Any runners- i need some advice!

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Your story is a lot like mine except the broken leg part. My spouse and I used to walk and jog together and then my spouse was the one injured and unable to continue in our battle of the bulge. We both lost track of time and became XX pounds heavier and significantly out of shape. We started with doctor visits and vowed to eat healthier . We stick to the outer areas of the supermarket (produce, dairy, meat) and choose healthy choices in those areas. We are not hardcore organic/raw junkies, but we are choosing healthier things than we previously would have picked. We really try to stay out of the junkfood/packaged isle. We do have some of our kids home yet, so grocery bills are still large, but they haven’t really changed in “total” amount. We’ve changed from junk to healthy and our wastelines are showing the result of that. As for exercise, we started walking a few miles each day (per doctor’s orders) and then walking and jogging a few miles a day, now we strictly jog. It’s a nice pace and it is okay on my spouse’s bad knee. AND it’s easy on the budget. Have fun.
 
A buddy of mine was told he had high BP. They worked on cutting out sodium and he began walking. Eventually walking became boring and it a little jogging was added in every block or so. It kept increasing and improving and this past weekend he ran a 5K.

Just keep going. You’ll get it back.
 
I’m slowly starting to get back into running after having my 4th baby. I go a few times a week and usually run anywhere from 2.5-3.5 miles…

GOOD running shoes are a must… invest in those no matter what. I’ve had my share of foot issues (heel spurs are no fun to treat… can you say cortisone shots in your foot??? OUCH!), so a good pair of shoes can make a huge difference.
Also, STRETCH… LOTS. Before and after your run.

I like using my phone to track my runs… this one just tracks by GPS, so you don’t need to buy any extra sensors…
runkeeper.com/

Most of all… listen to your body… and have fun! 🙂
 
twk001 said:
DH and i are going to start out by INTENTIONALLY walking 15-20 minutes every night. we’ve decided to just START to move. that will do wonders. hopefully by summer’s end I will have gotten up enough stamina and hopefully lost a few pounds and will THEN look forward to running again. i think it would just be WAY too much right now, and i don’t want to injure…thanks for awesome advice everyone!
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I see that you have gotten very sensible advice. From someone who has never enjoyed exercise for the sake of it, I also advise starting slowly and not trying to run when you are way overweight (too much stress on the knees and feet). The run/walk combo is all I can ever do, I am not a natural runner and it’s always very difficult and painful for me. I am about 15 lbs overweight at the moment, and was doing Weight Watchers but got sick of hearing about how to split one tortilla chip into 10 pieces so it seems like a bigger snack. :rolleyes:

I find the more I focus on dieting, the worse I find myself rebelling against the diet!

Thankfully, my younger son will be away at college starting in August, and we are going to have a GIANT pantry clean-out then. I have already told hubby that I will not be stocking all the sweets any more, that if he wants a treat after supper he will have to go and buy it and eat it that night. No more post-Easter candy raids for me! If it’s not in the house, I don’t eat it. I’m excited b/c I am sure we can both lose some weight soon. Maybe walking will appeal to me again, too.

Good luck with your plan, just start walking!
 
TheRealJuliane said:
I see that you have gotten very sensible advice. From someone who has never enjoyed exercise for the sake of it, I also advise starting slowly and not trying to run when you are way overweight (too much stress on the knees and feet). The run/walk combo is all I can ever do, I am not a natural runner and it’s always very difficult and painful for me. I am about 15 lbs overweight at the moment, and was doing Weight Watchers but got sick of hearing about how to split one tortilla chip into 10 pieces so it seems like a bigger snack. :rolleyes:

I find the more I focus on dieting, the worse I find myself rebelling against the diet!

Thankfully, my younger son will be away at college starting in August, and we are going to have a GIANT pantry clean-out then. I have already told hubby that I will not be stocking all the sweets any more, that if he wants a treat after supper he will have to go and buy it and eat it that night. No more post-Easter candy raids for me! If it’s not in the house, I don’t eat it. I’m excited b/c I am sure we can both lose some weight soon. Maybe walking will appeal to me again, too.

Good luck with your plan, just start walking!
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Don’t feel too bad if it is slow going at first RJ. My mom always goes on diets and my dad loses 10lbs. 😛 So just be aware.
 
I’m a 43 y.o. mother of eight. I was never an athlete, but felt so out-of-shape after #7 I started exercising. I ran my first 10K last fall, and I’m in the best shape of my life.

The only advice I want to add is this. If you have a day that you think you don’t have time to exercise, or you simply don’t have the motivation, give yourself permission to walk/run/swim or whatever, for only 10-20 mins. If you think you must carve out an hour to an hour and half, you may just bail on said day.
Getting out there is half the battle. When I simply don’t feel like getting on the road, or on my treadmill, or in the pool, I tell myself that…today, I am just going to go for 15 minutes or so. But, lo and behold, by the time I’ve done my 15 minutes, I’m willing to put in another 10 or 15! Last night I gave myself permission to walk instead of run. But, by the time I got out there I told myself I would get more bang for my buck if I ran, which I did. In fact, I ended up doing a mile more than I had intended to walk.
Go figure.
 
jilly4ski said:
Don’t feel too bad if it is slow going at first RJ. My mom always goes on diets and my dad loses 10lbs. 😛 So just be aware.
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Oh don’t I know it!!! All my hubby would have to do to lose 20 lbs is stop drinking a beer every night and cut back on his sweets. I can starve myself and it still takes that AND exercise to whittle even a few pounds off! I’m sure he will show a difference almost immediately.

😛
 
I think Couch to 5K is the way to go.

There are plenty of apps for IOS or Android which guide you step by step.

For example the first day
Warm up by brisk walking for 5 minutes. The app will tell you when the 5 minutes are up.
Run for 1 minute. Walk for 1.5 minutes. Run for 1 minute, etc.

It tells you things like 30 seconds, 10 seconds, etc.

While you are doing the runs/walks you can listen to music/podcasts (Catholic Answers podcast?) The App will unobtrusively notify you what you need to do.

It takes about 8 weeks to get to the point where you are running for 1/2 hour non stop.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Oh don’t I know it!!! All my hubby would have to do to lose 20 lbs is stop drinking a beer every night and cut back on his sweets. I can starve myself and it still takes that AND exercise to whittle even a few pounds off! I’m sure he will show a difference almost immediately.

😛
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lol. Yeah, she goes on these scary calorie counting diets. If she eats ~800 calories a day and exercises for 2+ hours (she walks and does the stationary bike, with a some weight and core work) she can lose almost 2 pounds a week, before she plateaus. :eek: But there are probably a lot of factors involved, including her age (I keep forgetting that she is over 60), some genetics (it appears many of her 8 sisters have to go on a similarly calorie restricted diet to lose weight), and the fact that she was malnourished as a child (they didn’t have enough food to eat growing up and all the middle children were undersized for their age) play a roll.
 
jilly4ski said:
lol. Yeah, she goes on these scary calorie counting diets. If she eats ~800 calories a day and exercises for 2+ hours (she walks and does the stationary bike, with a some weight and core work) she can lose almost 2 pounds a week, before she plateaus. :eek: But there are probably a lot of factors involved, including her age (I keep forgetting that she is over 60), some genetics (it appears many of her 8 sisters have to go on a similarly calorie restricted diet to lose weight), and the fact that she was malnourished as a child (they didn’t have enough food to eat growing up and all the middle children were undersized for their age) play a roll.
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Several of my friends went on the HCG diet and lost weight very quickly…That’s a pregnancy hormone, they either get shots or use a sublingual…It’s tempting to try it when you see your friends looking great…But I’m nervous about using something that doesn’t belong in my body in order to lose weight…

Of course the diet itself is a starvation level of 500 calories a DAY! :eek: Supposedly, the HCG keeps you from feeling hungry all the time, while you basically starve yourself.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Several of my friends went on the HCG diet and lost weight very quickly…That’s a pregnancy hormone, they either get shots or use a sublingual…It’s tempting to try it when you see your friends looking great…But I’m nervous about using something that doesn’t belong in my body in order to lose weight…

Of course the diet itself is a starvation level of 500 calories a DAY! :eek: Supposedly, the HCG keeps you from feeling hungry all the time, while you basically starve yourself.
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It’s crazy what people do to themselves to lose weight now a days.

What ever happened to the old diet and exercise based on will power and healthy habits? Do people not have control over themselves anymore that they need all this crazy stuff?

It’s sad really…
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Several of my friends went on the HCG diet and lost weight very quickly…That’s a pregnancy hormone, they either get shots or use a sublingual…It’s tempting to try it when you see your friends looking great…But I’m nervous about using something that doesn’t belong in my body in order to lose weight…

Of course the diet itself is a starvation level of 500 calories a DAY! :eek: Supposedly, the HCG keeps you from feeling hungry all the time, while you basically starve yourself.
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:eek: uh yeah, I lost about 10-15lbs in a very short amount of time at the start of my current pregnancy. Because the hormones made me sicker than a dog, with major food aversions. So not only was I throwing up everything, but I didn’t want to eat anything, I also had trouble keeping down fluids like water, and water weight is actually a large chunk of your weight. (It then took me well into my second trimester to gain back those pounds). I don’t think I would ever voluntarily sign up for that misery if I was not getting a baby on the other side, (no matter how good my body looked). 😃
 
I completed C25K two summers ago with the plan to run a half-marathon this past February. I had a baby instead. :o

Because I was (and still am) overweight and not particularly athletic, I dropped running out of fear of doing harm to the baby so I had to start from square one once the doctor cleared me. In the meantime did a lot of walking. If there is a shopping mall near you, those are actually great places to do laps in. Many malls let people enter the building early and walk laps before the stores actually open. By the time I started running again I was walking an average of 3 miles each session…one time I went for 5 miles on a whim.

I also decided not to do C25K to get back in my groove again instead following more of a Jeff Galloway-style plan that I modify for my own needs. He’s a major advocate of the “walk break”. Interval training has been GREAT for me. I did start up a 10K spinoff of C25K but I noticed once I transitioned from a 5 min run/90 sec walk to a 6+ min run/60 sec walk, things really went downhill. Sure my running time increased but my overall speed was plummeting. For some reason that 5min/90sec seems to be just the magic interval for me right now. The extra 30 seconds of rest alone makes a huge difference in how I feel by the end of the following 5 minutes.

Set specific goals for yourself. Originally I wanted to prove to myself that I could run a mile, then three miles. Now it’s 6 miles. I just signed up for my first stinkin half-marathon in January. All of this is leading up to my ultimate bucket list item: running a full marathon in Disney World. I hope after that I’ll have caught the fever because that’s what’s getting me out the door each week. No one but my husband actually thinks I can do it (many think running the half will turn me off the idea) so that cranks my determination up to 11. You don’t have to run marathons. But regularly participating in local 5Ks can motivate you to be consistent.

I just got a iPhone and two apps in particular have been awesome for me. However there are no android version for either (sorry!)

iSmoothRun - Does everything I could possibly want for tracking my runs.

TempoMagicPro - Plays my music library at whatever BPM I tell it without sounding like chipmunks. Podrunner Intervals podcast worked so well for me to keep my pacing in check when I did C25K. I’m a former marching band kid. I’m trained to step to a beat. 😛 While I like electronic music I’m not a big fan of the more ambient stuff used in PRI. Being able to listen to whatever music I want at the speed I need just makes my running so much less of a chore. I’m slowly cranking up the BPM to get my feet moving faster. It’s working. 😃

For the Android users, Record Beater does the same thing AND you can program BPM intervals if you also want a fixed BPM for your walk breaks.

I don’t know if it applies to you…but it applied to me and it may apply to someone else…but don’t be discouraged if you’re slow. When you compete against yourself, it’s okay to be slow. “Running” isn’t a speed. “Fast” is a speed. Running is an action. A slow runner is still a runner. Even now I’m smashing my old 5K personal records and I still have yet to come across any runner who was slower than I. That’s the story of my life though. :o I spent most of my life thinking I was too slow to even bother starting.
 
Pfaffenhoffen said:
The arms motion are very comfortable to keep the balance.
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In my personal experience I have to agree. The arms are not just for show rather rather a result of letting them move with your body. It actually makes the faster walking easier when you don’t fight it (believe me, I tried…).
 
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