If you make up your mind that you won’t like something, it has a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The thing to do, is to try many things. Even something as mundane as walking up stairs for 10 or 20 floors, is genuine exercise. In an office building, you’re very unlikely to meet many people there, too. I and a couple friends, do 12 floors twice a day. We walk to lunch (minimum 1/2 mile, often up to 1-1/2 miles), and just enjoy each others’ company.
You and your wife might try doing a 45 minute to 1 hour walk three or four times a week. It will bring you closer to one another, and will give you both exercise, too. When I’m not training people, I’m a Java programmer for a large financial company. I play video games, surf the web (how I found you, in fact!), and try to help people to get fit. I have a whole website with lots of information, and no blinking, annoying ads. I have nothing to sell you, either, so have no fear – there is no charge for admission, and no “subscription”. The URL is in my .signature, below. Read the first article, and continue on to the second, which has a BMR calculator for you to use to get started.
You want to get fit, you want your wife to get fit, then the best thing to do is to simply begin the journey. If you don’t try, you’ll never succeed. Write to me any time, too, and I’ll give you encouragement, counsel if you need it, or a kick in the butt if you need that. But Kenneth, the main thing I want you to do, is get off your ass and get started. Now. You’re the only one who can make it happen for you.
Does anyone have an idea of how good recumbent bikes are for performance and fat loss? I need to know if this is a good machine to use to achieve fat loss. And, if so, does anyone have a program that I could work from? The reason I ask, is because it is so easy to stay on the lowest intensity for 30 mins. I would like to be able to improve on my performance, not stay the same. This is such a complex question to answer with the information that you’re giving, but here goes – Firstly, some debunking – although the body uses fat as it’s primary energy source at low intensities, the amount of energy you actually use is very small.
There are probably several possible explanations. Exercise can result in temporary fluid and electrolyte imbalances, which in turn results in nausea. I’d also suspect other metabolic changes may be possible. Be careful or you may have to be rehydrated by IV, although that’s usually either a severe GI bug or running in hot conditions…. like around KSC or JSC? I’ve allways been careful about nutrition and think it’s useless even harmful to train before eatting early in the morning.
I have tried many times to get in the habit of exercising, but I find one of the serious problems I have is that it is so boring! I find it hard to work on a stationary bicycle for a half an hour, or run, or practically anything even though I know it is good for me. Mostly this is a problem in the winter, when my normal biking habits have to hibernate. I bike in the winter anyway 
I don’t ride in when the weather is truly awful, so my commuting mileage does go down a bit in winter, but it really isn’t so bad with proper clothes. (I live in Colorado.) On days when it’s just too miserable to bike, I run on a treadmill.
I am a 52 yr old male, 5’6″ carrrying about 220 lbs fully clothed. Type II is strongly indicated in both sides of my family history. I have a daughter turning 26 yrs old in 2/8 who has been a Type I for 13 yrs. All my life, I have undergone physician scrutiny and have taken many many 3 and 5 hour GTT, all with negative results. Over this past year, I have learned via cardiac catherization, that sometime in the distant past (indeterminate when, but definitely not at the time of the catherization) I had a heartattack. The right coronary artery is 100% occulded, and the 2 left arteries are 50% blocked. In early August, my physician referred me to a registered dietician and went on a 1800 ADA calorie diet. Because of the catherization, I began voluntary cardiac exerise (3 days/week – one hour sessions) program and promptly lost 20 lbs in about 2 months. With the holiday season, I stopped the exercise routine and have certainly eaten more than 1800 cals. However, I strictly watch the saturated fat in my diet.
I was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the end of April of this year, so I am trying to learn all I can about diabetes, and I had a question that I thought maybe someone on this newsgroup could shed some light on. I have read that exercise speeds up the effect of insulin within the body. My question is: does exercise also shorten the amount of time that the insulin will work? For instance, if I take some Regular Insulin and then exercise 2 hours later for 30 minutes, will the insulin be cleared out of my blood in 4-5 hours rather than 5-6 hours? Any answers would be appreciated. I too am new to diabetes (diagnosed three weeks ago) but I am also a professional dancer/choreographer. I don’t yet know what technically happens with the insulin in your system when you exercies but I did read that when you exercise, the “portals” for glucose in your muscles, that insulin opens, open up by themselves.
