get to what level?

Sports? Which sport(s)?

Cardio fitness? What kind of cardio fitness? Like a sprinter or like an endurance athlete?

How much time you have available to fit in your schedule and also how much time you want to dedicate to the gym are for you to decide and probably also build up to. How much time you need to dedicate to make good progress depends to a large degree where you are starting from.

No idea what your fitness level and experience is - if this is all new to you then try everything. Finding the one (or more) thing that really inspires you and you actively enjoy is the key to keeping it up.

LiliRose2707

Thanks for your advice. My workout gonna be 3 times a week at the gym for 30 min each. I may workout the rest of the time at home on the stairmaster and stretching exercise. At the gym I do 5 min on the bike the rest on heavier machine, don’t know which one I like best yet. I gonna find out which one fit for me and the one I like and I hope I will enjoy the workout.

JBanx256

So give us an update - how did it go?

LiliRose2707

I just start on few machine, at first 5 min bike, after it was more heavy machine, it was short but kinda heavy. Will I loose more weight and get fit on heavier machine? I need to ask her theses question? It give me migraine on few of these heavy machine. I gonna ask her if bike, stairmaster and similar machine is as good to lose weight and get fit then the heavy machine?

callsitlikeiseeit

what do you mean by 'heavier machine'?

for cardio, find what you LIKE. it all burns calories and im not sure if theres a significant enough difference in the machines themselves to matter which you use (your effort and the resistance is what would make a difference). The exception might be the stairmaster since it focuses so much on glutes and legs, but I could be wrong.

springlering62

@sijomial that was brilliant.

LiliRose2707

Hi,
It’s been a while since I came here. Like I said I did start working out at the gym 3 time a day but when winter will come I may not be able to go, my trainer said I need to plank and things like that but that kind of give me migraine. I wonder if I do 20 min of stairmaster and lift 5 lbs of weight 45 times will be enough? I need to asked her again, I think she feel the plank are better. It’s been 3 weeks but I didn’t loose any weight. What you do for workout to loose weight?

ritzvin

For losing weight, eating less than you burn (whatever amount that is) (less food when no cardio, more food when lots of cardio). When it comes to cardio, pick something you enjoy and look forward to doing. Walking/running/hiking/cycling/dancing/rollerblading/rowing/tennis/football/... (You might find local groups for these on Facebook, meetup.com)

LiliRose2707

Thanks ritzvin for your feedback.

sijomial

LiliRose2707 wrote: »

Hi,
It’s been a while since I came here. Like I said I did start working out at the gym 3 time a day but when winter will come I may not be able to go, my trainer said I need to plank and things like that but that kind of give me migraine. I wonder if I do 20 min of stairmaster and lift 5 lbs of weight 45 times will be enough? I need to asked her again, I think she feel the plank are better. It’s been 3 weeks but I didn’t loose any weight. What you do for workout to loose weight?

The gym has very, very little to do with losing weight - you simply won't be burning a lot of calories in that short time.
Eating less than you need = losing weight over an extended period of time.
Exercise = increased fitness and better health.

There are lots of alternatives for core and abs work, planks really aren't that special. Good test of your trainer to come up with an alternative if planking sets off your migraines.

Enough stairmaster for what goal?
Enough lifting for what goal?
And please, please, please do not limit yourself to very light weights - as you get stronger you should be lifting heavier too or you won't be giving your muscles any useful stimulus (wasting your time and effort).
You don't say what you are doing with those 5lbs weights but different lifts really should demand different weights.
A compound lift uses many muscle groups so a person should be moving far more weight than when doing an isolation lift (single muscle group).

Details of the routine the trainer set out would be helpful or there's a lot of guesswork.

heybales

LiliRose2707 wrote: »

Hi,
It’s been a while since I came here. Like I said I did start working out at the gym 3 time a day but when winter will come I may not be able to go, my trainer said I need to plank and things like that but that kind of give me migraine. I wonder if I do 20 min of stairmaster and lift 5 lbs of weight 45 times will be enough? I need to asked her again, I think she feel the plank are better. It’s been 3 weeks but I didn’t loose any weight. What you do for workout to loose weight?

Now that you have hopefully lost the misconception that exercise is for weight loss which clouded your thinking about it, please go back to first post by sijomial that had many questions you needed to think about.

From your recent comments I think I see a lack of focus because you have nothing beyond the weight loss in mind.

If this is truly 3 x a day going to the gym, up from 3 x a week, then might as well be able to use the time and energy for the best benefit.

Are migraines common at other times for you, do you have some health limitations?
And truly a migraine with all your senses overwhelmed, lights too bright, sounds too loud, smells too powerful?
That might be worth getting checked out if exercise is really causing those to occur.

LiliRose2707

Thanks sijomial and heybales for your feedback. I do have migraine often, sound and smell do trigger me. Eating less is more better then the gym? I don’t eat that much I’m sure is less then 2000 calorie a day. I got to admit loosing weight is very important for me, I guess for my age 44 140lbs is what a women in my age should me expect?

LuckiS32

I get an excruciating headache (migraine feeling) when I do floor workouts. It usually last about 10 minutes. Best thing I have done is find alternative workouts for abs and back or I do one set and immediately stand up for my rest period each time.

heybales

LiliRose2707 wrote: »

Thanks sijomial and heybales for your feedback. I do have migraine often, sound and smell do trigger me. Eating less is more better then the gym? I don’t eat that much I’m sure is less then 2000 calorie a day. I got to admit loosing weight is very important for me, I guess for my age 44 140lbs is what a women in my age should me expect?

For fat loss - eating less than you burn is the only way.

Now, while you are eating less, exercise can increase how much you burn in total - so you get to eat more compared to no exercise.
Would you rather say eat 1500 and burn 2000 being sedentary with no exercise?
Or eat 2000 and burn 2500 being very active including exercise?

Those aren't your numbers - just making a point exercise helps in that way, causing you to burn more daily.

Also, during a diet, resistance training exercise that is not easy for you, tells the body you want to keep the muscle you got. That can be very important.

Weight for certain age is not the factor that matters, it's how tall you are that really determines a healthy weight range.

140 lbs could be just right or very overweight depending on how tall you are.

LiliRose2707

Thanks Lucki and heybales for your feedback. I’m 5’1 140lbs.

AnnPT77

LiliRose2707 wrote: »

Thanks Lucki and heybales for your feedback. I’m 5’1 140lbs.

I'm age 65, 5'5", female, 125 lbs. At age 59, I was 183 pounds. By 60, weight was near my current weight, has been in a healthy range from 60-65.

When you say

I guess for my age 44 140lbs is what a women in my age should me expect?

. . . my reaction is that a woman should expect her weight to be whatever the balance between her calorie intake and output will cause it to be.

That's with the caveat that we as individuals may differ in our calorie needs from statistical estimates like MFP's, a TDEE calculator's, or even a fitness tracker's.

Most of us will be close to estimates. For most who vary from the statistical averages, some personal experiment and data tracking will quantify our calorie needs.

Age per se isn't inherently a barrier to losing weight or improving fitness. False assumptions or inaccurate attitudes about age can be a barrier, however.

heybales

LiliRose2707 wrote: »

Thanks Lucki and heybales for your feedback. I’m 5’1 140lbs.

So 100 to 127 pounds would be in the healthy BMI range. Middle of range 113 might be good to aim for.

So you may have 13 to 40 pounds to lose for the range, 27 for the middle.

A reasonable deficit to eat compared to what you burn would likely be 500 calories.

But that is from daily burn in total, so on days you do more you can eat more - using MFP's method.

Now the problem I see is that if you aren't decently active each day, and I mean outside of exercise, doing housework evenings & weekends, or an active job perhaps - you really don't burn that much daily to support a 500 calorie deficit.

If you do have household things you do evenings & weekends and decently busy, you should set your Activity Level on MFP to Lightly-Active.
Set your loss rate to 1 lb weekly.

You'll receive a base eating goal for days with no exercise.

And then logging your workouts - which it depends on what they are, as to how you will log them.
You'll receive an adjusted eating goal for those days.

You'll need some accurate food logging too, weighing everything you can.

kshama2001

LuckiS32 wrote: »

I get an excruciating headache (migraine feeling) when I do floor workouts. It usually last about 10 minutes. Best thing I have done is find alternative workouts for abs and back or I do one set and immediately stand up for my rest period each time.

Does this happen both on a rubber floor at the gym and a hardwood floor at home? I have chemical sensitivities and cannot be in new gym facilities until they have had months to off gas. The rubber floors are the worst.

LiliRose2707

Thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it.