Diabetes: Who is always fighting the battle of the bulge

Lots of muscular people get fat. There is a former professional wrestler at my gym who is always fighting the battle of the bulge. I see him there every day doing a good hour of cardio to keep the weight off.

My trainer says you can never let up on the nutrition issue - you've always got to control for calories and food components, which is the same thing the bariatric team says. My team at Tufts tells me that huge numbers of normal weight individuals use food diaries to keep on track so they don't gain weight. It is what goes into the mouth that matters most. (sparkpeople is a good resource towards rigorous self-honesty, which is something a lot of people don't like to deal with regarding food intake - me included) Read Bernstein sometime (The Diabetes Solution) for his take on exercise and nutrition.

I was not in good shape when I started at the gym with a personal trainer. Yet, he had me on the bike for 30 minutes (even if I was a slow at it) and then did a slow routine with low weights and followed up with 15 slow minutes on the bike. (Slow meaning I did not pedal very fast). I lived on OTC pain killers for a couple of weeks until my old farm girl muscles were able to start functioning again. That first month was difficult.

I don't know that you need to exercise HARD for 8 minutes. You'd probably get better benefit if you learned how to exercise smart, using cardio and muscle isolation. The goal is to exercise muscle groups to exhaustion of the fibers so that they build up. I know someone who needs to lose about 400 pounds and she does the few minutes HARD routine and it has gotten her nowhere for at least a decade. Perhaps you will have better luck.

My trainer (also named Mike) told me the best way to bike was to do a couple of minutes relatively slow warmup and then to do 10/20. 10 seconds of low rpm cycling followed by 20 seconds just as fast as I could go. In other words, interval training. However, it took me several weeks of going 10/20 for 30 minutes to actually get much of a change from my slow cycling to a faster cycling and still be able to cycle for 30 minutes. Now I get about 30 RMP change between slow and fast. I had to avoid the elliptical for awhile because it stresses my knees, but I am starting to be able to manage it, but only 15 minutes until I have to change to a bike. I'm living proof you can do 10 minutes treadmill, 10 minutes elliptical and 10 minutes of bike (back to back) and have it work.

I was about 150 overweight when I started the training program. It was hard, but I stuck with it. Surgery threw me off and I'm slower than I had hoped I would be in coming back.