Contrary
to popular belief, exercising to lose weight and to stay healthy is not a new
idea. Folks have been promoting exercise since I was a kid six decades
ago. President Eisenhower established the President's Council on Youth Fitness
on July 16, 1956 with a committee recommendation that all Americans be state
mandated to exercise.
Most of
us from 1956 on engaged and continue to engage in physical fitness endeavors.
Go Baby Boomers! Unfortunately, America has been on a slow learning curve
regarding how much and what kind of exercise is needed to maintain
health. More was always thought to be better. On this curve, I
depended on a ridiculous amount of exercise and starvation to maintain a
semblance of normalcy for most of my adult life. Many of my friends, who
don’t have lipedema, also used over-exercising, particularly
running, to maintain their vast calorie intake and at the same time to
remain thin. All of us, male and female, thin and fat, over the age of
50, have reached the same conclusion. We have had to relearn, rethink,
and rebuild our exercise plans to compensate for our bodies’ aging process.
Doing lots of exercise is great until your first serious injury occurs or your
worn-out knees finally refuse to be abused. Everyone who depends on
over-exercising to maintain weight is one twisted ankle away from total collapse
of his/er way of life. I know. I and most of my friends have been
there. My best skinny friend, ran 5 miles a day for years. In her
mid-50’s, her back wore out. She had disc surgery and then rotor cuff
surgery. She then moved to low impact swimming and bicycling 20 miles a
day in order to eat all of the sugary desserts, pastas, and rolls she
wanted. Her back went out again and her leg with it. Now she can no
longer ride her bicycle and she is a Joan Osborn cliche: Just like us because
she used exercise to maintain an unhealthy lifestyle until her body gave out.
Food intake and exercise are not synonymous. The reason compulsive
exercise is not okay is because you don’t get to the finish line with it…ever…
and then you still have to learn to eat what your body needs.
The same
day you learn that you have lipedema, you learn there are only two things that
medical professionals agree on about lipedema. You learn that you cannot
exercise or diet your lipedema fat away and you learn that you must continue to
diet and exercise to maintain what health you have. You also learn on every
site about lipedema that exercise MUST be low impact. This is logical since our
knees are often damaged and worn away from puberty onward with hyper mobility
and connective muscle tissue that does not properly protect our joints.
So what
are low impact exercises? Generally, they are walking, cycling, rowing,
swimming, and elliptical training. Running is not on the list. Now
to really blow our minds, some exercise gurus are beginning to agree that
exercising is fun, if that’s what you like to do, but it doesn’t do much for
weight loss beyond a given point. Two experts, British medical doctor Michael
Mosley and Australian exercise physiologist and associate professor at
University NSWS, Steve Boucher agree that limited, targeted exercise 3 times a
week is best. Mosley recommends intensity exercise bursts of 20 second
intervals for one minute, three times a week to increase aerobic fitness and
ability to process glucose. Boutcher’s clinical trial concludes 20 minutes of
intense pedaling on an exercise bike three times a week is the best exercise
for good health. He says:
"Diets do not work in the long term for the great majority of people; the stuff we want to lose is the stuff we can't feel - it's devilish," Boutcher says, “of the insidious visceral fat that surrounds our organs but doesn't always protrude externally as a worrisome girth."
He suggests that removing
stress and sleeping better are just as important as exercise and diet in
maintaining weight1.
Of course, every article I read while researching for this blog suggests
that walking at a good clip is the best exercise for everyone. For me, even my
walking days are over thanks to my compulsive, high impact exercising, but I
still exercise, because when I stopped walking well, I was taught by a physical
therapist to exercise every day before I get out of bed. I target the
areas I want to exercise, tighten my muscles for ten seconds in those areas and
then release. Belly, thigh, knee, full body presses: tighten and release
You can do leg lifts, stretches, and side rolls. You can sit at your
computer, lean back slightly and exercise your butt and upper legs, ten count,
release, and then take a deep slow breath in and out. You can move any
muscle in your body, including your heart to increase cardio-vascular strength
via deep breathing and yoga techniques. You just tighten your target muscles
the count of 5 and release, repeat 3 times and move on. It gives the same
return as regular exercise because these intense bursts release glucose
effectively and they aid NO (Nitric Oxide) production and flow, which is nectar
for the muscles.
You don’t need to push body weight down, around and over your muscles to
properly exercise them, and now, apparently, this no/low impact exercise also
helps you to lose weight. You can gain the same results on low impact and keep
your body intact into old age, something I wish I had been told in time.
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