Last week Marissa Nieves, our Healthy Mummy 28 day weight loss challenge personal trainer and fitness expert, was on our Private Facebook Community page to answer ALL your questions.
You asked and she answered! Have a look below at a few key questions asked on the night.
Q: What activities apart from the challenge exercises are good to build up my fitness?
For building endurance (cardiovascular fitness) I would suggest higher interval intermittent training which focuses on short bursts of 1-2 minutes and shorter rest periods. You could add these to your program with walking, jogging, cycling, swimming or any other preferred sport. The reason we love the challenge workouts is they provide all of these in a short time frame plus the important core training and lengthening exercises in the Pilates to strengthen, repair and tone. In addition to these, walking outside of your program, getting involved in the active recovery days and allowing your body rest will support your body’s recovery and renewal.
Q: What are the best exercises for keeping motivated to lose weight from the legs, bum etc when you have constant pain in the knees and you can not do squats all the time?
As an alternative to standing exercises, I absolutely love lying leg raises, glute swings and bridge exercises for legs and core area including the butt. Pilates exercises are fabulous as they have little or no impact on the body and work with the body’s primary muscles to develop strength and stability in all areas (may actually help with healing injuries by strengthening the deeper muscles).
Q: Can you suggest some safe core exercises when I have an ab separation?
A great start for ab separation could be some simple pelvic tilts lying on the floor with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. These can work the deeper abdominal muscles (transverse abdominus) without straining the outer abdominal muscles. Of course, it is important to get clearance from your doctor for the range of movement you can use in your tilts. Once you have mastered these, you could move onto some low range leg raises and/or bridge exercises to further support your core. Find out how to measure your ab muscle separations and where to begin with ab exercises post pregnancy with these great muscles separation tips.
Q: What activities do you recommend for an unstable pelvis?
Depending on where the instability and how severe it is, you may find some relief from looking further into hip flexor muscles such as the psoas and iliacus (for release/stretching or strengthening exercises). Depending on if there are skeletal or simply muscular/ligamentous issues, a skilled holistic chiro and/or good physio should be able to help you determine which treatment/remedy is best for you moving forward.
Q: I’m wondering if you can help me figure out why I lost 2kg then gained 2kg. In the first week I lost it, with no exercise. Now that I am exercising every day I’ve got that 2kg back.
Scales often like to give us an interesting misinterpretation of weight gain and loss due to different factors in in the body such as muscular gains, fluid retention and body fat loss. Body fat weighs a lot less than muscle so if you are toning your body and losing body fat at the same time, this could be a very common finding. In addition, if you have had a very stressful week, have indulged in sugary foods or are simply dehydrated, fluid retention could increase (the body holds more water) and this could shift your scale weight. Some other fairly accurate measurements for small increments of change may be simply checking your clothes, taking girth measurements or body fat %. (Read our tips on why NOT to trust your scales).
Want your questions answered? Join us for our next “Ask the Expert” session on Sunday, 29 May at 8pm AEST. Our Healthy Mummy expert on hand to answer all your question will be Nutritionist, Cheree Sheldon.
Simply join our support group on Facebook to get involved.
