(Part 3) Top products from r/fitness30plus

In my opinion: Nutrition is for losing (or gaining) weight and making sure you recover properly.

Cardiovascular training (literally heart and blood-vessel training) is for heart, vascular and lung health so you can run after a bus or take a flight of stairs without feeling like you are going to die. It helps you think more clearly, resist depression, and reduces risks of some of the most deadly diseases (heart attack, stroke, etc.)

Resistance training is for gaining or maintaining lean body mass and strength. This helps you look better naked, keeps your bone mass up, and as you get older, helps you recover more easily from slips and falls. It also is good for your metabolism: it helps with insulin sensitivity and each pound of lean mass burns 2-3x as much energy as a pound of fat, and it takes up less space.

Finally, stretching/mobility training will help you keep your youthful ranges of motion, reduce stiffness and pain, and reduce injury potential.

You need a balance of these four elements to be truly fit.

To answer your specific questions:

1. Yes, you have to maintain a calorie deficit to lose weight. There is no way around this. However, focusing on satiety (the feeling of being satisfied) will help. In my experience, foods that help with satiety without being high in calories are a. water b. fiber and c. protein. Fat can also help a meal stick with you, but a little goes a long way. Pure carbs (stuff with very little fiber) are tricky. This leads us to foods like lean meats, vegetables, fruits, and legumes (beans) and away from sugars and refined carbs (especially those with fat and carbohydrate together like cake, pizza, pastas, bread and butter, etc.). People have lost weight on all kinds of diets, so experimenting with what works for you is good. Tracking your calories and macronutrient (protein/fat/carbohydrate) intake with something like myfitnesspal.com can help. There are more "advanced" methods but starting there can help your basic awareness of when and what you're eating, and you can start to make tweaks and adjustments from there.
   
   
2. It's OK if you can't do purely running. Consider swimming, riding a bike, rowing or a low-impact alternative like an elliptical machine. If you have health insurance, consider seeing a doctor/physical therapist to give you specific ways to work with/around your limitations. Simply losing some weight can help with all kinds of orthopedic (bone-related) issues.
   
   
3. Lifestyle advice. It's about taking small steps and building habits. I recommend trying to break a sweat at roughly the same time every day. Do something laughably easy at the beginning, like going into the gym and doing a warmup, then leaving. The point is consistency by showing up over time. Find a program or work with a personal trainer who will design a program for your abilities, and stick with it. I personally recommend something that you do either every day (7 days a week) or at least 5 days a week during the work-week (Monday through Friday), purely because it's actually easier than going 3 days a week because you get into a habit of going at a specific time every day. You will have to carve out time for this, there are no two ways around it, but that time can be early in the morning, during lunch, or after work. If you join a gym, find one between home and work to help reduce the issues of going before or after work. Finding a program you can do at home is great as well and can help with logistical issues. You want to be there when your baby graduates high school and college and gets married, so you're investing in your future. I highly recommend the books "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, as well as "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg with more help on those fronts.
   
   
4. Lifestyle part 2, diet. I recommend doing a weekly or twice-weekly session of food preparation. If you have a 5-day a week workout habit, you can set aside two days to go shopping for healthy food and prepare healthy food in bulk. (Slow cooker and sous vide can help here, as well as the basic stove and oven.) Having a good breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or whatever meals match your plan) on hand will reduce the urge to grab something quickly for those meals, and it will force you to plan ahead, which really helps you stick to those decisions later. If you have trigger foods (like chips or pastries or something) don't bring them into the house. This doesn't mean that you can never eat your favorite food ever again, but it does mean that you want to have 80% or more of your nutrition match the goals that you have. Then when you have the food you like, you will enjoy it more.
   
   Sorry, I started in on this post and it got away from me. Hopefully you find some useful nuggets in here.
   
   TL;DR: You need to have a balance of nutrition, cardio, resistance, and mobility training. You have to have a calorie deficit to lose weight, so focus on foods that fill you up without a ton of calories. There are tons of cardio options that aren't running that will be easier on your joints. Lifestyle change is about changing your habits. Doing food prep really helps make losing weight easier.

If yuh do swimming see if you can find a “masters” program near you. They are basically swim clubs/ team for adults. Usually there has a workout and a coach. Swimming is all about form. You want someone to help you with your form so you don’t injure your shoulder. But great for longevity. I love road biking. Better than running on my feet.

Also on a more mental note maybe check out the book “full catastrophe living”. (Link below). I’ve learned to check my ego with working out and injuries, acceptance is a good skill (mindfulness acceptance). Also I found that being healthy snacks to work helps. Personally I got a vita mix and love that thing. Easy to make really tasty smoothies that fill me up.

I do suggest a good trainer who knows body stuff. I can no longer run and had to stop kickboxing due to foot issue. Miss it, but adjusting. Great job reaching out for support!

https://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-mindfulness-meditation/dp/0749915854

I'm not an expert. But here is my experience.

I put on this CD
http://www.amazon.com/Guided-Mindfulness-Meditation-Jon-Kabat-Zinn/dp/1604077956/

And I follow the instructions. It definitely guides you, soothes you. It centers you. For me, attempting to meditate is an invitation to quietness, and then all the noise in my head tries to fill in the quiet. So the guided meditation does keep me in the right state, and I get to transform some of the worries into noise, and recognize it for the noise it is.

There is this obsessive inner voice that often operates in an unconscious level. The meditation helps it make it more conscious, and quiet it, and tuning in more with the present. It also makes me more aware of what is consuming my attention, and to decide to pay attention to it. Sometimes, during stressful periods, I don't realize I'm stressed or why until I meditate.

All this frees up my mind to focus on the now, on the task at hand, on the present, as opposed to allocating some of my mind to repeated chatter.

In computer terms, which I think it's a good analogy in this case, it's like looking at all the 83 program windows you have open in the background, and deciding what to do about them. Often are just the same mindless browser windows, and realize they are there and just close them. Other cases are important emails or spreadsheets, and being aware that they are there it's positive and maybe write them down on a postit or little paper of key tasks. Eventually you end up with a clean desktop. And the background on the desktop is nice. And you like looking at the background. Also, the memory and the processor on the computer now are less charged. So after a while of cleaning through the open windows, and looking at the desktop, which you hardly ever do otherwise, you naturally feel lighter and better.

As a culture, we're just beginning to feel around the edges of the hugely important role that gut flora/our microbiome plays in our health. It seems like almost every day some new and exciting information is coming out regarding this area of knowledge.

At our house, we do a lot of ferments. We've done kombucha, milk and water kefir, lacto-pickles, sourdough culture and homebrewed beer. We also have a friend that has started a local business making amazing sauerkrauts.

If anybody is interested in this stuff, I'd highly recommend Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz. Both excellent books with background info and recipes.

Fermentation can seem unsafe/intimidating, but I've been surprised at how simple it is to do, and how few issues there are in regards to food safety (the whole reason people started fermenting food in the first place was to keep it from spoiling, after all).

It's definitely on the higher side especially if you are not in the U.S. BUT they last for a LONG time and are super high quality. I've had their lightest rope that I use the most last over a year. Then it's just $11-$18 for rope replacement. I hear you though.

Here are a couple good affordable options:

EliteSRS Heavy Beaded Fitness Jump Rope - Outdoor Rated - Comfort Foam Grip (Black/White) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QMZ9C55/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_TkSvDbBCGYFNA

https://www.amazon.com/EliteSRS-Beginner-Jump-Rope-Adults/dp/B07HMB95VZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?adgrpid=55435725589&gclid=CjwKCAjwqNnqBRATEiwAkHm2BDinL9COW3Z_FJyHr4zIH77wCWxCYYXcYsIr5e2XbN-lyO3Iu5WyhBoCTuMQAvD_BwE&hvadid=274714636724&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=1027691&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=18272867535278196379&hvtargid=kwd-378598560675&hydadcr=17338_9499980&keywords=elitesrs+jump+rope&qid=1565967062&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUE5UkhJTTlOVjUwV0MmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTAzMzMzNzFLNTlRUTdRNTFXMkkmZW5jcnlwdGVkQWRJZD1BMDg1MDE1NUEwRkhHODQ5OTJaRyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX3Bob25lX3NlYXJjaF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl

Joking aside, long endurance exercises aren't that good for your circulatory system. HIIT (or Tabata cardio) is much more effective to strengthen your heart. I think Al Sears was the first guy to popularize this in his The Doctor's Heart Cure (or at least it was the first I heard of it), and if I'm not mistaken it's now the general consensus.

(And Mr. Fixx stopped smoking and lost weight 17 years before he died of a heart attack. Whether his heart was congenitally enlarged is open to question. His diet has been suggested as the big problem--he had the idea that since he exercised so much he could eat anything, and he was an inveterate carbohydrate hog--donuts, pies, cakes, etc.)

If you're >50 lbs overweight you should be focusing purely on diet and calorie restriction. You might even consider cutting back or removing workouts until you get the weight worked out. The (overly simplified here) theory is that exercise can actually cause reactions in your body to slow weight loss. You'll have a much easier time focusing on one thing at a time and doing a phased approach:

1. Lose weight down to a manageable weight
   
   
2. Start working out again, while keeping your weight maintained
   
   I actually recently read Penn (from Penn and Teller) book about how he lost 100 lbs from 330 to 230, you might find it worth checking out. It's not really a diet book, more like a biography. But it was an interesting view of a 300 lb guy successfully losing 100 lbs reasonably quickly. There's a lot of kinda weird focus on potatoes, but that discussion of "don't worry about your muscle mass while you're trying to shed a lot of weight" is discussed in it as well.
   
   Finally, and I have used this one, check out www.myfitnesspal.com and try actually counting your calories and your exercise. You'll quickly discover that the calories you burn during most exercise pale in comparison to most of the food you're eating. I found this to be an amazingly effective tool for choosing foods that optimize my fullness and macros for their calories.
   
   

I do meditate and am even a Teacher in Training at the local Zen Center. I used to meditate once in the morning and once in the evening for 25 minutes each. However, since the birth of my son, I have not been able to get in my morning practice.

I have noticed a profound effect with my training which I attribute to meditation. It has helped keep my fuckarounditus at bay. Just as with meditation, it is rare that each practice session will yield many noticeable results. But trusting in the process and sticking to it, the results present themselves. For some, those results are fast and dramatic. For others, they are slower to come. But this is irrelevant because the path is the goal: sitting meditation is the goal of meditation; lifting is the goal of lifting.

Another way that meditation has helped me in training is that when I am lifting, I simply lift. I am there 100%. I don't have to scream, grunt, or pound my chest. I step up to the bar and pull/push. Either the bar moves or it doesn't (it moves 99% of the time). Then I move on.

And finally, in a surprising twist, seated meditation has helped me with my form. At the base, the legs are in as close to the lotus position as you can get. My legs are too short and think for full lotus, so I sit half. This has opened up my hips making ass-to-grass possible. Moving up, the proper spinal alignment for meditation is the same as for lifting. Sitting meditation makes this the default setting. The same holds true with the neck and head, where the gaze is neutral and the chin slightly down.

TL;DR: 2xday for 25 mins., helps mental preparation and body alignment, always enough time, tons of value. SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!

I also changed in that direction.

I was doing Starting Strength last year after slacking through my mid to late 20's and thought I'd throw the C25K jogging program into the mix as well. I ended up tearing a calf muscle while jogging, the pain was excruciating. I've been impaled on a fence (didn't hit any organs) and I think my calf tear hurt worse when it happened.

The tear gave me the epiphany that I'm getting older (30) and my body isn't as nimble as it used to be. My job isn't very physical and I'm not going to be playing football or anything like that again. Glad it didn't take me tweaking my back on a lift while going too heavy to realize this.

The switch from a strength training program to an aesthetic program has been great! I dove into the Body Sculpting Bible and have had fantastic results. I ditched the C25K program and instead hit up the exercise bike after a workout.

Based on your goals, a good start for cardio + strength would be to get a kettlebell and learn how to use it properly with something like Simple and Sinister.

I would pick up something along the lines of new rules of lifting since your goals seem to be moreso on weight loss, getting healthy and building some muscle

https://www.amazon.com/New-Rules-Lifting-Supercharged-Muscle-Building/dp/1583335366/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=THT2YD7QVH5BGFA8D51C

Follow a good program like the above and eat fewer calories. After that you can reevaluate - if you want to build more muscle, follow a program like 5/3/1, push/pull/legs, etc

https://thefitness.wiki/getting-started-with-fitness/

You didn't say how you injured your shoulder in the first place. Was it during your weight training?

My shoulder is prone to instability/partial dislocation and I have injured it several times. Generally, the bad injuries were from sports, however I had chronic shoulder pain while lifting until I started following the 7 Minute Rotator Cuff Solution. I've been doing that PT for about 6 months now, and my shoulder feels very good. I haven't had any chronic pain, and instability has been reduced.

So far I have not had an issue with any over the overhead pressing movements; provided my hands are greater than shoulder width apart. However, I do not lift heavy; my current OHP rep max is only 50kg.

I suppose my point is that not all shoulder injuries are the same, so you'll need to see what works for you. Make sure you have a coherent ongoing training plan for your shoulders (just like you need a plan like 5/3/1 or SS, or SL), and try to stay healthy.

Good luck and good health.

Thanks for the recommendations. As a masochist who does SMR with a PVC pipe, I have to say the trigger point book looks like a great resource.

I also wanted to add one for anyone with back issues:

Low Back Disorders by Stuart McGill

The injury rate for runners isn't extremely high at all, this is a fallacy perpetuated by people who don't enjoy running.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2013/09/25/why-runners-dont-get-knee-arthritis/

The rest of your advise, and the advise of others is great though. You can lose weight simply through your diet. A controlled diet and some form or training programme will get you where you want to be in no time.

I'd recommend Bigger Leaner Stronger by Mike Matthews. Great beginner guide for getting into lifting and organising a diet and training program to suit you.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bigger-Leaner-Stronger-Building-Ultimate/dp/1475143389

Yeah? Ok

Still don't understand why everyone doesn't go straight to this book. It's literally the only book anyone needs in their fitness journey.

The book Fit by Kilgore et al. provides a strenght routine using only machines.

https://www.amazon.com/Powerlifting-Scientific-Frederick-Hatfield-Ph-D/dp/1506184863/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=power+lifting%2C+as+scientific+approach&qid=1574381366&sr=8-1-fkmr0

This one?. I haven't picked this one up yet, but what I've heard is it's very much in line with the articles that Matt writes for Catalyst.