Category: Weight Loss Exercise

Today I watched my first Oprah episode in years. The reason I watched Oprah?

Kirstie Alley was on to talk about her weight loss over the last year. It has been a pretty amazing year and between the media machine that Jenny Craig created and the media machine that is Oprah this was a very talked about event with Kirstie Alley showing up in a bikini and then getting interviewed while wearing a dress.

It was an interesting episode where Kirstie Alley was very forthcoming about how tough it was to lose weight the and get comfortable with herself as a 55 year old woman, actress, and all that she is at. Kirstie is 5 foot 8 and lost 75 pounds so she is now at 145 pounds.

The best quote of the show to me was that she never appreciated her body when she was 30. She says she would never appear on TV in a bikini then because she was too introverted. She says women never feel like they’re good enough, or thin enough, or pretty enough, but they are.

One very sad story to me, was a story about a woman that lost 170 pounds by having gastric bypass surgery to make her father love her.

As we all know gastric bypass surgery is very dangerous with close to half of all people getting the surgery dying within just a few years.

This story was a real painful one to watch as it really showed the lengths that women are willing to go to for acceptance in society.

I am blessed to have two crazy kids, well mostly blessed. My wife, Michelle, works on the weekends and I end up looking after the kids. When I first started looking after the little ones on the weekends I would make myself a big breakfast and then a smaller one for each of the kids. Did not work so well.

Kids tend to eat at their own pace and I was for a couple of weeks having these huge breakfasts of six eggs and four pieces of toast and even a couple of bowls of cereal. I learned fairly quickly to not cook breakfast for myself and just live off the remains of the kids.

Where does the human garbage can come from? Kids seem to have their own internal hanger clock, mine will snack a lot and eat small meals so as soon as I adjusted to that I was much better off. Before I adjusted to the kids weekend eating schedule I would eat whatever I prepared for them that they did not eat. Now I make decent sized meals (except breakfast) and whenever they are looking for a snack I just grab something out of the fridge for them to eat.

Parents are bad for being a human garbage can, constantly eating that little bit of food that the kids did not want, eating everything that is left and eating the leftovers in the fridge before they have gone bad. I have found that one of the best methods of feeding the kids is to make generic meals that they can eat over and over again although I always make sure to microwave to reheat only once….well I started doing that when my wife told me it was bad to reheat reheated food.

When do you workout? Let’s pretend that the time that you workout is irrelevent because I really do believe that it is. There are a few times that you can workout, morning, lunch, evening, and weekends. The real decision is based around your schedule and the stresses of the day. One thing is important though and that is that you should make sure that hte time that you workout is consistent so that it fits in as a part of your day instead of you just rying to fit it in.

Exercise in the morning. If you are going to workout in the morning you have one problem to deal with and that is tiredness, some people just are not morning people. This is a plan to try out and see how well it works though because you probably will not have any distractions and you really can get the workout in without something getting in the way, unless of course the alarm clock fails you.

Exercise at lunch. I used to have a gym in the building that I worked in and this was a really great way to get my workout in. I would go downstairs to the gym abd play squash or do cardio or get in a workout. Working out at work also allowed me to have built in workout partners from the office. This of course is only an option if you work bearby a gym but I like this option best.

Exercise in the evening. Evening workouts are the most popular I believe. There is this idea that you have dinner, sit around for an hour and then go to the gym. This is my least favorite workout time but for many people it is the best time. The real problem with evening workouts is that they take the place of your social life so it is very easy to socialize at the gym instead and also there are a lot of things that can go wrong with the day that will either cause you to miss your workout or have your workout suffer because of the day.

Exercise on weekends. I hope that you realize that you need 5 or 6 workouts a week but one of the nice things that you can do on the weekend is have extended workouts and exercise that have nothing to do with your regular schedule. In the summer you can do outdoor hiking or long runs or bike rides and in the Winter you can do indoor rock climbing, skiing or snowboarding.

As you can see when to exercise really does come down to what is most conveninet to you. If things are working out well right now then this is not important. If you are not consistent with your exercise then you should look at some other options so that you can get that consistentsy into your exercise and not have to try to just “fit it in”.