Disabled and seated exercises Help please

My goodness dear--you've got challenges. I've been here for 8 years and during that time several wheelchair users have posted and have been successful losing. I'd suggest that you try a search and perhaps can find some of them.

I'd also suggest that exercise is important, but it's your food intake that will determine if you lose. Get your daily calorie goal, and log everything. See how that goes. Keep your exercise very light to start. You can always ramp up. There's a woman without legs, in a wheel chair that did an awesome transformation. You can do it with lots of patience and determination. Good luck.

PS: I'll bump her thread up after yours so you can find it. It's called "Down 105 lbs" by @faustinog

@Femmigirlz wow, I read your post and see a lot of determination. You try so many things, and keep trying to find what works. You reach out for help and haven’t given up. You’ll make it. Keep going, one day at a time.

There’s a saying you’ll see around the MFP forums, “weight is lost in the kitchen.” For everybody, medical challenges or not, the secret to long-term weight loss success is with focusing on diet.

Exercise is for other areas of health, and might bring benefits on a different timeline. It doesn’t have to be tied to weight loss. Weight-loss can start first and make the more robust exercises easier later. Doing what exercise is easy now, starting where you are, might be key to preventing injury. Working with a professional like a PT or OT might be an option if you haven’t.

I have three autoimmune diseases (one that can cause paralysis and respiratory failure if I exercise too hard) and several musculoskeletal issues, too. I started at 330 pounds and have gradually lost 88 pounds as of this morning, more to go. My exercise varies, and the progress is slow and disrupted. I work with a physical therapist to guide me and try to prevent injuries from taking it too fast. Diet has really been key for me, I learned a lot on the HalfSize Me Podcast and find MFP to be an invaluable tool. Part of what I’ve learned is to set goals based on effort, not necessarily outcomes, when you can’t control what your body will do. You can control your efforts, and that’s about it. So do that. You seem really motivated. You can do this!

"I need help to determine how many calories approximately I burn doing arm lifts, leg lifts, stretching and strengthening exercises."

No. You do not. You need to be in a calorie deficit that gives you weight loss without any other activity. Then you need to do other stuff for other reasons.

1. You need to do strength exercises to get stronger because weakness is nonfuntional and muscle loss is catastrophic.
2. You need to do "aerobic" exercise to increase your endurance.

strength training:
The easiest thing will be handweights (dumbbells). Single arm shoulder presses (because pressing two weights above you head at the same time has drawbacks), seated triceps extensions, and (last and least) bicep curls come to mind.
But you want to challenge more of you muscle mass. Perhaps an elastic band you could attach to your door and pull from a seat (standing version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNn81C7haqU ).
For legs, you're already trying. I'll see if I can come up with ideas. If you get a band for rows you could also try to use it in leg exercises.

The all important point here is to record what you do (weight x repetitions x sets), do it regularly, and do more (reps or weight or volume) as you are able. You will see then how you are getting stronger.

Endurance training
Three possibilities come to mind
1. Battle ropes. you could basically do HIIT training using your arms. Increase rounds as you are able.
2. Pedaling, They make bicycle pedals you can use from any chair. I had a junky one from Aldi but I assume their are quality versions. If you can use those you could do both sprints and low intensity longer duration sessions. Again, always record what you do (your time at least) so you can increase it.
3. You said you get around your house with a walker. Can you see if you can every other day use it for a certain distance and get a little bit longer each week. I don't want you to inflict pain on yourself, but you might find that you gain capacity if you start slow. I mean simply going from one room to another and back. And then two days later doing that twice with a rest in between. And then seeing if you can do it without a rest.

In all these things you need to start small and gradually build up. But do continue to pursue it.

Good luck. I pray you find health and in turn help others.

Others have give you advice about the exercise, and suggested that the calorie estimating question is less important. I agree that managing food intake can make a larger contribution to weight loss than can exercise, when one is limited in exercise modes/vigor especially. I also agree that over-estimating exercise (or trying to account for every calorie of routine movement as exercise) can be a pitfall.

Nonetheless, I think your question is answerable, within reason.

Femmigirlz wrote: »

(reply-er has snipped intro that amply demonstrates OP's determination and strength of character, and then some)

I need help to determine how many calories approximately I burn doing arm lifts, leg lifts, stretching and strengthening exercises. When I look on the site here under exercises it doesn’t help much. Maybe I’m not doing enough to even log right now?

IMO, if you choose to log exercise of the type you describe, it would be reasonable to use the MFP exercise database entry "Mild stretching", in the Cardiovascular Exercise session.

I get that that's not exactly what you're doing, but the underpinnings of this estimating method is something called METS that is a research-based way of comparing the calorie cost of different exercises. This would be a conservative (less likely to be overestimated) estimate you could use, and see a tangible entry representing your effort. The METS value under the covers is IMO reasonable for what you're doing. Some of what you're doing might even count as strength training, or even mild calisthenics, but the METS values for those are not as much higher as some people might assume. Calling it all "Stretching" would be simple to do, recognize some calorie burn in a conservative way.

Geez, sorry long of a post. Now I’m depressed after reading what I wrote but I need to start somewhere, right?

Most of the time I just don’t want to be on this earth my chronic pain is so bad. I know losing weight and getting stronger will help.

Anyone want to motivate me daily would be incredible. It’s do or die time.

I think you should pat yourself on the back (itself a stretching exercise 😉), not be depressed. You're fighting hard here, uphill, to get stronger and fitter so you can have the needed surgeries to even further improve your situation. That's truly admirable and inspiring.

(Here, I go into curmudgeon mode . . . . )

We see quite a few able-bodied people showing up here saying "I hate alllllll exercise so I can't lose weight" or "it's raining and I don't like marching in place so I ate over my goal" and things like that that frankly kind of make me eye-roll.

( . . . end curmudgeon mode . . . )

You, in contrast, are bringing both intellect and personally challenging physical effort into the picture, and you deserve mega-credit for that. Yes, based on my (less difficult!) personal experience as an older person with a few much more minor physical challenges who used to be obese, losing weight and getting stronger will help.

Go, you: I predict success, if you can stick with it, with that kind of effort and attitude in play!

Hugs to you! And listen to the others that say weight loss starts in the kitchen. If you are unable to do cardio right now, then just concentrate on your intake. All the strength exercising you are doing is great, but it doesn't really help with weight loss, just strengthening your muscles. So don't stress about those. Just do what you are able to keep up with your muscle mass and look to where you can modify your diet. I've lost 38 pounds since the end of August just by diet alone. Because of back problems, I was scared to do anything that might injure my back. I tried walking before and ended up in the hospital because my back seized up. Didn't even know I had any back problems until the walking inflamed it. And I used to run when I was younger! Doc thinks it is from an accident I had, ruptured a disc in my lower back. The weight I put on aggravated it even more. I'm hoping once I get down to a healthier weight, I can resume exercising. But for now, just concentrating on my diet. You can do it. I see how much you want it! I'm in your corner! Don't give up!