5 Steps to Start Exercising Successfully

Steph Wagner MS, RDN

October 17, 2016

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You know what’s missing on this website??

I don’t help you with exercise. And I know it.

I do exercise in my personal life but I’m not a great source of  knowledge about exercise. And, honestly, some days I’m not even that good at encouraging it.

Which is why I am SUPER excited to tell you that my dear friend and bariatric exercise physiologist has started her own website called BariCoach: Exercise and Bariatric Surgery. And you guys. This is GREAT NEWS. Renee just “gets it.” And while she is weird because she would prefer to spend her free time in a gym on a Friday afternoon…she knows that not everyone’s experience with exercise is such a positive one. But, she also knows how to coach someone through not only the actual physical side of doing an exercise…she knows how to coach you through a healthy relationship with exercise that makes you see how much better your life is with it.

{And if you’ve been on this site for long, I hope you’ve seen that my desire is the same with food. Creating a healthy relationship with food for the long-term.}

Renee recently posted this amazing blog with “5 Steps to Exercise Success” and it is incredibly practical and helpful. I seriously love #3 and can’t believe I’ve never thought of it before. It’s been super helpful for me to be honest about how much I’m exercising.

I’m looking forward to showcasing more and more exercise help through Renee and her heart to help you move your body and enjoy the experience of reaching goals you never knew you were capable of. {Insert warm fuzzy feelings here!!}

Here’s the beginning excerpt of her most recent post that you can read in it’s entirety here. 

5 Steps to Exercise Success
by BariCoach (Renee Horinek)

Exercise is important, especially if you are contemplating weight loss surgery. Getting started can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve seen patients go from zero exercise to an hour a day in a very short time. Below is a list of steps I hope will help you on your weight loss journey.

Start With What You Know.

If you can walk, then walk. If you have a bike, then ride. If you can swim, then get in the pool. The type of exercise you choose is not as important as simply starting. If you haven’t been exercising or have been inconsistent, then keep it simple.

Don’t enroll at the local boxing club (yet) because an in-shape friend said it’d be a great way to get into shape. Before we can run, we have to walk. Before we can walk, we have to crawl. Before we can crawl, we learn how to throw a punishing right hook. Nope.

The first goal of a fitness program should be to improve your endurance, which is another way of saying you can move more than you could before. This requires that you consistently challenge yourself to the same movements and for longer periods of time. It shouldn’t necessarily be movement that is foreign to you at the onset.

If the farthest you normally walk is a quarter-mile distance from the parking lot to your office, then start by walking half a mile, but on a regular basis. If you intentionally walked an extra half a mile every day, you’d be doing more than what you were doing before, and that’s a victory.

Our bodies respond well to consistency. Walking a mile a day will eventually turn into walking two miles a day, which will turn into walking three miles a day, which is only a squirtle’s distance away from walking the vaunted 5K. While it is important to progress exercise into more challenging activities, just remember you have to start before you can finish….{READ MORE}

2 thoughts on “5 Steps to Start Exercising Successfully”

  1. Looking at doing the surgery.
    Then the steps to take to my next adventure in life.

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