pretext:
I'm male, 35, 5'10, and currently 260lbs
I was in a car accident several years ago and it messed up my back (split disks at L3&4 causing pinched nerves, and an injury to S3 which I don't remember atm), which caused my weight to balloon, and for me to lose a huge amount of muscle as my activity levels cratered. One year ago at this time, I was about 334 lbs and I was not able to do any significant level of physical activity without great stress and pain.
Last year we had a few large snowfalls and without the funds to buy a snowblower that left my wife doing nearly all the shoveling, which was very hard on her. It caused me a lot of emotional pain to watch her have to do that by herself, when it was something that I really should have been able to do at my age, and was something I had agreed to take ownership of when we got married.
That along with several other factors (being put on blood pressure meds) were huge motivating factors for me to get my life and health in order.
Since May I've gone from 330 -> 260 through CICO, and strengthening workouts 2-4x per week, 1 hour per day. I've put extra emphasis on my legs, core, and cardio to support my back and help with my endurance. The past couple weeks have been a major win for me as I've been able to fully shovel out our driveway with no pain (other than general soreness/tiredness from the exertion) and without needing to stop and rest at any point during the process. I really cannot state the massive massive improvements to my physical well-being and quality of life, despite still being obese, and another 70-80lbs from my ultimate goal weight.
For me personally I started out by working with a personal trainer for the accountability, help with building out a workout routine to strengthen my back without damaging it more, and to build better habits. I mostly knew what to do around CICO and food, but I was incredibly anxious about the exercise and afraid of further injuring my back. Now I'm mostly flying on my own with an established routine and continuing to make progress. The pain from staying in my previous state is so much worse than the super occasional flare ups I still have, and when it flares it's usually related to sleeping on it awkwardly or something, much much much less frequent from physical exercise.
For the details on the improvements as well as what I found to be the best/most helpful workouts:
- Details -
I cannot really stress enough how incapable of physical exertion I was when I started this journey in May. Walking about 4-5 minutes at a slow pace would have my back in excruciating pain, shooting down my legs, and causing me to have to stop and rest for several minutes. Anything like lifting weights, moving heavy objects, shoveling, etc was pretty much completely out of the question. Not only would I be winded after a minute or two at most, if I pushed past that I would have the excruciating back pain shooting down my legs shortly after.
- Best workouts - General/full-body: squats (with/without weights), dead lifts, medicine ball slams, burpees, and one of the best IMO is combining multiple different workouts from any of these groups into a HIIT (high intensity interval training) routine.
Leg: Split squats, leg press, calf raises, walking lunges, and leg extensions
Core/back: Lat pulldowns, feet-hand pass offs, bosu ball split squats, crunches/situps, back extension, and oblique lifts
my general advice/tips for anyone that nervous about starting or concerned about injuring yourself would be:
1) if you can afford it, find a personal trainer you gel with to work with things on. Even if it's only a short term thing, they can give valuable insight into things you're doing wrong, correct your form so you don't get injured, etc. In my case it also helped with accountability so I could build good habits.
2) Go slow. With each exercise, it's important you get your form right and do each motion slowly and purposefully. When lifting, doing squats, etc aim for 10-12 reps with slow and purposeful movements. It's not a race, and your muscles will get a much better workout going anyway.
3) starting out especially, or if you're very heavy, do low-impact exercises. A brisk walk is way better on your knees than running. If you want to get a jogging pace going, use an elliptical or bike. Focus on building muscle in your core and legs to support your body more, and don't worry so much about doing cardio exercises right away. Just going at a decent pace with body-weight or light-weight exercises will get your HR up into the cardio zone.
4) starting is hard, but there is no special trick or cure for it. You have to find something that works for you and just force yourself to do it. For me, that meant I had to get out of my house and find someone to keep me accountable (a PT for me). Once you start feeling the differences in your ability to move, walk, lowered pain, etc it will become a positive reinforcing feeling and be much easier to keep going, but there's no magic pill to get to this point. The first couple weeks are going to suck balls, but the improvements in movement and pain happen pretty quickly and start getting noticeable around the 2-3 week mark.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/zu9tpj/nsv_i_was_able_to_shovel_my_driveway_with_no/
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