My right knee is awful. I injured it pretty badly in high school while I was running track. To this day (4 years later), I still can't do anything strenuous with it. Since I haven't been able to do the things I wanted to, I kind of lost hope and gained about 30lbs. Even though I tried to eat well, the weight piled up eventually because I wasn't doing anything. So what I'm looking for is a decent way to lose some of this weight and tone up without high impact on my knee. I can run alright, slower than ever, but at a pace to where my knee doesn't kill me and I can cycle pretty well without my knee hurting. Problem is, no gym that is affordable in the area, and running/cycling in 14 degree weather/snow right now is kind of tough. Any advice would be great. I'm not looking to get ripped or heavily toned. I just want to lose the weight and develop some of the muscle I lost.
First off, diet is the single most important part of weight loss. Calculate your base metabolic rate and eat less than that consistently without overdoing it (it is typically not recommended to have a caloric deficit of over 500 calories per day). You may find that tracking your caloric intake can help with this process. If you do so, track your weekly intake rather than daily. This way you have some wiggle room on days where you might have to eat more. If you don't track calories, just be as disciplined as you can. I've found that most people have a pretty good idea of which foods are healthy or good for weight loss and which are not, but very few have a willingness to actually eat them consistently. Consistency is the most important thing. A diet that you can't stick to is a shitty diet. There's a lot more that I could say about nutrition, but I'd like to keep this post concise. Swimming might become your best friend. It's low-impact and one of the best cardio workouts out there. See if you have a community center or something like that near you with an indoor pool. Normally I'd recommend weight training, but with your knee you might have a lot of trouble doing the best possible exercises. Of course you can do seated or pronated upper body workouts, but lower body workouts are really the best part of lifting. There are plenty of other ways to gain strength, of course. You might want to lose some weight first, but gymnastics-type training could work well for you. Maneuvers like the l-seat, front lever, and back lever all involve the legs and can dramatically build leg strength without any impact to the knees. Of course, to work up to anything like that you will first have to be able to do a pullup and a dip. If you are currently unable to do one of either, I'd be happy to provide a progression that might help. How exactly did you hurt your knee? Have you had any physical therapy for it?
Thanks for all of the advice man. I appreciate it a lot. I was thinking about getting a recumbent exercise bike as I can bike alright without too much pain. Good idea? As for the knee injury, in track I was one of our team's best long jumpers. I also did the 200mm race, but that's not really relevant. At one of your home meets, I landed poorly and ruptured my knee. Previously, I had been treated for knee tendonitis twice and told to stay away from high impact sports. I didn't listen though because I loved what I did. After the injury and scans, it was also found that I did some cartilage damage as well. My school provided me with physical therapy once a week, but after the knee had healed up, the cartilage damage couldn't be undone and my knee never made a full recovery. So to this day, I can walk fine, I jog, bike, and whatnot alright as well (unless it gets really cold). I definitely can't sprint, lift too much, or do anything high impact though.
Sure, get the bike as long as you are definitely going to use it. I enjoy doing intervals on stationary bikes. That sucks that you can't do anything about the cartilage damage. I'm surprised because that sort of thing can usually be fixed with surgery.
It probably can be fixed, but I'm in no way shape or form able to pay for a surgery and even back then when I was on my parents insurance, they couldn't have handled it either. It was pretty much just a, "you didn't listen to the warnings, now you've done yourself in" kind of deals. Oh well though. I'm likely getting a bike this week or next. I'll definitely use it. I love biking and used to do it a lot (regular and stationary bikes). So I think this will be a good place to start. It'll help with the weight and leg muscle I've lost. From there, I'll likely be back for toning my upper body a little. Again, thanks for the help. Hopefully in about 4 months I'll be where I want to be.