The FastDay Forum

After reaching my goal weight and body fat half a year ago, I've been happily maintaining. That is, until realizing how gaunt I actually am from some photos, you can't trust the mirror, or the scales.

I haven't had any exercise while in maintenance since I thought I didn't have to, but now it's time for the gym. Primarily I want some muscle mass in my thighs and butt, the upper body is pretty much OK as it is. When I lost weight my legs haven't had to work very hard, and it clearly shows. They look pathetic.

The plan is to build a solid exercise habit by connecting it to another habit - the morning shower.

Instead of taking a shower at home, I take it at the gym, and am willing to commit at least 15 minutes lifting weights, a minimum of two machines or free weight stations every morning before going to work. I might work out hard, or not, depending on how I feel. I figure the important thing is to actually show up, rather than be obsesssive about quick results.

Sure I can motivate myself to work out like a maniac, but from my experience you tend to traumatize yourself and build an increasing resistance to even getting off the couch if you get carried away and start out too intensively, rushing things looking for quick results.

What do you think, is there any point in 15 minutes of daily gym exercise?

Absolutely. It would probably work really well, especially if you do different muscle groups on different days. So alternate upper and lower body muscle groups, and make sure you do some core strength exercises as well. One advantage of doing it this way, is muscles need to rest between workouts to get maximum benefits, and this way it's a couple of days between each workout for each muscle set. I've done this very successfully at home with dumbells a few years back. It was pretty much a 6 day cycle alternating upper and lower body muscles, followed by a rest day, and only 15 minutes max a day. Definitely built up muscle, I got a lot stronger doing it.

Edited to add: If you're doing it before work, a 5 day sequence would probably work better, so you could do lower body, upper body, core, lower body, upper body and then two rest days.

[Debs]

Definitely! I subscribe to the go hard and then go home method! I have limited time at work so I pick a couple of machines, or exercises and then do pyramid exercises, 10 moderate, 8 hard and then as many as I can of the heaviest I can manage. 15 mins and I'm done. It also means that you aren't laid up by DOMS for days afterwards.
Good luck!