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The OP is 64 years old, overweight and just starting out exercising. Advising them to "up the intensity" is terrible advice and will only lead to injury or them giving up. Upping the intensity is for people who have been exercising a long time and are fit enough to accomplish this.
The OP should continue walking at whatever pace they feel comfortable at. If it's slow, it's slow, they're a beginner. Their goal is to avoid injury and slowly increase the duration of their walking.
Agreed. Its good to get to know the natural ebb and flow of weight and weight loss too. If you never watched it before and now you do the flux can make you think something is wrong when everything is just going as it should be.
Every time you bloat up 10 lbs are you are going to drive yourself nuts trying amp it up to a new level and harsher dietary restrictions? That is not a healthy thought process for anyone. That is what people with eating disorders do. You can develop an eating disorder at any age. Excessive purges of the system are what bulimics do. And the raw rub of that is those habits usually leave you fat or fatter because its not a sustainable pace or healthy habit.
The OP is 64 years old, overweight and just starting out exercising. Advising them to "up the intensity" is terrible advice and will only lead to injury or them giving up. Upping the intensity is for people who have been exercising a long time and are fit enough to accomplish this.
The OP should continue walking at whatever pace they feel comfortable at. If it's slow, it's slow, they're a beginner. Their goal is to avoid injury and slowly increase the duration of their walking.
"Walking faster" is different for everyone. OP is walking 2 miles. A good distance. This might take anywhere from 30-50 minutes for the OP.
Pushing a little bit harder for a short period of time is good for everyone in my book, and makes it easier to go further. And there is quite a lot of evidence that going a little harder is better than going longer. Over time, the average pace will increase, allowing the OP to cover more miles in the same time.
Let's say your "easy pace" is 2.2mph. And pushing a little harder is 2.4mph *(About 10% faster). This works is a good progression. With more time, your "easy pace" will increase from 2.2 to 2.4, and your "fast" will increase to 2.7. You don't have to jump from 2mph to 8mph. Or go from walking to sprinting.
Your BP is good and I assume that you're otherwise feeling o.k. Not short of breath, not pushing yourself too hard on the treadmill, etc.
If you are counting WW points and exercising you shouldn't be gaining that much weight unless you are way off on how many points you can have. And since you've done WW, I think you would be well aware if you were eating 7000 extra calories a week (2 pounds per/wk).
So my guess is, you are retaining water. If so, watch your salt intake and be sure to drink lots of water. Sometimes you gain a little when you first start exercising.
are we pretending as if walking has actually caused the OP to gain 10lbs?
Im not pretending squat. But 10 lbs is a normal bloat from exercise or natural weight variation. I am entertaining possible reasons with the information at hand.
The bloating from exercise is a under discussed topic. So is normal weight fluctuation. This situation is exactly why I think that diet blurb of only weighing in 1x a week or 1x a month is stupid. More data means a more accurate way to find the reason for the scale hopping up.
A trainer once told me that some of that weight gain comes from all of those new capillaries that are branching out to support those new muscles that you are building. And those muscles that you are building are the engines that will burn the fat off of your body.
If you have an appropriate caloric intake and exercise program, you're fine.
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Any FAST change in weight is always due to water retention, whether it be from exercise bloat or increased sodium intake.
It's common for people to increase their salt intake on diets, because you're switching to less tasty foods which are made better by increasing salt - the idea being that salt has no calories. So Pam might be loading up on broths or soups, which have way more sodium that you might think (far more than chips or nuts). In addition, when people are under stress from dieting, their body releases stress hormone which cause some bloating, particularly from exercise.
There's only so much weight gain from that. Eventually you will start losing more fat than the bloating will increase it. You might gain 10 from that now, but you might lose 50 lbs of fat from the dieting in a year's time.
IMPORTANT: exercise doesn't reduce fat nearly as much as reducing calories. You'd have to exercise frantically for many hours to lose the calories gained by a cheeseburger and fries.
Calorie control is most important but individual so that you have to experiment to see what's best for you. A good starting point for a 300 lb person trying to reach 140 lbs would be maybe 1200 calories per day. When your weight is stabilized from the sodium gains, you should expect to become more slender at a safe rate of about one lb per week. Much more than that, and you would trigger off too many stress hormones.
Im not pretending squat. But 10 lbs is a normal bloat from exercise or natural weight variation. I am entertaining possible reasons with the information at hand.
The bloating from exercise is a under discussed topic. So is normal weight fluctuation. This situation is exactly why I think that diet blurb of only weighing in 1x a week or 1x a month is stupid. More data means a more accurate way to find the reason for the scale hopping up.
10lbs is a little high for normal weight variation not unless the person is obese.
How do your pants fit around the waist? If they are OK around the waist can the weight gain be from increased leg muscle? Were you eating more as a result of being hungrier from working out? Did your food choices or food intake change?
I think that's whats going on. If you eat more just because you're working out, you're defeating the purpose.
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Eat less
