Do you have any beginner tips? I’m trying to lose weight, gain muscle, and just generally be healthier lately but I have zero exercise experience
I grew up with multiple disabilities that made it really hard to lose weight and gain muscle but now I’m being treated for it and would like to help it along
Any advice is much appreciated ❤️
I hope this does not sound dismissive, but the best advice I personally can give anyone about losing weight is to stop trying to lose weight.
That doesn't necessarily mean you will never lose weight, but that it's not an effective goal to focus on. It depends on a multitude of factors, many of which come down to genetics and are really outside of your control.
Focus on building muscle. Focus on consuming more hydration and nutrients. Focus on getting quality rest and sleep. Focus on things you can control that are functionally improving your fitness instead of chasing numbers on the scale.
Because here's the thing. As you build muscle and improve your endurance and otherwise quantitatively improve your fitness, you might not lose weight.
You might actually gain weight through this process. But your body will look different with a higher muscle mass and you will likely feel differently about your body when you can see how much it is capable of.
The flip side is, through building muscle, you still might lose body fat, which is this thing we're all societally encouraged to lose all the time, even if your overall weight does not decrease. But if you focus on building the muscle instead of losing the fat, you're going to have a much better time.
You also might lose weight in general! The truth is: there are no healthy ways to exert total control over your weight. If you focus on specifically seeing the number on the scale go down you will either feel frequently frustrated despite how much actual progress you may be making towards improving your fitness or resort to unhealthy practices to try to force the number down, and if you have to sacrifice health for weight loss it's no longer a fitness practice.
But if you focus on strength, flexibility, mobility, endurance, sleep quality, hydration, and eating plenty of nutrients then your fitness will improve, regardless of how your relationship with gravity may change.
As for getting started my best advice is start slow! Imo the worst thing a beginner can do is too much too fast. This increases your risk of injury and also is just miserable. It makes the task feel overwhelming which frequently makes people avoidant of doing it at all.
The trick is actually to make it really easy. So easy you almost feel kinda silly because you're barely doing anything at all.
This will vary based on your time and limitations but for some folks it might look like training once per week for 30min. For some folks it might look like training twice a week for those 30 minutes. And for others maybe just training twice the whole month.
After that first month, evaluate and adjust. Either increase the number of sessions per week or month. Or increase the duration of those sessions. Don't increase both at once.
So you might go from training once a week for 30 minutes to once a week for 45 to 60 minutes or twice a week for 20 to 30 minutes.
No matter how you set it up, the goal is to gradually increase the intensity over time. This gives your nervous system time to become familiar with the task. This makes it less overwhelming when you eventually build up to longer and/or more frequent sessions.
There's a million different schools of thought on if you should train whole body each session or different body parts on each session. But which way is best? Whichever way works for you! Literally just whichever way you like doing it.
I recommend starting with whole body training because it's much easier to make sure you hit all the major muscle groups when you're starting out with fewer sessions per week, but my initial point still stands: do whatever works for you.
I'm gonna link a bunch of free programs from creators I personally like a lot below. Don't feel compelled to follow any of them as written. The goal again is to make it really easy to start, so that might mean looking at some of these programs and just choosing one or two upper body exercises and one or two lower body exercises and forgetting about the rest for now.
Don't neglect your rests!! Both between sets and between sessions. You need to give yourself ample time for recovery. The rests as written in a lot of these programs may be too short. Rest as long as you need to.
You want to come into each set and each session with as much energy as possible. If you still feel really tired from your last set or session, then don't go into your next one yet.
We build muscle while we rest. We (constructively) fuck up our muscles during training and without proper rest (and calories!) we can't actually build the muscle back bigger and stronger like we're trying to.
Also search my blog for "form notes" and you'll find a bunch of posts where I've gone a little in depth on basic form for various exercises.
Do Yoga With Me (stretching is so important. Please make sure to incorporate some stretching.)
As far as nutrition is concerned, it's about addition, not substraction. It's not about what you can deprive yourself of, but what opportunities can you find to give yourself extra protein, fiber, fruits/veggies, or hydration?
One way I like to do this is to get my nutrients from multiple different sources. Instead of giant chicken breast constituting the whole meal's protein I like to do a little chicken, a little cheese, maybe an egg, maybe some nuts, and some veggies with small but still significant to the overall sum of protein on my plate line mushrooms or broccoli. Now I'm getting my protein from a bunch of different sources, some that also have micro nutrients, some that have nutritionally dense fats, some that have fiber.
If you're wondering what that seemingly unrelated series of foods might look like in a coherent meal:
Put melted butter or whatever cooking oil you like on the bottom of a small oven safe dish (you could probably do this in the microwave but I haven't actually tried that)
On top of the melted butter add a little shredded chicken (or ground beef or sausage or tofu or whatever just make sure it's cooked first) some crumbled goat cheese (or whatever kind of cheese you like) crack an egg (or two) on top, more spices and more cheese on top (I usually do cheddar or parm on top) set aside.
In a different dish (you could do it all together in a larger dish but I like them better separate) dump frozen veggies out of a bag. Throw a handful of nuts on top. Add butter or oil, whatever spices you like, and a dash of balsamic vinegar (sometimes I do white wine vinegar or lemon juice instead) (you could also just dump your favorite jarred sauce on there instead.)
Put both dishes in a preheated oven at 400°f and cook for 15-20 minutes until your eggs are done to your liking and your veggies are cooked.
You also don't have to do any of those things. You could get a frozen meal and just dump some extra protein and/or veggies on top.
Lots of ways to do it, but I'm just saying I personally recommend layering up your meals with different sources of various nutrients so you can get adequate amounts without having to eat a giant portion of any one particular food, which can often make "eating healthy" feel like a horrible chore. This is just my way though, feel free to ignore it if it doesn't work for you.
And most importantly, have fun with it!
Most humans do not do things just because we know they're good for us. But we frequently do things just because they're fun for us. So find ways to make it fun and at the very least avoid things that make it miserable.
If there's an exercise you really hate, you simply never, ever have to do that particular exercise. Whatever body part you're trying to train, I guarantee there are other ways. If there's a food you really hate, you simply never, ever have to eat it, whatever nutrients you're trying to get from it, I guarantee there are other ways. You absolutely never have to do anything that you really hate doing in the pursuit of general fitness.