How to get started with an exercise and nutrition regimen
It's worth it, I promise
There is a remarkable amount of bullshit about starting a fitness regimen in both the mainstream media and on social media. Normies must find it overwhelming.
I was reminded of this recently when I thought about getting into gardening (my inner 20-year-old self died while writing that sentence), and did a quick google. So much information, that I immediately closed all my tabs. Especially after I saw a man suggesting that you piss in a bottle in your garden shed and then use said item as a hand warmer when gardening in winter??????
Fitness is even worse. If you follow social media fitness you will see diametrically opposed opinions on the same subject within a one-minute scroll.
So in this post I want to add my suggestions for embarking on an exercise and nutrition regimen with a view to changing something about yourself that you want to change, because there aren’t already enough of these posts online.
Step one: what’s your goal?
The worst thing you can do with exercise is just drift along, especially if you don’t particularly like exercise. Do you know why, in fact, you’re dragging yourself up a Stairmaster while watching a muted This Morning in an overcrowded gym?
“Feeling fitter” is fine as a vague target but my advice to you is to refine it and I mean at the micro level:
Do you want to be able to go up that hill without feeling winded?
Do you want to be able to carry bags of shopping further?
Do you want to improve your blood sugar levels?
Do you want to have a perkier bum?
A note about weight-based goals: virtually every client I have ever had has wanted to lose weight, and it’s fine as a goal. But it’s a slow process, often dispiriting, and as a result it’s very easy to fall off when you get discouraged.
The antidote to this is to have another goal or two running in tandem e.g. getting a push-up or running a 5k or eating a better breakfast at least 5 times per week. Also: in sedentary people who do not exercise at all the weight loss/pleasant body shape change sometimes takes care of itself as they get on with their workouts (as long as they are not completely wilding out with dietary choices).
Step two: assess where you are currently
Do this before you change anything.
Keep an honest food diary for three-four days. Include in it what you ate, how hungry you were when you ate it, and what kind of mood you were in at the time. Try to identify patterns in your eating.
If you think you don’t have time for exercise, keep a time diary.
How’s your sleep? If it’s crap, start assessing possible causes.
(Lack of sleep affects everything and improving it gives you a superpower. A middle aged superpower but still a superpower).
You might want to take full body pictures of yourself, and continue to take monthly pictures after you’ve started your exercise and nutrition regimen. These pictures will show you changes that you can’t see yourself.
Measure your waist and write down the measurement somewhere. Especially if you are overweight and/or have a long-term condition such as diabetes. I’ll come back to the importance of this in a future post.
Step three: how are you going to reach your goal?
If you know nothing about exercise or nutrition then my suggestion is to hire a coach, or use a decent workout template (there are tons online these days, of wildly varying quality).
Good exercise doesn’t need to be in a gym and can take many forms. But it should be the most efficient route to your goal. If you want to get stronger than doing this solely by taking up jogging is a stupid idea. Pilates is not the best way to develop aerobic fitness. Powerlifting is a terrible choice for becoming more flexible. The body adapts in a very specific way to a specific stimulus.
If you don’t know the answer to what exercise does what, hire someone who does. It will make a huge difference to your progress.
Important: the biggest mistake people make is doing too much, too soon. This results in at best them losing interest and at worst an injury. If the most physical exertion you have experienced in a decade is stopping yourself from falling that time the bus made an emergency stop, now may not be the best time to start parkour.
Step four: what obstacles will you face and how will you deal with them?
A crucial step. The biggest obstacle to you not reaching your goal is yourself. You will dig deep into your soul for reasons not to exercise. You will sabotage yourself with negative thinking. You will allow the smallest inconveniences to justify why you won’t do what you planned to do.
This isn’t to shame you because I do it too. Everyone does. Exercise isn’t always fun, the gym can be a drag. Life is overwhelming. The world is spiralling out of control so what’s the point, etc.
You will have to prioritise to some extent your exercise and your nutrition to make any real progress, that’s just the way it is, there are no shortcuts. But this is where steps one and two come in. If you’ve worked out a meaningful goal, that should at least be enough to keep you going until you gain some momentum, and might even propel you through the times when you just cannot be arsed. And if you’ve done a good assessment of where you were when you started, you’ll know that you come home from work knackered and hungry, and stuff anything into your mouth. How will you deal with that?
How will you deal with days when your childcare plan falls through and you can’t make it to the gym? What alternative home exercise plan do you have?
Step five: how will you measure progress?
This is entirely dependent on your goal, but some ideas include:
Weight (note that this is a proxy for better, but more expensive, ways of measuring fat mass changes, which is ultimately what we are trying to assess. Standing on the scales measures the entirety of you and this includes water weight and poo sitting in your gut. It should not be relied on in isolation to measure progress).
Body circumference measurements, in particular, waist measurements
How your clothes fit
Your blood glucose levels if you have diabetes or pre-diabetes
Your blood pressure readings if you have hypertension
Your triglyceride levels
The weight you’re lifting going up in the gym
How less shattered you feel going up that hill
Sleep improvement
Your mood generally
That’s about it. There is a further, future step, which is to think about how you will maintain your results once you have them. But that’s a behemoth of a topic and not for today.
I’m an online personal trainer and enjoy working with people who frankly just cannot with exercise. Especially people with diabetes, hypertension etc. If this interests you email me hicoachcarr@gmail.com