Found this several pages back and thought it helpful:


"Unless you were already very athletic it is suggested to wait to reintroduce exercise.

It is advisable to wait until you are in ketosis and past the adjustment window about 2 or 3 weeks so that your body is more familiar with fueling itself with ketones and limited sugar sources. It will prevent you from :

becoming more fatigued
burning muscle
craving food from carb sources


It is highly adviseable to start slowly. Keep all cardio (walking, running, swimming, zumba, step, kickbox, etc.) in a low heart rate zone. The heart rate zones and their benefits are discussed by Elizabeth in the exercise thread. Ideally, stay between 50 and 75% of max heart rate. Exercise

If you choose yoga or pilates, again, be aware of not over exerting yourself. If you do bikram or other hot yoga make sure you stay well hydrated. Dehydration is a real issue with this program"

Dr. Tran Tien developed his Protein Diet, originally, for athletes who wanted to lose a few pounds... so, IMHO, it's designed with exercise in mind... I still have a hard time understanding the "no exercise" rule, but since it seems to be the consensus among IP coaches, I'm not going to argue about it... in my case, I'm glad I didn't have a coach to discourage me from continuing my workouts, & I was working out pretty intensely... I honestly don't believe the good doctor's program would have worked as well for me if I hadn't been exercising...

Just sayin'..

hugs :hug:

I have lost 40lbs in 8weeks and it is largely due to cardio, and strength training. The reason I am here is my wife has stalled out and do you guys think that introducing exercise would help kick start her? She is really frustrated.

Originally Posted by smm34:
I have lost 40lbs in 8weeks and it is largely due to cardio, and strength training. The reason I am here is my wife has stalled out and do you guys think that introducing exercise would help kick start her? She is really frustrated.

I would say that if she used to exercise and is feeling good enough to start again, why not. Cardio has always been good when it comes to losing weight. I would say to start off slow and to work her back into it.
hope this helps :)

I'm in phase 1 and would like to start using my Wii. What programs would you recommend that I use and for how long? Thanks!

How do you guys get/stay motivated to exercise?

I've never been a big exerciser (hence needing the IP diet), but I've been meaning to get into it since starting maintenance in the beginning of October. Because of my schedule, the only time it will work for me to exercise is early in the morning (or really late at night), but every time that alarm goes off at 5 A.M., hitting the snooze sounds a lot better to me than exercise and my laziness gets the best of me!

Any tips/advice/motivation that has worked for you? Thanks!

Originally Posted by rubyh:
Found this several pages back and thought it helpful:


"Unless you were already very athletic it is suggested to wait to reintroduce exercise.

It is advisable to wait until you are in ketosis and past the adjustment window about 2 or 3 weeks so that your body is more familiar with fueling itself with ketones and limited sugar sources. It will prevent you from :

becoming more fatigued
burning muscle
craving food from carb sources


It is highly adviseable to start slowly. Keep all cardio (walking, running, swimming, zumba, step, kickbox, etc.) in a low heart rate zone. The heart rate zones and their benefits are discussed by Elizabeth in the exercise thread. Ideally, stay between 50 and 75% of max heart rate. Exercise

If you choose yoga or pilates, again, be aware of not over exerting yourself. If you do bikram or other hot yoga make sure you stay well hydrated. Dehydration is a real issue with this program"

HAHAHA I hope you realize that I AM Elizabeth ;-)

Yes start slow, of course, but I train my clients with weight slow paced as well

Originally Posted by deinekatze:
HAHAHA I hope you realize that I AM Elizabeth ;-)

Yes start slow, of course, but I train my clients with weight slow paced as well

:) Hey Eli,

I quoted you and she quoted me, quoting you! :) Glad you stopped in! You have been missed!!:hug:

Originally Posted by deinekatze:
HAHAHA I hope you realize that I AM Elizabeth ;-)

Yes start slow, of course, but I train my clients with weight slow paced as well

Did not realize until I had gone back and read the exercise thread. I found this just going through the 29 pages of IP topics!

I can't wait to get back to exericising...had emergency apendectomy on Monday and no heavy lifting or exerices for 2 weeks!

Thanks for all you good advice in the exercise column. WHen I get to start again, I plan on rereading it again. Have good weekend.

Originally Posted by showgirlaz:
:) Hey Eli,

I quoted you and she quoted me, quoting you! :) Glad you stopped in! You have been missed!!:hug:

Hey Carla...well you see me on FB all the time LOL

Miss you all too

Originally Posted by rubyh:
Did not realize until I had gone back and read the exercise thread. I found this just going through the 29 pages of IP topics!

I can't wait to get back to exericising...had emergency apendectomy on Monday and no heavy lifting or exerices for 2 weeks!

Thanks for all you good advice in the exercise column. WHen I get to start again, I plan on rereading it again. Have good weekend.

eekkk I had that done when I was 13... yup, no working out for a bit for you. Hang in there

It's trainer day for me! I figure I am far enough into my progress that I really want to start toning and if that means my weight loss slows then so be it. I'd rather weigh more and be muscular. (Much easier to say at 225 than 300!)

I've chosen to go to a friend who is a PT that specializes in working with dancers because she knows what I put my body through and what I need to be able to put it through. Also because I've had so many surgeries and injuries, I need someone that can adapt to my abnormal anatomy.

I've been doing more and more time on elliptical, but I suspect that will be the piece I need to adjust along the way.

Originally Posted by kplus80:
How do you guys get/stay motivated to exercise?

I've never been a big exerciser (hence needing the IP diet), but I've been meaning to get into it since starting maintenance in the beginning of October. Because of my schedule, the only time it will work for me to exercise is early in the morning (or really late at night), but every time that alarm goes off at 5 A.M., hitting the snooze sounds a lot better to me than exercise and my laziness gets the best of me!

Any tips/advice/motivation that has worked for you? Thanks!

Personally it is easier for me to work out at night. If that isnt possible for you maybe try getting up and just washing your face or drinking a glass of water which should help you to wake up. Once you do that, it shouldnt be too hard to walk downstairs and put on a yoga dvd or some essy cardio.
I hope this helps! Goodluck! (you just have to find something that you like!)

Originally Posted by shindabug:
Personally it is easier for me to work out at night. If that isnt possible for you maybe try getting up and just washing your face or drinking a glass of water which should help you to wake up. Once you do that, it shouldnt be too hard to walk downstairs and put on a yoga dvd or some essy cardio.
I hope this helps! Goodluck! (you just have to find something that you like!)

Thanks for the advice - I will try your ideas to help me wake up! And I agree that half the battle is finding something you like!

The eternal debate about when to exercise... now comes some sound scientific evidence that working out before breakfast does something that exercising after breakfast doesn't do: it keeps weight off...

From The New York Times Health page:

Originally Posted by :
December 15, 2010, 12:01 am
Phys Ed: The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

The holiday season brings many joys and, unfortunately, many countervailing dietary pitfalls. Even the fittest and most disciplined of us can succumb, indulging in more fat and calories than at any other time of the year. The health consequences, if the behavior is unchecked, can be swift and worrying. A recent study by scientists in Australia found that after only three days, an extremely high-fat, high-calorie diet can lead to increased blood sugar and insulin resistance, potentially increasing the risk for Type 2 diabetes. Waistlines also can expand at this time of year, prompting self-recrimination and unrealistic New Year’s resolutions.

But a new study published in The Journal of Physiology suggests a more reliable and far simpler response. Run or bicycle before breakfast. Exercising in the morning, before eating, the study results show, seems to significantly lessen the ill effects of holiday Bacchanalias.

For the study, researchers in Belgium recruited 28 healthy, active young men and began stuffing them with a truly lousy diet, composed of 50 percent fat and 30 percent more calories, overall, than the men had been consuming. Some of the men agreed not to exercise during the experiment. The rest were assigned to one of two exercise groups. The groups’ regimens were identical and exhausting. The men worked out four times a week in the mornings, running and cycling at a strenuous intensity. Two of the sessions lasted 90 minutes, the others, an hour. All of the workouts were supervised, so the energy expenditure of the two groups was identical.

Their early-morning routines, however, were not. One of the groups ate a hefty, carbohydrate-rich breakfast before exercising and continued to ingest carbohydrates, in the form of something like a sports drink, throughout their workouts. The second group worked out without eating first and drank only water during the training. They made up for their abstinence with breakfast later that morning, comparable in calories to the other group’s trencherman portions.

The experiment lasted for six weeks. At the end, the nonexercising group was, to no one’s surprise, super-sized, having packed on an average of more than six pounds. They had also developed insulin resistance — their muscles were no longer responding well to insulin and weren’t pulling sugar (or, more technically, glucose) out of the bloodstream efficiently — and they had begun storing extra fat within and between their muscle cells. Both insulin resistance and fat-marbled muscles are metabolically unhealthy conditions that can be precursors of diabetes.

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group. Like those sedentary big eaters, however, they had become more insulin-resistant and were storing a greater amount of fat in their muscles.

Only the group that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. They also burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently. “Our current data,” the study’s authors wrote, “indicate that exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet.”

Just how exercising before breakfast blunts the deleterious effects of overindulging is not completely understood, although this study points toward several intriguing explanations. For one, as has been known for some time, exercising in a fasted state (usually possible only before breakfast), coaxes the body to burn a greater percentage of fat for fuel during vigorous exercise, instead of relying primarily on carbohydrates. When you burn fat, you obviously don’t store it in your muscles. In “our study, only the fasted group demonstrated beneficial metabolic adaptations, which eventually may enhance oxidative fatty acid turnover,” said Peter Hespel, Ph.D., a professor in the Research Center for Exercise and Health at Catholic University Leuven in Belgium and senior author of the study.

At the same time, the fasting group showed increased levels of a muscle protein that “is responsible for insulin-stimulated glucose transport in muscle and thus plays a pivotal role in regulation of insulin sensitivity,” Dr Hespel said.

In other words, working out before breakfast directly combated the two most detrimental effects of eating a high-fat, high-calorie diet. It also helped the men avoid gaining weight.

There are caveats, of course. Exercising on an empty stomach is unlikely to improve your performance during that workout. Carbohydrates are easier for working muscles to access and burn for energy than fat, which is why athletes typically eat a high-carbohydrate diet. The researchers also don’t know whether the same benefits will accrue if you exercise at a more leisurely pace and for less time than in this study, although, according to Leonie Heilbronn, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, who has extensively studied the effects of high-fat diets and wrote a commentary about the Belgian study, “I would predict low intensity is better than nothing.”

So, unpleasant as the prospect may be, set your alarm after the next Christmas party to wake you early enough that you can run before sitting down to breakfast. “I would recommend this,” Dr. Heilbronn concluded, “as a way of combating Christmas” and those insidiously delectable cookies.

hugs :hug:

Originally Posted by Aunt Sheshie:
The eternal debate about when to exercise... now comes some sound scientific evidence that working out before breakfast does something that exercising after breakfast doesn't do: it keeps weight off...

YES! Isn't well-documented evidence wonderful? Maybe this study will produce others. Thanks so very much for posting this.