Ask Adrienne: Fitness

I’m answering questions about fitness this time for Ask Adrienne. So let’s get right to it!

Question: When you started your weight loss journey, how did you start exercising?

Answer I became a lover of exercise in my early 30s. When I moved to Sonoma County after my husband and I were engaged, he bought me a membership at one of the nicest health clubs in the area as a birthday gift. I loved it and I met many new friends in a morning aerobics class, who I am still close with 21 years later. I went to the club 5 days a week until the kids started to drive themselves to school (I always worked out after I dropped them off). Then in 2016, we turned our formal dining room into a gym. Bill and I have lots of different equipment and we both spend time exercising in there almost daily.

So if I had to start fresh, where would I begin?

I would create a low pressure exercise routine that works with my schedule, includes things I enjoy and know I can do, and is accessible to me when I want to do it. Here are some tips:

• Choose an exercise you’re familiar with – something you used to do, perhaps, or an exercise routine you saw on Instagram or YouTube that looks doable for your skill level. Don’t think too hard about it. Just do something simple and accessible – think living room floor, some music, your body and a few exercises you already know. The point here is to just begin.

• If you’re brand new to working out, make your goals for exercise small – as in teeny weeny. Set your timer for 5 minutes. That’s it. If you do 5 minutes, that’s fantastic. Good on you! If you do more than 5 minutes, that is awesome too but do not go overboard. You don’t want to injure yourself or get overly fatigued. That will make you less likely to want to continue an exercise program.

• Once you find exercises you enjoy, create a routine around those exercises that work for you and your schedule. Be consistent and I always recommend tracking your progress. I write down every exercise session I do in a calendar. When I see the calendar filled with days of exercise, I know I am making fitness strides!

• If you like to walk, take a brisk walk a few times a week. Start small and increase your distance and time as you get used to it. Consider supplementing walking with some weight bearing exercise sessions on your non-walk days. If you’re 50 or over, you may want to read this article about preventing muscle loss. It’s important to keep as much of our muscle mass as possible!

Chris Freytag’s Get Healthy U TV is a great online resource for a variety of exercise classes including weight training – with and without equipment. She offers both a monthly paid subscription and free classes. She also shares videos on her Facebook page and Instagram.

Other wonderful types of exercises I enjoy are yoga, Pilates, hiking and badminton when the weather is nice. Yoga With Adriene is my favorite for yoga instructor online. She has a beginners section if you’re new to yoga. It’s so great for flexibility, strength and your mood!

Question: How did you and Bill get on the road to weight loss and fitness together? Is one of you leading in matters like this and the other one comes along supportively? Or is it something you decide and implement together right from the start? How do you encourage each other or hold each other accountable, or do you?

Great question! Let’s start with the fitness portion.

We are grateful to have a home gym. It’s been the best investment for our health, especially during the pandemic. I have been using our home gym regularly since we converted our formal dining room into a gym back in 2016. Even when I was at my heaviest weight, I still worked out frequently.

I was the only one using the gym until this year. Bill finally came around and started joining me after Christmas. I gave him an Apple Watch as a Christmas gift and he’s been working out several times a week ever since. Who knew that’s all I had to do to get him to exercise with me?

We like to do different things in the gym which helps keep things simple. He uses his heavy bar bells outside and I use my lighter weights inside. We take turns using the Pilates reformer and the treadmill, though lately we’d rather be hiking in the sunshine than trudging along on a belt.

As far as accountability goes, we are accountable to ourselves more than anything. We both want to hit the goals we’ve set on our Apple Watches. Bill and I are goal-oriented so closing all the fitness rings is the main focus (the rings show recorded movement, exercise and standing up throughout the day).

We are congratulate each other via text for our workouts – even though we are in the next room or sometimes standing right next to each other. It’s kind of dorky but the positive reinforcement works. So I guess I have Apple Watches to thank for our fitness success!

I’d like to add that making it a fun thing that we “get to do” rather than a chore we “have to do” is helpful. Oh, and we compliment each other on the physical results too. I am always asking Bill to flex his biceps for me these days!

As far as weight loss goes, Bill also wanted to lose weight – not as much as I did but still 40 pounds is nothing to sneeze at! So he was willing to make lifestyle changes with me and be supportive too. He doesn’t do Noom like I do, but he does do intermittent fasting and loves it. Men have an annoying tendency to lose weight easier and faster than women. So he can eat much more than I do and still lose weight and he doesn’t need to count calories.

Thank you to the two readers who submitted these terrific questions! If you have a question you’d like to ask me about weight loss, fitness, minimalism, giving up alcohol or something else, just use my contact page and fill out the form or send me an email.

Adrienne