Just found this site and joined up

[teuthida]

Hello!  I somehow manged to find this place while searching through reddit and decided to give the 6 week challenges a try.

 

A little about me.

 

I'm going on 30 years old, female & I'm a stubborn, lazy person.  I'm very resistant to exercise.  On top of that, I have horrible eating habits.  When I was growing up I was one of those twig girls & constant comments about how thin I was made me eat and eat and eat and now that I'm getting older, it's definitely showing in weight and energy and pain levels.  About 3 years ago I tried to start changing this, but every attempt has been met with failure.  I will go about 1 or 2 months and then just...forget about exercise and diet.  My back hurts, my joints hurt and I can't run to save my life.

 

I have very limited access to exercise equipment.  I do EA Sports every so often, sometimes I bike, but that's about it.  I don't have money for a gym membership, but my brother does do weightlifting so I have access to that.

 

I also have a nasty habit of eating way too much bread.  I every time I have tried to even cut down on bread, I get angry throughout the day.   I'd really like to try the paleo diet, but I'm afraid I'd explode if I walked by a bakery.  I'm considering taking smalllllll steps in cutting back and eventually going paleo, but again, I'm afraid for my family's safety :-/

 

What I really, really want is just to be healthy.  I want to gain control of my eating habits and have a regular exercise routine.  I work as a veterinary assistant with cats, but someday I know I'll work with more animals and I need the strength and endurance to hold a rottweiler (or hell, work with something slightly smaller then that even!!).  I also love hiking and would love to be able to just...DO that.  At this point, brisk walks are a pain, let alone up the side of a mountain.

 

I have this past year had one victory to claim, which is quitting caffeinated drinks (except for decaff espresso, which yesssss I know contain caffeine, but believe me I was drinking maybe 2-3 times daily at times & it took over my life!).  So I'm holding onto that one victory in the hopes that it motivates me to do more.

 

Well...that's about it, it's nice to meet everyone!

[a2wd]

Way to go on cutting out the caffeine! Thats a hard one. Back in college I was addicted to Pepsi, and breaking it was HARD.

 

I feel ya on the back and joint pain. Sucks. I can't remember a time when my lower back didnt hurt. Have you gone to see a doctor about any of it? I definitely believe that getting fit will help (I'm working on that myself), but its always good to get checked out just to make sure theres nothing seriously wrong, ya know?

 

Baby steps. Good luck!

[Remoth]

If there is one thing that is very heavily promoted on here... its that you do not need exercise equipment. Body weight training is all you need. Something easily graspable with enough weight to be challenging (a dumbbell usually, but I've used my old guitar amp before) to do one arm rows with is all I've found you need. I've seen people use gallon jugs of milk for them as well. Squats, pushups, planks, one armed rows, step ups, hip raises, some cardio(walking, jogging). These are all that is needed. 

 

Getting off of caffeine is hard at first, but now I feel great without it. I sleep a good 8 hours every night, and can wake up at 8am on days off and not be tired. Went from 3-4 cans of pepsi a day to only when I have a drink (Rum/whiskey and coke).

 

My back used to hurt a fair bit too, but I started doing planks and one-armed rows, and it feels like a million bucks. After the first few days, I had a really nasty spasm in my back, but got that worked on and all is good!

[chris_de_maas]

Welcome!!!

Congrats on your caffeine victory! How did you manage to do it? Did you quit little by little or did you go cold turkey?

 

Remoth is right about the "no need for equipement" thing, body weight workouts work wonders! I've been doing them for almost 2 years and have gone from not being able to do a real pushup to being able to do quite a lot of clapping pushups/elevated pushups/one leg pushups/etc without stopping! Steve wrote a number of various bodyweight workouts that you can do from home. You can even tailor them to fit your level, just make sure you keep perfect form and keep track of everything you do (it is super important!)

 

Regarding the bread issue, try to cut it down slowly so your body and brain can get used to the lack of it and build a new normal without being overwhelmed. Let's say that you eat a full bread every day. Try to eat 3/4 of it instead for a week or two, then go down to half for a little while, then maybe alternate 1/4 and 1/2 a bread every second day until you feel comfortable going to 1/4 every day, etc all the way to the point when you get to eat maybe just 1/4 on weekends or twice a week, then to none at all without feeling the need to rip your family's head off!

Go slowly, step by step and you'll get there. Good luck!

[teuthida]

Wow, thanks for the replies!

 

As far as quitting coffee/caffeine, it was real tough.  I've pretty much tried to stop on/off for several years.  It really took a lot of work this time to just STAY off of it.  The worst for me wasn't the first few days, it was after.  Waking up and *wanting* it, but I replaced it with a very strong cinnamon herbal tea and haven't gone back since!

 

Also it helped that I used the flu as a starting point.  Nothing masks withdrawal symptoms like having...flu symptoms, lol.

 

I'm actually getting up the nerve to go to the doctor for my back pain because I just recently obtained insurance through my work, thankfully.  Ugh, but I hate going to human doctors, lol.

 

Thanks for the info on body weight workouts! I'll look into those and set up some time during the week to spend doing it.