Free Alternatives to Running

Have two blown out knees. ACL and torn meniscus. I ride bike. No harm to my knees and I have gotten to love it so much I hardly can let a day go without riding. If I miss a day, I get really down. The endorphins are awesome. Plus, I get to sit on my butt and exercise and lose weight. Started with a cheap Target bicycle and have now gone to an Domane 4 Series. Love it. Did 37 miles today and burned over 2700 calories.

I do not know how to ride a bike. I see people in the city that I live bike riding, but, in all honesty, it is a bit dangerous, because of the crazy and aggressive drivers we have out here.

Thanks so much for all of your tips. Running has been my go-to exercise when I want to lose weight because it is such a big calorie burner. I lost 70 pounds the last time that I wanted to lose weight, and this was largely due to running and counting calories. I have lost about 52.5 pounds from my highest weight this time around, and I can say that the weight loss really accelerated once I started running, but I will try walking. I know that this may sound strange to some, but it is a bit of hit to my self-confidence for me to be going walking, when I always go running on the route that I normally go on. As it is, I live in a really hypercompetitive city - New York City - and the area that I go running in there are a lot of desperate (I am sorry, but that is the only word that I can think of, because this is the air that they give off), women who are clearly running out of a fear of being fat in a city that is full of actresses, models, and lots of other beautiful women. Now, I am not talking about women who are superathletic, and are clearly running because they love the sport. I understand them, running is really addictive. Those women always breeze right past me, and I congratulate them for their physical fitness and admire them for taking good care of themselves. I am happy for them. They are setting a good example for others, and they give me a fitness ideal to aspire to. No, I am not talking about those women. I am talking about women (and yes, I use that term, because it is only on occasion that a man will engage in this behaviour, even there are a few men who do it as well - again, it is often overweight men - the superfit just breeze right past me) who maybe are not in such great shape, and see a fellow fattie (myself) who is running slowly, and think that it is ok to cut in front of me and running slowly blocking my path for five miles. Its always the fellow fatties who try to race me!

I do not understand this mentality, because I truly believe that the best way to move forward with being healthy is to compete against oneself, and not against others. Maybe it is their way of feeling better about themselves. I hope that these people will not begin to harass me even more now that my pace will drop now that I am walking. My one consolation is that many of the people that I see walking are MUCH slimmer than the women who try to outrace me on my morning runs. I think that this proves that 80% of weight loss is really about calories. It also gives some credence to the points made by many on this board about the dangers of eating back too many calories after exercising. I could not understand why so many of the women who would try to race me were so overweight, and also could not understand how people could run so fast for so long (remember that I often run 9 miles a day, and these women were at least doing four miles) and still have BMIs that appeared to be higher than 28 and even in the 30s (and they were not bodybuilders), until I found My Fitness Pal. It was only then that I figured out that it is possible to spend a lot of time exercising, and still be overeating.

I apologize if I have offended any people with this post, but I really had to get this off my chest, because it is one of the issues that had blocked me from exercising for some time. People give very large people a hard time when they are exercising (I cannot tell you all of the disgusted looks I would initially get), and I find that women are often really nasty to one another, and are often the ones who will try to race me off the road. When I am stick thin (I am quite tall, so when I am at a normal BMI I look like I weigh much less than I do, and people will ask me if I am a fashion model), some women will shoot daggers at me, and when I am quite heavy both men and women will give me nasty looks. Maybe this is just the city, that I live in. I find New York to be a really competitive, and unfriendly city at times. What is needed here, as is needed in the world in general, is more kindness.

I run but am conscious of the knee thing too. So I limit myself to one longer run (under 5 miles even at that). And a couple of shorter runs (usually some kind of interval trainng). Other stuff I'll do besides running is rowing maching and walking (usually with my dogs).

Is that you in the picture? Further motivation to try walking.