Please help! Routine!

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amber914137
amber914137 Posts: 19 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hey ive used this app for a long time i lost 60 lbs got pregnant and gained it all back! Now 4 years later im back!! When i lost the weight before it. Was all at home. Now i have a gym membership that doesnt include personal training and i need help! What should i be doing at the gym to maximize weight loss? All cardio? All weights? How long? Low weight high reps? Spot training? Please someone help me come up with a course of action. Im 5'4 and 221lbs and a woman

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  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
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    For the weight loss to pad my cals out, I liked to zone out doing machine cardio and watching TV and movies on my iPad and then I'd do a half hour of resistance training 4-5 times a week as well. You can put together 5-7 moves for upper and same for lower that hit the major muscles just by searching around and checking out these threads linked here: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10300310/most-helpful-posts-fitness-and-exercise-must-reads#latest
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    do what you LIKE to do.

    i like cardio. so thats what i do.

    if you are interested in strength/weight training, looking into the new rules of lifting for women or stronglifts programs. make sure you consult with a gym employee on proper form and technique for strength training. its worth paying for a few sessions to learn the proper ways of doing things so you dont injure yourself.
  • Strongfitmama100412
    Strongfitmama100412 Posts: 90 Member
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    Well Im biased because Im a certified fitness instructor but I would do classes at the gym. My clients love going to classes, made friendships that will keep you accountable for going, and its fun!!

    Not sure what your gym offers but spin, muscle classes, boot camp etc are excellent. I would pick 3 muscle classes and two cardio classes.

    Plus my kids love the gym daycare. They have made friends too!

  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
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    sijomial wrote: »
    You shouldn't be doing anything at the gym to "maximise weight loss".

    Exercise is for health, fitness, strength, enjoyment..... You will notice all those things are what you should be striving for your entire life - not just during a few months of weight loss.

    This is quite a subjective judgment. Can it not be both? It does and will work both ways. My fitness interests have developed out of working on that "calories out" part of the equation. Cardio burned the calories I wanted to be able to eat a bit more while losing, my condition improved and this opened up other avenues to me such as trail running, and losing weight on cardio alone, for a brief time, taught me the importance of including resistance training if I wanted to maintain any strength at all. Now I maintain while keeping up a level of exercise that balances about as much as I can deal with to push my fitness forwards, but working out to be able to eat more is always a thread running through my choices.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,811 Member
    edited January 2019
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    MelanieCN77 wrote: »
    sijomial wrote: »
    You shouldn't be doing anything at the gym to "maximise weight loss".

    Exercise is for health, fitness, strength, enjoyment..... You will notice all those things are what you should be striving for your entire life - not just during a few months of weight loss.

    This is quite a subjective judgment. Can it not be both? It does and will work both ways. My fitness interests have developed out of working on that "calories out" part of the equation. Cardio burned the calories I wanted to be able to eat a bit more while losing, my condition improved and this opened up other avenues to me such as trail running, and losing weight on cardio alone, for a brief time, taught me the importance of including resistance training if I wanted to maintain any strength at all. Now I maintain while keeping up a level of exercise that balances about as much as I can deal with to push my fitness forwards, but working out to be able to eat more is always a thread running through my choices.

    "Able to eat more while losing" describes exactly how MFP is designed to be used, using exercise to maximise weight loss such as the OP says is contrary to how this site is designed to be used and ignores that the daily calorie goal excludes exercise.

    Maximising weight loss (a.k.a. crash dieting) isn't a healthy approach, an appropriate rate of loss is which is what both MFP and TDEE calculators try to encourage.

    Do more = eat more, do less = eat less is a valuable life lesson for successful maintenance at goal weight as opposed to regaining everything - such as the OP did.

    With my unusually high volume of exercise I could use exercise to create a deficit, but I wouldn't select a daily deficit and then increase to an inappropriate level with exercise.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
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    Fair, I guess there's semantics at work here too.
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,464 Member
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    Walking, elliptical, swimming or water exercise, and strength training. Start where you are now , pace yourself, and gradually increase exercise as you are able.

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