Recently in Exercise Category
One of the things that makes it so hard for fat women to start exercising is the fact that there are very, very few exercise clothes made for them. Women need strong sports bras, fabrics that breathe, aren't too baggy, don't cling. We need shorts and sweat pants, tshirts and tank tops, running pants and sweatshirts. Do you know how hard it is too find all those things in sizes that will fit large women? It's not easy. Even companies you think would have an interest in making customers of fat people who want to exercise, say athletic companies, don't make clothes for that demographic. Maybe they'll come around with Americans getting bigger and bigger but I'm not holding my breath. That's why I completely understand Laura's frustration with Nike.
Laura is a great fan of the Nike+ iPod running system. Based on that love she wanted to buy some Nike running clothes. She was horrified that Nike's idea of an XL sized shirt seemed more like a small and wouldn't fit her. She's lost 50 pounds (from 235), runs and practices a healthy lifestyle. Nike lost her sale with their skewed sizing and utter disregard for potential larger customers.
It's a classic Catch-22. You have to exercise to be fit and be smaller. But you have to be fit and smaller to fit into exercise clothes.
Luckily there are a few options for fat people in the market for exercise clothes. Sadly I really do mean few options, particularly if you want anything remotely fashionable.
Champion : Sports bras, sports tops, tshirts, pants and shorts. Champion is one athletic company that seems to "get it" and actually makes exercise clothes for plus sized women. Thank goodness for Champion. The clothes actually look, fit and feel like exercise clothes should.
Title Nine: Not an extensive collection for very large women but several sports bras will fit larger women. Excellent quality clothes.
Junonia: Made specifically for large women, Junonia is an entire store filled with the kind of clothes active plus size women need. Bras, tops, pants, shorts, tshirts, even bathing suits!
When I started Weight Watchers I slowly started incorporating exercise into my life. Since I have a dog I was already walking a little bit at least 2-3 times a day. So my first concrete exercise step was to increase the distance of those walks. Using Gmaps-Pedometer I plotted a 3/4 mile loop for my dog and I to take twice a day. After a week I moved up to 3/4 mile once a day and then 1 full mile once a day. After a week of that we started doing a two full miles 4-5 days a week. The remaining two days alternate between being a light day (a 3/4 mile loop and a mile loop) and being a little bit of a longer day (1.5 mile loops or a 2 mile hike).
Those two miles meet the minimum recommendations for exercise (30 minutes a day at least 3 times a week) but they aren't strenuous miles (my very small dog can only go so fast) and my body definitely needed to move more. So I decided to really take the plunge and get some serious cardio into my exercise regimen. I did a little research and found that I really wanted to try the Couch to 5K in two months running program.
For extremely unfit people or even those who are just brand new to an exercise program 5K can be an extremely scary phrase. It was to me but looking at in terms of just over 3 miles it didn't seem quite so scary. So on August 6 I began the program. I have two goals. The first is to be able to walk/jog a complete 5K by January without passing out from exhaustion. The second goal is to be able to actually run an entire 5K by May 2007. Obviously I'm stretching the 5K program out much longer than two months but that's ok. With my weight and lack of fitness it would be unreasonable to expect to go from 0 to 5K in two months. Look for periodic progress updates on my running program.
