Motivate me to get fit pls

[Jackaroo]

So, basically over the past couple of years, I've been piling on weight, and from the once skinny kinda not too bad looking guy I was, I'm now obese, and I need to lose weight, but with that comes a heap of excuses as to why I don't do excersize, I guess there's only one which is actually kinda relevant.

So, why I keep putting exercise off:
Every time I exercise even slightly, I get way too out of breath, I suffer from asthma and I can't afford to replace my ventolin pumps, lol.
I get chest pain when I exercise, like it feels cardiac but it disappears after a while.
Whenever I step into a gym and there are other people there I get real bad anxiety lol (ikr wtf)

So, motivate me. Give me work out plans. Start them easy tho pls. Like imagine this is someone who was never slim.

[Sugar Rush]

I personally like SparkPeople. I use pretty much everything there, they have a lot of motivational tools and here's some decent beginner workout videos ([Only registered and activated users can see links]) that you can start with at home.

I totally know what you mean about going to a gym. I don't. I do what I can at home, and when I got bored with that, I found a bike/running trail near my home that is mostly in the woods and typically semi-private, and used that to start a 5k (walk/run interval) training program with the Zombies, Run! app. I highly recommend it, it's kinda like role playing while you run to keep it entertaining and motivating. When I first started, I sucked at running. Sometimes I would have to walk when it said run. But it gets better. Your body needs time to adjust to using oxygen more efficiently for exercise, especially in your case with asthma, I would imagine.

If you're serious about losing weight though, I would focus a lot on diet and just add in exercise gradually. Focus on one or two small goals at a time, don't get too hung up on the overall picture, but just focusing on one small change and sticking to it until you genuinely feel you've mastered it and made it a habit, then moving on to the next.

Once I started exercising, I found it motivating to put up a sheet of paper on the wall near my desk (or wherever you spend a lot of your time and are guaranteed to look at it everyday), with my workout plan for each day that week. Check the days off as you complete them. Visually seeing the effort that you've put in every day is motivation to keep up with it.

I have this quote at the top of every schedule: Your workouts are important meetings you've scheduled with yourself. Bosses don't cancel. Maybe you could do something similar with something that motivates you. I get pride from seeing how many consecutive days/weeks/months I can maintain my daily goals without excuses.

By the way, fitness is pretty much use it or lose it, especially with cardio, so keep that in mind to motivate you as well.

One of the best studies of the effects of detraining on recently acquired fitness gains found that VO2 max gains (a person’s maximum capacity to take in, transport, and use oxygen during exercise) that were made in the last two months are completely lost after four weeks of inactivity .

Don't over do it. I started feeling pretty confident after a few walk/run intervals and overestimated myself and ended up injuring my leg (not from a fall or anything, mind you, just overstraining it), which made working out nearly impossible for a couple weeks. I pretty much had to start over, for the reason above. Don't do it, trust me, it's a bummer.

This is just a personal preference, but keep track of your progress with strength, endurance and speed, not your weight loss. I find obsessing over the scale to hurt rather than help. The point should be to be fit, not a magical number on the scale that no one else sees anyway.


If you need a workout/accountability buddy or someone to talk to about it or anything, feel free to PM me anytime.

[Sci_Girl]

The most important thing out of any of this is your diet. Forget trying to run, forget trying to increase stamina, forget trying to go to the gym to work out. The absolute most important thing to get hold of is your diet. You mention you are obese, this means your calories in greatly exceeds your calories out. Your body right now will store all those extra calories as fat because they are not being burned off.

If you can deal with the diet then the exercise will come much much easier. The hardest thing to do will be to limit the foods that you probably love the most. If you want to be successful you must do it gradually. Weight loss is not a quick process, anyone who claims that it is is likely trying to make a buck off of gullibility. Do not go cold turkey on changing your diet because that will just anger you and make you feel helpless, as it would to anyone really (myself included). It is the small changes that can help the most especially right from the start. If you are a big soda/pop drinker then cutting that out right now will lead to the most significant 'right now' results. There is so much sugar and so many unnecessary calories in those drinks that it quickly causes weight gain. Switch your drinks to water, if you want flavored water just cut up some fruit slices, lemon, or even cucumber slices and put it in the water. Next small step is to increase veggies. Want a snack? Grab some sliced veggies instead of the chips.

If you can change your diet, even a little, then your energy will go up and the working out will come easier. This same gradual approach applies to working out. Do not expect to be jogging 5 miles. Start with maybe taking the dog for a walk a few times a week (if you have a dog of course). Get yourself some of those mini dumbbells so you can do some weight lifting at home. Nothing major, just do some curls, arm lifts, stretches and stuff while watching tv....preferably of course is to stand while you watch tv doing this stuff. I loathe working out so much so I need to be distracted from actually thinking "eff I am working out", so I listen to music while I do it. I go for a walk in the woods for exercise and be distracted by the beauty of nature. I use our exercise bike while watching a video on youtube. Anything to distract me from the awful thought that I am actually working out. I refuse to step foot in a gym so do not think you need to go there, unless you want to. Many things can be done at home.

The thing with weight loss is you need to be consistent and accountable. If you have a friend that can help you, or bug you, when you are doing these things it can be an immense motivator. And just remember...baby steps.

[5252]

So, basically over the past couple of years, I've been piling on weight, and from the once skinny kinda not too bad looking guy I was, I'm now obese, and I need to lose weight, but with that comes a heap of excuses as to why I don't do excersize, I guess there's only one which is actually kinda relevant.

So, why I keep putting exercise off:
Every time I exercise even slightly, I get way too out of breath, I suffer from asthma and I can't afford to replace my ventolin pumps, lol.
I get chest pain when I exercise, like it feels cardiac but it disappears after a while.
Whenever I step into a gym and there are other people there I get real bad anxiety lol (ikr wtf)

So, motivate me. Give me work out plans. Start them easy tho pls. Like imagine this is someone who was never slim.
I started to practice for Football right after i moved up from 8th grade. I was slow, literally. We would run steps across the stadium and i lined up number two. Literally the kids would double across and finish the whole thing and i even remember falling asleep while the other guys were running routes cause i was so tired. I'm 5'8, feeling like i can't even walk down the stairs. Flash forward to sophomore year, we would run back and fourth. 10 yard line and back. 10 and back, 20 and back. You get it. Literally, finishing last all the time when your with the lineman (bigger kids) is never a good feeling. I also do get the same chest pain you do but know how to control it. Now, that i workout six days a week. I am not in full cardio shape, but i enjoy working out. Six days a week, you want t o be at the right place. If your seriously interested PM me your Skype ill hook you up with somethin

[Jackaroo]

Holy crap I forgot to message u, i'll fire it over now 5252

Thanks for the tips Sci_Girl & Semtex

[70spurple]

If you wanna see fit goals check out Kelly Ripa in 2003 versus Kelly Ripa now...

[hachikoesque]

I get anxiety from the gym too!! but I have confident friends who I go with and they boost my self-esteem. Maybe that'll help for you too? I feel really awkward and nervous when I'm by myself because I don't know how to do anything LOL. When I go with my confident friends (they don't have to be super athletic! They just have to know how to exercise safely) I feel less anxiety and I end up pushing myself even harder to keep up with them so they don't know I'm a secret weakling.
If this doesn't work for you, I really enjoy jogging outside and yoga indoors. Yoga stretches your body at the same time and I really helps with any back pains associated with sitting in front of a computer all day. You can add weight training with a dumbbell or medicine ball during/afterwards.

About motivation: I also get demotivated relatively quickly, but like Sci_Girl said, having a friend to bug you about working out is a great motivator!! Start with whatever is comfortable with you. Just do it. If you want to quit after 10 minutes, quit. But you need to start building the habit of regularly exercising; eventually 10 minutes will grow into 15...etc. (when I first started I could only run for 10 minutes before I quit)

About Diet: I gained a lot of weight from college :rolleyes: and realized that it was from eating late at night and/or eating fast food. Of course, you don't have to apply any of these to your life, but I'm going to say at least 20 lbs from my weight loss came from just changing my diet.
Things I did: 1) No eating past 8:00pm. If this means you have to go to bed hungry, that's what you have to do (but you can eat if you really have to. It was just my personal punishment for breaking it frivolously, not tryna starve myself)
2) Completely cut out soda from my diet. Stopped drinking beer, switched to harder alcohols (if you drink), cut out fast food consumption by 50%. Meal prepping really helps here.
3) Tried to incorporate vegetables into everything I ate. For example: I always make a green smoothie with kale, spinach, fruits, etc. every morning with my breakfast so I could get vegetables starting from when I woke up.
4) Drank wayyy more water. I'm below average in this, I drank like 5 cups of water a day when I think you're supposed to drink 8. I'm always dehydrated haha.

Seriously though, these things (without working out too hard, I think like 2x-3x a week) helped me lose a ton of weight, improve my complextion, blah blah. But the key idea here with weight loss is persistence. If you set a rule, you have to follow it. If you want more info, feel free to pm me!! Good luck!!!!!!!!
*****These are just my opinions from my personal experiences. I recently was overweight and lost 25lbs from doing these things, which may or may not be correct.

[Banannie]

I like to hit the gym around 1 am to avoid other people. Just started kind of sort of getting in shape.
One thing that I have noticed that helps is I will do 10 push ups, sit ups, jumping jacks and squats every hour and that adds to around 100-150 every day and only takes like five mins out of an hour.

[joeyjoey95]

With all this motivation in mind, be sure not to overload yourself. Feeling out of breath or short of fainting/throwing up is something I've been through before and honestly, it does suck. But you get over it after a few weeks once you get in shape.

[Evil Pastry]

Well what got me started is this quote, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels"

[70spurple]

Honestly, if you're trying to get fit. It's already too late. Take preventative measures so that you're not at the state. What motivates me is that honestly, in the long run, you WILL be old and decrepited with hella health problems. So take care of your body NOW. it's a temple. Or else you'll be old, needing knee surgery, back surgery, etc.. It sucks, I've seen it at work when I do those fogey's nails.

---------- Post added at 11:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 AM ----------

I mean, I was always a bigger girl too. The skinniest I've ever been when when I was working 10 hour days 5 days a week at a nail salon. It was always busy so I had to help clients and didn't have time to eat. When I got home, I just went to bed from being too tired and would do it again the next day. It's actually not too bad. By the third day, your body uses reserve fat? Idk but you get a surge of energy.

Another example is my neighbor's sister. She's about 40, works as a hostess at Macayos? Anyways, they're short staffed so she busses tables too when it gets really busy. She's lost A LOT of weight.

So what I'm trying to say is, it's your life-style aka job that will make or break you.

---------- Post added at 11:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:35 AM ----------


With all this motivation in mind, be sure not to overload yourself. Feeling out of breath or short of fainting/throwing up is something I've been through before and honestly, it does suck. But you get over it after a few weeks once you get in shape.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

[Mr Farenheight]

I get anxiety from the gym too!! but I have confident friends who I go with and they boost my self-esteem. Maybe that'll help for you too? I feel really awkward and nervous when I'm by myself because I don't know how to do anything LOL. When I go with my confident friends (they don't have to be super athletic! They just have to know how to exercise safely) I feel less anxiety and I end up pushing myself even harder to keep up with them so they don't know I'm a secret weakling.
If this doesn't work for you, I really enjoy jogging outside and yoga indoors. Yoga stretches your body at the same time and I really helps with any back pains associated with sitting in front of a computer all day. You can add weight training with a dumbbell or medicine ball during/afterwards.

About motivation: I also get demotivated relatively quickly, but like Sci_Girl said, having a friend to bug you about working out is a great motivator!! Start with whatever is comfortable with you. Just do it. If you want to quit after 10 minutes, quit. But you need to start building the habit of regularly exercising; eventually 10 minutes will grow into 15...etc. (when I first started I could only run for 10 minutes before I quit)

About Diet: I gained a lot of weight from college :rolleyes: and realized that it was from eating late at night and/or eating fast food. Of course, you don't have to apply any of these to your life, but I'm going to say at least 20 lbs from my weight loss came from just changing my diet.
Things I did: 1) No eating past 8:00pm. If this means you have to go to bed hungry, that's what you have to do (but you can eat if you really have to. It was just my personal punishment for breaking it frivolously, not tryna starve myself)
2) Completely cut out soda from my diet. Stopped drinking beer, switched to harder alcohols (if you drink), cut out fast food consumption by 50%. Meal prepping really helps here.
3) Tried to incorporate vegetables into everything I ate. For example: I always make a green smoothie with kale, spinach, fruits, etc. every morning with my breakfast so I could get vegetables starting from when I woke up.
4) Drank wayyy more water. I'm below average in this, I drank like 5 cups of water a day when I think you're supposed to drink 8. I'm always dehydrated haha.

Seriously though, these things (without working out too hard, I think like 2x-3x a week) helped me lose a ton of weight, improve my complextion, blah blah. But the key idea here with weight loss is persistence. If you set a rule, you have to follow it. If you want more info, feel free to pm me!! Good luck!!!!!!!!
*****These are just my opinions from my personal experiences. I recently was overweight and lost 25lbs from doing these things, which may or may not be correct.

I have to agree with this. I'm currently in the process of cutting soda out of my diet completely (I have a soft spot for diet coke I won't lie), but I've done most of your bullets as well and I'm starting to see such improvement. I try to get to the gym 3x a week, but that gets hard because work exhausts me.

I have stuck to my diet constrictions though. I hardly ever get fast food anymore and I cook every single night. It's definitely easy once you get on a routine.

[hachikoesque]

I have to agree with this. I'm currently in the process of cutting soda out of my diet completely (I have a soft spot for diet coke I won't lie), but I've done most of your bullets as well and I'm starting to see such improvement. I try to get to the gym 3x a week, but that gets hard because work exhausts me.

I have stuck to my diet constrictions though. I hardly ever get fast food anymore and I cook every single night. It's definitely easy once you get on a routine.

That's great! I'm glad that my bullet points are helping you (: I hope we can keep each other motivated in the future!
Another tip that I found works for me recently: Instead of using a scale to weigh myself, I've been taking before/after photos while wearing the same clothing.

[EdenQueen]

I'm also struggling to get fit and lose weight... I just find between a full time job, a part time job, eating, and sleeping, its so very difficult to get out to the gym. I also have moderate (sometimes severe) back pain due to scoliosis and often fail to keep myself motivated for any length of time. I try to work out in some way every day, but I'll often only do so for a week and a half before its too much and then I find myself going another week or so without exercising at all...

[Pachirisu]

I'm also struggling to get fit and lose weight... I just find between a full time job, a part time job, eating, and sleeping, its so very difficult to get out to the gym. I also have moderate (sometimes severe) back pain due to scoliosis and often fail to keep myself motivated for any length of time. I try to work out in some way every day, but I'll often only do so for a week and a half before its too much and then I find myself going another week or so without exercising at all...

You can do it! Like what was said before in the previous posts, don't sweat going to the gym/working out too much. It's all about diet and what you're eating. As for motivation, what got me motivated was actually my low self-esteem. I hated being insecure about my weight so I decided that, while it's a slow process, it's something that could inevitably be done. All I ever did was run 3-5 days a week and eat a low amount of calories. I lost 35 lbs my first semester of uni. ;v; Good luck!!

[bandit]

I jut read through all these posts. I too need motivation. It's so hard to get started.. but a lot of my friends say that once you get into routine and stuff it'll be easier. But bah!

[ohfyk1]

I jut read through all these posts. I too need motivation. It's so hard to get started.. but a lot of my friends say that once you get into routine and stuff it'll be easier. But bah!

The endorphins that get released after hard workouts become addicting. You feel so good after you go hard.

The main thing for me was fixing my diet, a lot of people look at things like 'diet and exercise'

Which is like saying all exercise is the same which it isn't, and which is looking at a diet like a temporary thing for a temporary result. (i will diet for 5 weeks to lose 5 lbs and then go back to how I do things now) Which will of course bring you right back to where you are now after some time.

So a better way to view things is 'Nutrition and Training'

For me personally I have always enjoyed the Training aspect but I could never get my Nutrition down. But I had a lot of free time this winter and taught myself how to cook and prepare the kinds of meals I could eat for a lifetime (im down almost 30 pounds and sitting at about 12% bodyfat now, another few weeks and I'll start bulking). Switching how you eat needs to be about a LIFESTYLE change and not just doing whatever nasty shit you think will get you down a few pounds.
If you find a way of eating that is healthy and will bring you where you want to be, then make sure its something you enjoy and can do for long-term. There are cool pages you can follow on facebook that help for women like bodyrocktv
that give great meal information and training information, and shes on there every day trying to motivate.

Anyways I wish you luck