Reducing your waistline will make a huge difference to how comfortable you feel while working and reduce the risks of overstraining muscles and ligaments in your body. Reducing your waistline isn’t just about losing weight; it’s also about becoming fitter and healthier. When it comes to reducing your waistline, these simple tips can help.
Today, I have an article for you if you have more than 20 plus pounds to lose and how to get started on an exercise program.
Often I get emails from readers saying a lot of the exercises you recommend are too hard for me and what I should do.
Here you go.
Cameron Makarchuk will show you how to get going on your weight loss program.
Enjoy!
Rick Kaselj
The type of clients you’ll typically see coming into my studio is not naturally athletic. They are not the ones who normally enjoy going to the gym. These people (maybe like you) have been very heavy most of their lives – if not their entire lives.
People who are 20-120+ pounds – or more – overweight have difficulty doing things other people find easy.
Things like walking up a few flights of stairs or bending over to tie their shoes.
Along with these seemingly simple tasks, when you’re carrying that much extra weight, you’re also tempting fate in a much more dangerous way – your health.
I’m not talking about your overall health, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease. That’s obvious, and your local Doc probably tells you that every six months at your checkup.
I’m talking about your bone and joint health. The bones and joints that enable you to move around and complete the tasks of your everyday life.
Without healthy bones, joints, and strong muscles, you’re left either with a walker (as some of my clients are when they come to me) or, worse, in a wheelchair for most of your life.
If you don’t already have it, think about what it would be like to have constant pinching in your lower back, making it hard to even get out of bed – or get into bed, for that matter.
Carrying even an extra 50+ pounds around your waistline puts an enormous amount of stress on your lower back, potentially leading to back pain. Your spine is very good at handling vertical loads, but something has to give up when you start carrying that weight out in front of you. That’s not how your spine – or the muscles supporting it – was designed to work.
Start with the Basics: Nutrition and Exercise
A healthy diet is a foundation for reducing your waistline. This means eating three balanced meals daily and snacking only on healthy foods. Excess weight is often the result of eating too many calories from foods high in fat and sugar. A healthy diet includes eating: whole grains, pulses, fruits, vegetables, fish, and low-fat dairy foods. This can be achieved by following the Mediterranean diet, which has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.
Exercising regularly can help you lose weight and keep weight off. Exercise can also help reduce your waistline and improve your strength and stamina. Reduce waistline exercises include squats, crunches, lunges, and planks. Take a 10-minute walk every day, and you can add an extra two miles to your weekly workout.
How do your knees feel daily when you’re out walking around? How about when you try to bend your knees to sit back in a chair?
Take care of your body by strengthening your muscles.
Weight training can help reduce your risk of injury and improve your posture. Lifting weights is one of the best ways to strengthen your muscles, particularly your core. Many types of exercise use weights, including squats and lunges. These exercises can strengthen your core and reduce your waistline while helping to reduce your risk of injury and back pain. If you don’t enjoy lifting weights and prefer to exercise less structured way, try yoga. Yoga can help you improve your posture, reduce stress, and strengthen your muscles.
If you’re like my clients, you probably have a hard time with that because:
- The extra fat around your knees makes it hard – if not impossible – to bend them enough to sit down properly
- The weight you carry around every day has put so much pressure on your knees that the ligaments holding them together are constantly strained.
So what do you do?
Well, number 1 is to get that weight off your body.
But how? It hurts when you move. Where do you start when everything hurts?
First, you could start with Rick’s programs on this site, Exercises For Injuries (this is where I come for my injury advice).
I like to give my clients ONE thing to focus on each week, so here’s my advice:
1. Reducing Your Waistline By Getting Your Nutrition Dialed In First
This is the most important because depending on how much extra weight you carry. The process will be much easier if you can get some of it off before starting a training program.
Even if you can barely walk because you’re in so much pain, you can still change your eating habits and lose a good portion of the weight.
Start with simple things like eating protein with every meal or basing your meals around lean meats and vegetables.
If you’re 100 pounds or more overweight, this is a MUST before you start doing too much training.
Even something as simple as walking can lead to more pain when you’re carrying that much weight.
If you’re more around the 50 pounds overweight mark and relatively pain-free at the moment, this is still important to do first, but you can move to #2 sooner.
2. Start Slow – Don’t Try To Break Any World Records
When you have massive weight to lose and are hurting all of the time, it will take some time to get you moving forward again.
This could mean starting with something as simple as walking outside for 20-30 minutes daily on your lunch break.
Try to walk on grass or dirt, avoid walking on concrete if possible, and don’t overdo it. Concrete is awful on your joints when you’re healthy, not when carrying an extra 50-150 pounds around.
3. Get A Structured Training Program
This is going to be the key to your massive weight loss and how you’re going to be able to stay pain-free and injury-free for the rest of your life – unless you do something stupid 😉
A well-designed, progressive training program must help you lose fat carry less weight, and develop stronger muscles. Hence, you have an easier time carrying your weight and increasing your metabolism so you can keep the fat off for the rest of your life.
They say, “There are many ways to skin a cat,” which is true here too. But there’s also the best way – my way.
My clients do a combination of strength training and metabolic training. Typically with two dedicated strength training and 1-2 dedicated metabolic training (i.e., “cardio”) days. The rest of their week is filled with just staying active with some light, fun activity they enjoy.
A typical strength training day for someone who is just starting and still very overweight might look like this:
STRENGTH WORKOUT A
1A. Push Up Position Plank, hands-on bench/counter – 2 x 10-60 seconds
1B. Horizontal Cable Rotations – 2 x 10 on each side
2A. Bodyweight Squat – 3 x 15
2B. Single Arm Dumbbell Row – 3 x 15 on each side
2C. Cross Body Shoulder Stretch – 3 x 20 seconds each
3A. Supine Single Leg Hip Extension – 3 x 15 each leg
3B. TRX Hands Elevated Push Ups – 3 x 15
3C. TRX Chest Stretch – 3 x 30 seconds
4. Jumping Jacks – 6 x 20 seconds WORK 40 seconds REST
And one of their metabolic training workouts might look like this:
METABOLIC WORKOUT A
Complete as many rounds of this circuit as possible in 12 minutes, resting only as needed:
- Seal Jacks x 25
- Prisoner Reverse Lunges x 8 each leg
- Push Ups x 8
- Jump Squats/Total Body Extensions x 15
- Mountain Climbers x 10 each
That’s just an example, but you get the point.
The key to reducing your risk of injuries when you’re 20+ pounds or more overweight is first getting some of the weight off so you can move better and then second, developing a strong body that is better equipped to handle the stresses you put on it every day.
Cameron Makarchuk is the best-selling author, master transformation coach, and founder of BOOM BodyShaping Studio in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he and his team are “changing people’s lives, one pound at a time.” He has worked with thousands of clients throughout his career and has helped them change their lives through sound nutrition, mindset techniques, and scientifically proven training strategies.
Acclaimed as “the most comprehensive fat loss solution in Winnipeg,” BOOM BodyShaping Studio is just that, having all the bases covered and giving their driven, dedicated clients all the tools and coaching they need to lose 20-120+ pounds and more.
On a mission of helping 100,000 people change their bodies and transform their lives, Cameron started ReengineerYou.com, a website providing free articles, workout videos, and recipes to help you transform your body, and has put his entire massive weight loss system together into an easy to follow video-based coaching program called “Extreme Fat Loss Blueprint” that is now available for anyone, anywhere, extending his reach to helping people not just in Winnipeg, but all around the world.
