I am 5’2 and weigh 127 pounds. I want to lose between 10-15pounds in time for the summer. I walk at 3 miles per hour on the treadmill for 20-40 minutes everyday and I do pilates for around 15 minutes. Should I do pilates longer?
My advice – and it’s only advice – you should up the intensity a bit on the treadmill by increasing the incline a bit. I was told by a personal trainer that working at a slightly slower pace but steeper incline does sometimes help to burn more calories. I did notice I sweat more during those workouts. Or – do that every other day, just to change it up.
As for pilates, it depends on what exactly you are doing for pilates. Pilates is great and you can get a workout in only 15 minutes, but you have to be doing the absolute best exercises and really focusing on them. Let me know what you are doing and I can easily give you more information! Most of my pilates clients either need a variation to make their workout more challenging! Are you following a DVD or other video from the web?
Ed
August 23rd, 2011 at 3:27 AM
If weight loss is your primary goal now, you should focus on the activities which burn the most calories. These are the intense aerobic workouts, including running, cycling, cross-country skiing, swimming and rope skipping. Running stadium steps will burn a tremendous number of calories too.
Pilates is great as well, and is very important in maintaining your flexibility. Muscle strains are the most common sports injuries, and incorporating it into your exercise routine will help avoid them. Fifteen minutes of Pilates is sufficient if you focus for that length of time. Make sure the large muscles of your body–the glutes and hamstrings–are being stretched after you walk.
Walking three miles per hour burns about 300 calories in one hour. If you could step the pace up, you could burn twice that amount, adding an exta half pound of weight loss each week. Try gradually moving from walking to running. The best way to do this is to run until you are too tired to run any more, then to walk, then back to running, etc. Soon, you will be able to run an hour without stopping to walk at all.
Jack Lalanne, perhaps the best example of superior physical fitness in the world, will be celebrating his 95th birthday in September by swimming twenty miles in the Pacific Ocean. He suggests varying your routine monthly so that all your muscles are being used. If he can swim twenty miles, at his age, you can run for an hour. Just build up to it gradually.
Anyway, you are doing great. You are already fitter than average. Do you know the average woman in the Unites States is now five-four-and-a-half, 158 pounds?
God bless you and your efforts to become even fitter.
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