I'm 9 weeks out and walking is all that I have done so far. Some days, I noticed that if I walk too far or long, I get shakey and start sweating. I haven't felt up to pushing harder. Good Luck!

I'll be 11 weeks out tomorrow and the only exercise I do is walk a mile and a half each day. I probably don't lose as quickly as some people (I'm down to 205 lbs from my heaviest weight of 250 and my surgical weight of 236), but I also haven't shown any signs of excess skin or anything like that. Definitely at least walk or swim if you can - even if you're not aggressively exercising, the weight is still going to come off just from lower caloric intake.

I have arthritis and joint damage from my lower back down. All those years at 380+ pounds. I walk regularly and use my pilates machine. Frankly, I could use the pilates machine much more than I do. Anyway, I am almost 4 years out from surgery. And still, what I do more than anything for exercise is walk. I've tried other things and even enjoyed some of them. But because of the damage to my joints, I inevitably wind up getting injured and then I'm doing nothing while the injury heals. I've looked into other non-impact activities like bike riding and swimming. Haven't found a place to swim that works for my schedule needs and need a recumbent bike, regular bikes cause pain, and that's out of my price range. So I pretty much stick to walking as it's better than doing nothing. I like grim-traveler's adea of increasing daily activity rather than exercise.

You really must go easy on exercise and build up. Since you have arthritis and lupus the swimming or water aerobics is good. Yoga might work for you as well. I started out walking and then doing video exercises until I felt more comfortable. Try Zumba gold, it is a slower pace Zumba class and easy on joints, not alot of jumping. I know one person in our support group did no exercise at all and managed somehow to get to her goal.