Work outs for "morbidly" obese

JasmineDiver22 wrote: »

My BMI says I'm morbidly obese. I'm 286 @ 5'2 being a 23 year old female. I've been over weight all my life so I'm used to having a belly and I'm really flexible and can get around very easily like normal people would. I'm not like those people that have to use a scooter or anything like that lol but my point is that I'm wondering what's the best work out for me to start? Walking 3-4 times a week for 30 mins a day is what I've been doing because I don't want to push myself so hard and I plan to lose 10-15% of my body fat before I try to lift weights because of my "joints" with me being so heavy. Am I doing the right thing? Or should I do more than what I'm doing now? Help?

Hi, I started where you are back in November 2015, at 5'2" and 289.5lb I fell in the super morbidly obese category, only I'm quite a lot older and was barely able to walk across the room. tbh I started by simply sorting my diet out for the first couple of months but in January 2016 I joined a small, local gym. I was still over 260lb at this point and the owner/trainer worked with me to do a program that involved a little cardio (which for me was still walking) and some simple strength training. Around 6 months later still over 200lb I started doing compound lifting and I really wish I had started earlier. Sure it slowed the weight loss but the changes to my body were incredible. So I would try and incorporate some sort of strength training as soon as possible.

As for "exercise" I started slow, I could barely walk so to start with I worked on being able to walk for 30 mins at 3km/hr. Then I used the C25K app on the treadmill to work on increasing my speed, so instead of running the intervals I walked at 4km/hr, then once I could do the whole 30 mins at 4km/hr I re-ran the app with 5km/hr intervals and then finally added in some very slow running. At the same time I entered my first 5k (race 4 life) in the July, which I walked more than ran but completed in just over an hour.

As I've become able to do more, I've added high intensity classes in to the mix, I was over 200lb when I took my first Insanity class and had to modify pretty much everything, but as time has gone on I've got stronger and able to do much more. I now compound lift 3x week, take up to 10 high intensity classes (and not only no longer have to modify to make them easier but am given modifications on some exercises to make them harder), have 3-4 PT sessions a week and run 3-4x a week (up to half marathon although now training for a full marathon). But I didn't get to this point overnight, as I said I started being virtually unable to walk across the room, but lots of little steps have added up over the last 22 months.