How much exercise?

CarMe

Hi all,
firstly Im a 24yr old female-not sure if you'll need this info- i had a baby almost a year ago and instead of shifting the baby weight, i added to it while on maternity leave id rather avoid saying my weight if i can get away with it.
Only recently I've kind of copped on and gotten into the right headspace and Im eating great and exercising and have lost a stone and a half- delighted! I still have a fair bit to go but I've also recently rekindled my absolute love of swimming so my question is this,
if i swim, lets say three times a week now and lose the rest of the weight, will i need to carry that on to maintain the weight loss or should i maybe start at once a week- i also do aerobics once a week- lose a bit more, then up it as my weight comes down?
Any advice would be brilliant thanks!

MagicMirror

It's more to do with your diet rather than anything else. Think about it this way, you ate more and gained additional weight. You're 'eating great' now and have lost weight.

The swimming will help, but it won't do much unless you're a professional swimmer or something. Swimming just isn't the best aerobic activity for most people in terms of cals burned/time spent.

It would help to know how much weight you reckon you have to lose and also if you could give an example of 'eating great'. There are probably a few more small changes you could make to your diet that would contribute to your weight loss.

What you're doing is working it seems though, so by all means stick with it, but if you want to ramp it up a bit I'd look at more exercise and fine tuning your diet a bit more. The diet that helps you lose weight at 13stone won't work in the same way at 9stone.
(just an example)

Well done so far

Canis Lupus

Losing, maintaining and increasing weight is simply down to calories and calories used. If you eat loads and sit on your bum then weight goes on. If you exercise to burn off what you eat you maintain and obviously if you exercise and burn off more than you put in you lose weight.

When you first get into exercising you will lose lots at the start and then you'll tend to plateau and diet becomes more important however I don't necessarily see it as a healthy option to look towards decreasing your exercise levels once you reach a certain goal weight assuming I've understood you correctly.

BTW I strongly disagree with the above about needing to train professionally for swimming to be of benefit. It's a great way to get fit never mind additional benefits like being low impact and more importantly if you love doing something you're more likely to stick with it. There's one caveat If you're one of those people that breaststroke with head out of the water and take 5 mins to do a length without breaking a sweat then it's not going to be of massive benefit. You get out what you put in. Best of luck.

EDIT: To answer the other question a bit more... Exercise should be a part of life :P One aerobics class a week just won't cut it to stay fit. You should look at 3 hours minimum a week be that cycling, aerobics, running, and in particular weights if you have access to a gym are fab at losing and keeping off the pounds.

MagicMirror

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Losing, maintaining and increasing weight is simply down to calories and calories used. If you eat loads and sit on your bum then weight goes on. If you exercise to burn off what you eat you maintain and obviously if you exercise and burn off more than you put in you lose weight.

When you first get into exercising you will lose lots at the start and then you'll tend to plateau and diet becomes more important however I don't necessarily see it as a healthy option to look towards decreasing your exercise levels once you reach a certain goal weight assuming I've understood you correctly.

BTW I strongly disagree with the above about needing to train professionally for swimming to be of benefit. It's a great way to get fit never mind additional benefits like being low impact and more importantly if you love doing something you're more likely to stick with it. There's one caveat If you're one of those people that breaststroke with head out of the water and take 5 mins to do a length without breaking a sweat then it's not going to be of massive benefit. You get out what you put in. Best of luck.

I didn't say it would be of zero benefit. But for a normal swimmer, a 20min sprint/or circuit training complex would burn more calories than 20mins in the pool. I'm looking at it from a bang for your buck perspective, i.e. the most she can get out of her time spent.

CarMe

Thanks a million for the replies, really appreciate them.
I know the majority is down to calories and nutrition but i have that sorted- i know there's always room for improvement Im not saying i know everything, Im following a good plan by a good dietition i trust so at the moment Im just looking for advice on the exercise bit-
The reason Im asking about how much exercise is because i have quite a bit more weight left to lose, Im worried if i swim say three times a week from now and lose a stone lets say, then to lose another stone I'll have to do it 4 times a week and so on.
Does that make sense? It's not that i want to do as little as possible it's actually that Im itching to get into the pool as much as possible but Im worried that in the long term that might go against me in weight loss terms? Or should i just ""dive in" heh and start as i mean to go on?
Thanks again

Stench Blossoms

What will more than likely happen is that you'll stop losing weight after awhile.

It's called a plateau.

You'll either need to change around your diet and/or change around your exercise routine.