well hi, i`m a man, but my mother tell me to please post this:


well a little background, she had a car accident and she broke both hands and almost lose both legs, like when she was 20, the legs have like a platinum thing that holds everything (bones) , she was fat she do the atkins diet and loss tones of fat now she is slim , i told her she MUST do another diet because that diet is very bad for her health, so she start doing another diet and start 10 mins in the stationary bike,but 10 mins for me is waiting her time, what sport can she do for loosing fat, does that 10 mins in the bike reaaly woth it? she can`t run because of the platinum thing and she have a leg smaller than the other one. i was thinking to tell her go swimming but she can`t do more than 10 mins... only like 30 mins walking if she is lucky because the leg always start to hurt. i want her to do hit cardio but i can`t measure her maxHRM because she can`t run, or so something else...

With that health history, I would strongly recommend that she first talk to her doctor, then only work out with a personal trainer who is qualified to deal with someone with her limitations. If working out every time with a trainer is not an option, see if they can set her in the right direction on a program and help her with it, just not everytime she works out. Many are willing to work something out.

She is not going to be able to do what an average healthy adult can do, and I would think HIIT would not be the way to go with her injuries, especially if swimming starts to hurt. If she can do 10 min on the bike w/out pain, then great. Nothing is a waste of time. After a while, maybe she can go 15, then 20.

Those sound like serious injuries and that's nothing to mess around with. Strength training would probably be beneficial to her, but ONLY with someone who knows how to work with those types of problems, don't just have her try to do weightlifting, even if you know how to do it, b/c what you can do and what she can do are two very different things.

I'm a personal trainer, and I have a couple of suggestions:

First of all, now that the weight is off, she can slowly start to add other foods back into her diet. Just make sure she is eating WHOLE grains, not processed; avoid sugar; and eat small meals. Add fruits, vegetables, and other food back in gradually. It helps to make a big veggie soup each Sunday and eat it 3 or more times a week for dinner. Diet is an easy way to keep weight under control.

Also, evidence supports the fact that it is perfectly fine to do exercise for shorter periods of time but more often. For example, 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon, 10 minutes in the evening. 20-30 minutes a day is great! Mix it up - walking, swimming, and biking.

Also, don't worry about HRM. It really doesn't matter as much for weight loss as it does for cardiovascular health. While you do burn more calories by going harder, you can burn the same number of calories by going longer. In other words, it's ok to go slower if you go longer, and there are still significant health benefits.

I don't know your mom or how old she is, but I'm not sure what HIIT would do to her body and therefore would not recommend it... However, your mom can measure the hard intervals herself by just "going as hard as she can" for 20 seconds and resting 10 seconds. You don't need to have her HRM.

Thanks for all the recomendations, my mother is 41 years old and she has been doing some cardio exercises like walking during the weekends (45mins) and during week days (2x-3x) in the stand alone bike for 15 mins... she says that if she uses a hard speed she will feel a pain in her femur and knee, she never workout after the accident so her muscles are not strong enough...