New to My fitness pal

stverner32
stverner32 Posts: 2 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Looking to drop about 50 lbs. I am 53 and newly diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes with insulin dependence. I currently am not an exerciser, so I would have to start out with beginner exercises. This seems like a fun system to use for tracking and am happy with this new journey. Any and all help would be appreciated.

Replies

  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 11,630 Member
    Welcome to the community! This thread contains lots of options for weightlifting programs, including several for beginners just starting their fitness journey. Of course not everybody wants to do lifting, but no sweat (pun intended)! There's tons of other options you can try for fitness: from traditional cardio like running, swimming or biking, to cross-fit or pilates, indoor mountain climbing, dancing, intramural sports, even simply walking a little further/faster than yesterday counts.

    But remember, you can never out-exercise a big meal. You lose weight through the kitchen and what you eat; you gain heart fitness, strength, flexibility, etc from exercise. The smart person does both!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,222 Member
    Beginner exercises are perfect.

    Too many people start a health improvement, weight loss or fitness enhancement effort with the assumption that they need to do miserably intense, punitive exercise in order to get benefits. That's completely wrong. Over-exercise for current fitness level can be counter-productive for fitness, health, or weight loss. It can increase appetite, bleed calorie burn out of the rest of the day via fatigue, increase injury risk, impair the immune system, and more. I don't mean to catastrophize, because it's not guaranteed that anything bad will happen . . . but risks increase.

    The perfect thing IMO is exercise that's a challenge to current capabilities, but a mild and manageable challenge. It may result in a few minutes of "whew" right after the exercise, but should be energizing, not exhausting, for the rest of the day. It should leave a person with enough time and energy for family, home, job, or any other things important to that person. Ideally, it should be fun, or at least tolerable and practical. (Exercise we want to do, so do regularly, is 100% more beneficial than theoretically perfect but unpleasant exercise that we procrastinate or skip at the slightest excuse.)

    Any extra movement burns extra calories. Keeping a challenge in the picture gradually improves fitness. That's the sweet spot, if you ask me: A manageable challenge.

    That said, exercise is optional for weight loss, though exercise is good for a person. Weight loss can be done entirely by managing calorie intake. I didn't significantly increase exercise to lose 50-some pound at age 59-60, I just changed how much (calorie-wise) I ate. I admit, I'd been very physically active for a long time, around a dozen years by the time I started losing weight. I worked out lots, but stayed overweight/obese for those dozen years. (Admittedly, I was healthier as an active obese woman than I would've been as an inactive obese woman.) That gives me the very strong perspective that exercise alone is not enough to cause weight loss, though!

    I'm cheering for you to succeed: If your experience is like mine, the results will be very much worth that effort!

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