Texas Lap Band Surgeons Talk With You

Most everyone I know has had a piece of exercise equipment in their house at some point in their lives.  An elliptical, a treadmill, a weight machine – something.  It starts out all shiny and new, or for the more cautious buyer, maybe with a few scratches from a previous owner.  Whatever its’ condition, it comes to the house full of promises. Promises of finally commiting to an exercise program, being in shape, being thinner……

But then a few weeks pass and dust starts to collect on the parts of the machine that are exposed.  The rest of the machine is of course, covered with clothes.  Suddenly instead of a glorious emblem of fitness, the machine is a convoluted hat-rack.  A very expensive, sometimes guilt inducing hat-rack, at that.

I may just be projecting because this has certainly happened to me with several different pieces of equipment, but I don’t think I’m alone in this.  I’ve talked to lots of people who have bought fitness “stuff” that just ends up sitting around ’til it gets sold in a garage sale at $0.10 on the dollar.

So what to do?  Here are my New Year’s thoughts on actually exercising and using what you’ve got.

1) You’ve got to like exercise before you actually do it.  If you dread it – whatever “it” is – you ain’t gonna do it.  Don’t buy a treadmill because you think using it will make you look like the skinny-Minnie marathoners in the magazines.  Buy a treadmill because you’ve got a stack of movies you’re dying to see and getting on the treadmill will allow you 30+ minutes every day to watch them.  Or better yet, because walking/jogging/running gives you a hit of endorphins that makes your whole day great!  We just got this slippy-slide thing that lets you mimic speed skating in your living room.  It’s a blast, so we use it.  But a stationary bike? Not my speed, so never had one.  Makes my behind sore.  But I’ve got patients that swear by them.

2) You’ve made your choice, now work it! You found something you like – so do it.  You can’t just go through the motions, tho’, you’ve got to actually sweat.  Are you an outdoors person and enjoy walking? Groovy – but 30-40 minute miles while chatting with a friend is called “strolling” not exercising.  If you’re a walker, pump those arms, move those legs, get some huffing and puffing going.  Here is a link to a program that will take you from barely able to walk out the front door to running (ok, slogging, but still!) a 5K. You can do it! http://www.c25k.com/

3) Speaking of intensity, here is one of the great fat burning programs of all times and it will accomodate anyone from the least to most fit, from the idle rich to hardworking folks with no extra time.  It’s called HIIT and it goes like this: warm up for 5 minutes, then for 15-30 sec exercise all out doing whatever you’ve chosen to do (run, swim, walk, jumping jacks, skipping, squats-whatever!), then go back to a restful, relaxed pace for 2-4 times that length of time, then repeat a few times.  For example, you run all out for 15 seconds, walk slowly for 45 seconds to catch your breath and let your  heart rate come down, then you repeat this cycle 10 more times, then cool down for 5 minutes.  Total time: 21 minutes.  For some people, the “all out” phase may be walking briskly, and the rest interval may need to be 5-6 times the length of the high intensity interval in order to do it again.  But you’ll find by doing this several times per week, that you’ll soon expand your exercise tolerance dramatically. Knees hurt too much to do this? Try doing it by tossing a basketball in the air or throwing it hard onto pavement instead.  There are all kinds of upper body-only exercises that will allow you to raise your heart rate in the high intensity phase.

Now get moving!