Finding time to Exercise

kshama2001 wrote: »

Maxematics wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

heiliskrimsli wrote: »

Maxematics wrote: »

savithny wrote: »

Actually, if the before picture is you, you might be able to maintain on fewer calories than the calculators suggest. Studies disagree about whether preserving lean mass helps prevent the "reduced obese" phenomenon, but it does exist - people who lost a lot of weight are found to burn fewer calories than people of the same (current) weight who were never obese.

But THAT much? I'm 5'3", 113 pounds, and I lose on 2000 calories. I truly think, depending on how long he's been at this, he's being impatient or highly underestimating his food intake. I'm leaning toward the latter even though he says he weighs everything in grams. Do you have cheat days?

Do you run a daily half marathon to get that kind of burn?

She walks up to 20,000 steps and exercises up to an hour per day.

Thank you for this! Yes, that's what I usually do. I feel like people really underestimate the power of being active. They see exercise calories as a bad thing and think they have to eat so little to maintain their weight.

Yay for exercise calories!

At 5'2", @WinoGelato is an inch shorter than you and maintains on 2200 calories because she's active. I find her story about how she gradually increased her activity level and was able to lose weight without deprivation inspirational.

Thanks! Don't know how I missed this earlier. Yes it's been a steady progression to try to become more active from when I started and truly was more Sedentary. When I first got my FitBit after 6 months of MFP I was averaging 8-10k steps/day. Now I average 15k steps/day, a lot of which is from just being a busy working mom, and then a lot is from purposeful exercise. I get up early and walk the dog, for 30-60 min depending if I'm doing circuit training that day or not. I do have a desk job but I park in the back of the lot, try to get outside at least once a day at lunch or between meetings for a couple laps around our campus (~3,000 steps). My boss and I have taken to doing part of our meetings while walking a couple times a week. I try to hit 10-12 k steps before I get home in the evening and then often take another walk with kids and dog in the evening - but a lot of my steps come because other than driving, working, and eating, I don't sit down all day long. When at home I just keep moving. Right now I'm at a kids birthday party and I'm walking outside while the kids are bouncing. Other parents are sitting and playing on their phones, I would rather keep moving. On the weekends we hike or go to the park and run around with the kids.
So yeah, my TDEE in the summer when I'm even busier is like 2300 or so. I'm in maintenance and eat back those calories over the course of the week (less on weekdays more on weekends). Just like some folks end up negatively impacting their metabolism through adaptive thermogenesis and years of extreme calorie cutting - I feel like I positively impacted mine through concerted efforts to raise my NEAT and my exercise levels. I enjoy the extra calories to eat but I also enjoy the activity.

I could get 2,000 steps or less a day if I did not try. I am getting 8,000-9,000 steps now.
Sure, I can fit some exercise into my day. 30-90 minutes is not unreasonable. It meansnot sitting as much, being less efficient in daily tasks, walking upstairs to tell dd dinner is ready instead of shouting from the bottom of the stairs, walking while the food is in the oven, doing a workout video.
It can be challenging when the family wants to do something less active together because I want to spend time with them so getting 2,000-4,000 steps or doing a workout video in the morning is helpful for reaching my exercise goal by the end of the day. Not aiming for 20,000+ steps or a 3 hour workout just doing more than I was doing.

If you are doing zero exercise aim for 10-20 minutes. Lots of short you tube workouts or you could walk briskly or turn on some music and dance. When you have that in your routine maybe you can do a bit more.

heiliskrimsli wrote: »

Lots of people don't have three hours a day to devote to exercise. In fact, I would say most people who work full time, particularly in office jobs, do not have that kind of time. Also, based on your math, walking for 75 minutes (4 miles per hour, five miles takes 75 minutes, not 60) each way to and from work means you're spending more like 2.5 hours walking to and from, so we're up to 3.5 hours per day.

She spends an hour a day exercising. Walking around isn't exercise.

In that "don't eat your exercise calories" thread you told us you run a 5K pretty often.

armchairherpetologist wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Christine_72 wrote: »

I too would struggle if i had a desk job, plus a two hour commute everyday.

I'm quite fortunate because although my commute is stupidly long for how far I live from work (about 6 miles, and yet 45 minutes minimum each way, generally longer on the way home), part of that is always a 10-15 minute walk (or a bit more if I detour to one of the slightly farther grocery stores than the one I pass between my place and closest L station), and I can replace part of all of it with something active. The fastest way to get to work is biking, and for a while I was biking the pleasant way along the lake with an extra loop or 2 -- 13 miles there, maybe 20 on the way home if I could leave where I wasn't fighting the darkness. Lots of exercise without adding much to my commute time. I also often run home (have a backpack for that purpose -- 1 hour, so again not much more than my regular commute and the workout is out of the way). Unlike the biking I do this when it's dark and in the winter too (many people bike in the winter, but I don't). Worst case I can walk part way home and get at least some additional exercise.

Being able to not be cooped up in a car is important to me (I chose not to take one job in part because it would have required a long commute to the burbs), and so it's something I prioritized.

The choice of where to live can be an important factor in this. I'm able to get extra steps by walking to and from work when it's not too cold. I can do this because I specifically chose to live in an area that was close to my job -- I'm just two miles away from my office. I've had longer commutes in the past and I don't like them, so when I relocated for my current job, I made distance to work a top priority in choosing a home.

I have co-workers who have much longer commutes and many of them do talk about not having time to exercise before or after work. Sometimes it's necessary to have a long commute, but sometimes it's the result of choices.

I know there are exceptions to this rule, but when people don't have time to exercise it is often because of choices they've made. When they made the choice they may not have been thinking "I don't want to have time to exercise," but the end result can be the same. Where we live, the hobbies we prioritize, the after-work commitments we take on, what we prioritize on the weekends, these all factor into the amount of activity we can fit into our lives.

I used to live very close to my job, and then they restructured and I got laid off. I had to get a new job, and that meant a longer commute. I couldn't just up and move, because I had bought a house and selling it too soon to try and move closer to a new job would have lost me a lot of money.

As a result I have a long work day, and a commute that it's impossible to walk. Getting walk breaks during the day is fairly difficult. If I leave my desk for more than a couple of minutes and I'm not actually in a meeting, someone notices that I'm not responding to instant messages and emails and raises an issue. I can get away with maybe 10 minutes twice a day. Most of the time my lunch "hour" is spent working on the actual work that is prevented by all of the meetings and eating my lunch at my desk.

I do like to be active, though, so I pretty much rush out the door at the end of the day in order to go and get in a run or a ride. I mow the lawn with a push mower, in the winter there is usually snow to shovel instead of the lawn to mow. I get at least an hour of exercise a day, but I would like to do way more than that. As it is I have to relegate the long rides and long runs, the hiking and the kayaking and the camping to weekends, and sometimes what I want to prioritize and what I have to do are at odds. I'd far rather be out riding my bicycle than doing laundry, that's for sure.

I totally didn't mean to make it sound as if everyone who has a commute made the conscious choice to do so (lay-offs happen, being tied to a particular house happens). I've had times in my life when I had a longer commute and there wasn't anything I could do about it. My point was more like . . . many of us have *something* we can rearrange in order to make time to be more active if that's what we want to do. And it sounds like you're doing that, just in different circumstances than I am.

I apologize if my words didn't convey that or if I seemed judgmental of people who do have longer commutes due to stuff happening in their lives.