Want to lose weight? Head for the hills

Q

I had a pacemaker fitted two years ago due to a heart-rhythm problem and I’m on tablets for high blood pressure. I’m 75 years old and have otherwise been pretty fit and active all my life. While I am not really overweight (9st 11lb and 5ft tall), I would like to lose weight. I’ve heard about high-intensity interval training (HIIT) – short bursts of exercise, like sprinting – but is it safe for me?

A

When you have lived a life that is geared around being very active, it is really hard to convince yourself to slow down in any substantial way, and even harder to be told you can only do things that are (relatively) mundane. However, you do need to be conscious that you are battling a mixture of different ailments and have the control of your pacemaker to consider. The beauty of them is that, obviously, they control your heart rate and protect you against excessive strain. But the clue is in that end bit: ‘excessive strain’.

You will need to keep your levels lower, or you are simply fighting the machine, but you can use varied pace training to add some intensity in complete safety as that is, after all, why the pacemaker was fitted.

I would suggest that rather than going for the full ‘eyeballs-out’ HIIT approach, you should use hills – either real ones, or in the gym – for fast walking intervals. I don’t mean slow, rolling hills, but hills that make you work a bit. Make them steep and the intervals 30 to 45 seconds. Walk powerfully up and then stroll back down to the start and repeat. I can’t guarantee it will fulfil every desire that you have to work hard, but it will certainly help.

And you can absolutely still do resistance training, so use the big muscle groups in your legs, chest and back to help burn energy too. Again, you might find you just don’t have the extra boost as your pacemaker is partially in control, but it will simply mean that you do rather fewer reps and you lift a little less weight.

Q

I am a 65-year-old woman and I weigh about seven-and-a-half stone. I walk two to four miles a day with my dog, and do a fitness class once a week and stretching exercises for 20 minutes five days a week. To my horror, I am developing a ‘spare tyre’. I am not eating any differently so I cannot understand why.

A

I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t doing enough. Or rather, you are doing enough in time terms, but you aren’t doing the right things.

It’s a really common mistake to make in adding up the hours, especially when you include dogwalking because it consumes so much time. It’s not that dog-walking doesn’t count – it does, but it’s gentle or moderate exercise at best.

One simple solution is to ensure you make the dog-walking become significantly more intensive. This might be through finding varied terrain (beach walks are great if you live by the coast), or it may be that you walk and jog.

The exercise class you are doing needs analysis too. Are you reaching a level that’s making you genuinely hot, out of breath and sweating?

As a scale, you should be reaching seven to eight out of ten, with an occasional nine. If you’re not, it isn’t tough enough for you. Also, you should be reaching that level three to four times a week, so either increase the number of classes you do, or adapt the walking programme or start using a routine at home to get yourself working for half an hour two to three times every week.

We often don’t realise just how much intensity is needed to get results – it’s a high level. And we also forget how often we need to do it. For you that’s not a problem. What you need is to use your time to the max.