Hi, I'm Erika, the PCOS personal trainer.
And I'd like to share with you my formula for a PCOS weight loss workout plan.
And you can put this together with three simple steps and it's the quickest way
I know how to get you feeling confident in your body. Again,
reduce your stress and get you on the road to losing weight even if you have
PCOS.
So step number one is to strength train three times a week on non-consecutive
days. So you want a break in between each workout.
So it could be Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday,
Saturday you get the idea.
These workouts should be total body workouts so they should hit all of your
major muscle groups,
which is an upper body pushing exercise and upper body pulling exercise,
a squat based exercise and and usually something for
lower body pulling the hip hinge patterns.
So you want to hit quads and hamstrings as well in the lower body and then a
core stability exercise.
And you want to have that sort of formula for all three of your workouts.
Start to finish from warm up to cool down,
it should take about 30 to 40 minutes tops.
I know what you're thinking that you should be working out a ton if you want to
lose weight with PCOS. I can tell you right now that's not necessarily the case.
I've been working with women who have had PCOS for a long time now since 2014
and probably say for example, one of my coaching clients, Chi,
she's a personal trainer and she came to me frustrated with stubborn weight loss
that she just couldn't get a handle on and she was working out about two hours a
day.
I put her on the plan I'm talking about right now and she got fantastic results
and also she reduced her stress cause she was having to spend so much time at
the gym and it was getting in the way of some other stuff in her life. Okay.
So getting onto step number two, which is your cardio,
I recommend high intensity interval training because it is better at addressing
insulin resistance and decreasing belly fat.
It has an edge over traditional cardio.
So high intensity interval training is when you alternate between bouts of about
20 to 40 seconds of really intense exercise.
Maybe something like running as fast as you can jump ropes,
burpees and then low intensity exercise like just walking it out,
marching in place,
skipping rope instead of jumping rope and you alternate between this high and
low intensity for about 10 to 15 minutes tops.
And I'd like to see my weight loss clients getting in two HIIT sessions a week.
I have also found that if you want to place those hit sessions right after your
a strength training workout that usually works pretty well in might give you a
little bit of an edge when it comes to fat loss. I'm not sure why,
but then again,
I've been doing this for awhile and I've just kind of noticed some patterns.
So that's one way that you can give yourself just a little bit more of an edge.
Step three is restorative activities and this is the one that everyone skimps on
and doesn't realize the power of it.
So it's kind of a well known fact. If you're a fitness nerd like me,
that your workout is not where your body changes.
So working out provides your body stimulus to change and the healing and
recovering that happens on your off days.
That's where the metabolic action, the magic really happens.
So on your recovery days,
you're going to be building more muscle and increasing your metabolism by
building that muscle and you're insulin cell receptor sites,
which is critical for women with PCOS.
So that recovery time is really necessary.
Plus overexercising kind of works in the opposite direction for women living
with PCOS because stress is big underlying issue for us.
And if you are, our stress levels are high,
either your physical stress levels or your mental stress levels or both,
you're going to see your body take on some hormonal reactions that aren't going
to help with balancing out your PCOS related hormone problems.
So all that to say you gotta have your recovery days,
but I don't want you to just sitting around doing nothing on your recovery days.
I want you engaging in restorative activities.
I love it if you can get outside for this type of exercise because that gives
you an extra mental boost plus the sunshine will give you some vitamin D,
but things like walking, restorative yoga or yen yoga,
so that's really gentle yoga with a lot of deep breathing involved and resting
in a pose for awhile. It will help with your flexibility as well. Walking,
like I mentioned before, anything fun where you're laughing or goofing around,
like playing kickball with some friends maybe even in a league or
playing with your children or your friend's kids,
go borrow some kids if you're looking for some games to play.
All of those are great examples of restorative activities that are going to
ensure that when you go to the gym that you're actually getting the results you
had hoped for. Okay, so let's recap.
Strength train three times a week, three full body sessions,
so you're going to be hitting your upper body, pulling and pushing.
You're going to be working your quad dominant exercises and your hip dominant
exercises in your lower body and you're going to be doing core stability.
Step two is high intensity interval training.
Either on your days off from strength training or directly after your strength
training workouts.
Do not do hit before you strength train because you want to come into your
strength training fresh and fully energized because it's the most important
element of your workout. And then step three,
your restorative exercise.
So this is the physical activity you do on your days off from formal exercise.
It should be good for your heart, heart heart, not your,
your cardiovascular heart. But I'm talking about your soul, if you will.
Your spirit should be something that boosts your happy, feel good,
feel good vibes.
It should be relaxing and it shouldn't have pushed you to your limits and it
should happen every day that you're not in the gym doing something formal. Okay?
So if you found this video, helpful, subscribe.
Because when we talking more about PCOS exercise,
whether you're looking to lose weight or maybe you have a different goal,
I'm going to do my best to address all of those on this channel.
So please subscribe below.
And if you heard me describing all the strength training stuff, and you're like,
what the heck is it? Hip dominant, lower body exercise. It's cool.
I got you covered.
Click the link below and that'll take you to my do it yourself strength training
guide,
and that's going to break it all down for you and assemble no nonsense way.
You can print it out so you always have it with you.
So if you like this video, please hit like and subscribe.
I look forward to talking to you again soon.