Activity: Aerobic & Strength

[playdough125]

Week 1 and I am going on holiday :/ am in two minds to postpone diet till I get back or just power through it and just making more healthy/aware choices as we go along...?

Anyway - I have 2 small children always running under my feet until nap time in afternoon where I get 30mins or a lovely 2hrs to myself (don't get me wrong, I worship the ground my children walk on and the best noise ever in the world is their laughter - the worse is silence when they are not asleep as trouble is brewing lol but I do enjoy my 'me time') so I have recorded a million and one fitness programmes on my Sky box from Fab TV like Kim Kardashian's Fit in your Jeans by Friday, Amy Childs Fit in 30 to Beach Babe Tone It Up/Surfer Girl Series and then the les active Ballet Fitness & Ballet Yoga with Nicky McGinty or Walking for Weightless...

But my main question is: what is Aerobic and what is Strength? As I read through the PDF files for Week 1 on my email it shows me a example diary that strength is gardening but all I have in my garden are Trees I am trying to clip back which I don't think will be enough...

Thank you if you managed to continue reading through my nonsense and leave me a comment

[tootsiepops]

Hi, Aerobics, otherwise known as cardio, are excercises that raise your heartbeat, examples of cardiovascular/aerobic exercise are medium to long distance running/jogging, swimming, cycling, and walking. Strengthening are exercises using weights. eg, dumb bells, kettle bells etc.

Starting a diet while on holiday will be extrememly hard to do, as you will be faced with too mmany temptations. Enjoy your holiday and start your diet when you come back, when it will be easier to adjust to a new eating regime..

[GoogleMe]

You are not 'starting a diet', you are starting a better way of life and that works best if you do it right now. However, there merits to easing yourself into it rather than postponing it and starting bam, straight after a week or two of 'excess', and your plan of spending this holiday week relaxing and making some good choices rather than trying to calorie count or do a defined amount of exercise sounds good. Much depends on the sort of holiday you are on and why you weigh more than is good for you.

I'm not personally convinced by airbrushed celebrity exercise programmes although it has the merit of being able to do it at home in your living room (if you can find any floor space with small children!) If you enjoy them and find them motivating, that's great but I suspect they are bad for many women's self esteem (I did try one a good many years ago but I found it somewhat offputting because I really do not even want to look the way the person demonstrating did)

Random Acts of Fitness are good. My current (as in starting two and a half years ago) fitness programme started with parking further away from the entrance to the supermarket and walking briskly to and from.

I do 5-10 minutes yoga every morning in the bathroom (based on things I have learned from Eckhart Yoga on YouTube) The NHS provide a 5 week programme of podcasts called Strength and Flexibility which you can do at home (there's a forum on HealthUnlocked for it)

Good luck and enjoy!

[Windswept1]

nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/...

Lots of information on this part of the website and you don't need any special equipment. Aerobic can include very brisk walking as well, as long as it gets you slightly out of breath. I used to count gardening as strength when I was doing a lots of heavy digging and shifting rocks. you are correct, a bit of light pruning will not count :-).

It may be difficult with the children but c25k is brilliant.

You could use your holiday as a time to start reducing portion sizes and making healthier choices without counting calories until you get back. Maybe you will get more time to exercise as well?

Anyway good luck & enjoy hols.

[cloudstrife]

I would say anything that uses weight (including your own) to exercise counts as strength this means the obvious ie using actual weights but also things like squatting and lunges. Sit ups, pull ups and press ups also count, I should think gardening wise it would refer to digging and weeding of pushing mower. So I would guess you might have to find something else on top of tree pruning, could try stair step ups too they are supposed to be good for toning butt not that I can say you will end up Kardashian-ish!

[margrete]

Aerobic means burning up oxygen (to put it simply) and it strengthens your heart. You need to make the heart beat faster. Strength is using your muscles, heavy work (to put it simply).

When I had 2 small children I was the slimmest I've ever been, but then, life was different then. Making a phone call meant loading them into a push-chair and walking half a mile to the nearest phone box. I think I did both aerobic and strength in those days!

I don't know the people you name, but remember, it's likely they will have been paid a lot to find out what you can get for free on here.

Coming back from France on the ferry a couple of days ago, there was a little lad there - maybe about 18 months old - who never stopped running. So his mum and his auntie were on their feet all the time rescuing him from all the places he was trying to get to. He was like a wind-up toy and it reminded me that littlies can keep going non-stop and then suddenly run out of steam, fall asleep in the middle of the floor or wherever they happen to be. Being a mum is energetic, and that uses both aerobic and strength.

[Acorn2many]

Aerobic is where you get heart rate up and get puffed out. Fast walk, run, skip etc. strength is body conditioning exercises that tone - free weights, sit ups, squats etc