Exercise routine for SAHM?

I am 31 year old stay at home mother of a three year old boy. I recently gained like 28 pounds and have been trying the last 3 months to take it off with no success. The exercising I am currently doing consists of 35 mins on elliptical and some crunchs (reg crunches, reverse crunches and side). It is hard for me to even get through this. I set the timer to 37.5 mins for elliptical to allow for getting my LO juice and such and will pause the time as well. I know starting and stopping is not ideal but I do not have much of a choice. I do this routine 5 days a week.

I have been doing this for like 3 months and haven't lost any weight or inches or anything. Can someone suggest any exercises that I can add to make my work out more effective? Like I said I can not devote much more time than that to the workouts, but opefully there is a more effective way to use the time?

They have be exercises done in my home.

Thanks!
 
What is your diet like? Have you tried keeping a food diary and working out your calorie intake?
 
You can do anything that gets you sweating. Crunches, press ups, burpess, squats, lunges, jumping jacks, supermen and so on. If you buy yourself a couple of kettle bells you can add alsorts of extra exercies that will burn the fat, increase your strength a little and get you fitter.
 
Be careful with nutiritionalists. There are some brilliant out there and others whose main source of income is selling suppliments. If you are buying real food under sensible guidance, you have a good one. Also remember that anything passing your lips has to be counted. I am critical because I have see so many who count food and forget beer, this doesn't mean you are one of them.

Exercise wise, be really careful unless you are already practiced on a lot of activities. Your best tools would be a wii fit, xbox equivilant or you tube searches for easy at home circuits, or low impact workouts.
The easy part is not an insult, it is because you will need to start low and build up.

There are routines on here. If you want to build up your own use the bals system for balanced routines, not a spelling error, it means back arms legs stomach. An example is below
Deadlift or bent over row Back
Bench press or press ups Arms
Squats or lunges Legs
Crunches or twists Stomach

Remember to find out correct technique, being at home alone while triaining increases the risk of injury through bad form, so be really careful of this.
I train at home and do some really insane stuff but I have a lot of experience being this stupid in public gyms to fall back on and a few who can tell me if I have good form, ie wife and son.
 
Thank you for advice. I have a wii and also have exercise aps on TV I have been interested in but the prob with anything using the TV is the only way I get my LO to give me any exercise time is by putting Phineas and Ferb on the TV for him:p

I am not buying any special foods from the nutritionist. Also, I kinda know some about this stiff. When I was in my mid 20s I was big into eating right and exercising. I wrote down everything I ate, counting calories, fat, sugar etc at first but after time I just knew what i should eat. I was very active and was not trying to loose weight (I was 98 pounds when I started and ended up maintaining at 101 after a few months), so I was allowed a lot more calories back then. I did 45-90 mins cardio 5 days a week and 1 hour strength training with a trainer 4 days a week. I also worked 3 days a week at a physical job. I was in really good shape. I would love to be able to do that again but there is no way I have the time for that! I will probably never be 16 % body fat and I am okay with that. But I don't wanna be chubby either:p
 
im thinking of adding (to teh cardio and abs stated in OP) 3 sets each of push-ups and squats with like 10 pound dumbbells. 12 reps a set to start. And justadding these 3 days a week to start. Hopefully my LO will get more used to the extra exercises and I can go up to this 4 days a week at some point.

What do yall think? Think that will help?

(We do other physical activity together but that obviously isnt enough to effect my weight any more. We go for walks and play at park, play tag and get me and stuff, go to the lake in the warm months... I guess normal mommy LO stuff:))
 
^ I'd definitely recommend going ahead and incorporating squats and push ups into your routine. Resistance training may not make you lose weight any more effectively than your current struggle, but it will promote good things with regards to body composition. The BALS system CrazyOldMan suggested would be worth taking on.

Next step after that is to start squatting and bench pressing your kid :p (not serious) (maybe a little bit serious)
 
Good stuff on the additions. Need back work too, like deadlifts or rowing, then you will be balanced. Consider that back issues are incredibly common, missing this is not advised.
Everything counts, there are no exceptions. I remember posting to one person feeling the need to get fit to be a better dad that you will never be fit enough to keep up with a child, they will simply expect more, and still wear you out. If you can't do the fun stuff there really is no point anyway!

I know you are used to P&F being the LO distraction, great show, I love it, but there is an alternative. You can be the distraction.
My son hasn't been 3 in a while but my wife and I used to provide him endless entertainment when training at home before this age. We have his tooth marks on some little handbells, pink for our shame, that came in a kit we bought to help with my wife recovering from an operation, so he really has cut his teeth in the gym. That colour was on offer, my wife is not what one would call a pink person.
The at home kit is a lot more serious now but back then only low intensity stuff was done at home. Entertainment was him copying to some extent, either simply moving his arms and legs about when he was too young to stand, smiling and laughing at our funny faces, then doing some of the movements with no load while laughing at us for being so slow, i.e. doing the exercise properly. By making it a bit of a game, it meant he wanted us to be doing training, as it became family fun time. His form was dreadful and erratic at best but safe, it didn’t matter back then it got him moving.
As he got older we recruited him as a coaching assistant, basically telling him to watch out for specific failings on movement and tell us if we did it, he's still doing it. Being home educated PE is often him and my wife doing circuits, we have him watching for my wife's form to help enforce how it should be done in his mind, lot more strict with him now he's not a toddler. Obviously the intensity is child standard low, unlike with mine, but he will sit there being powerlifting judge and is very good at it. He doesn't care how much I am lifting, the bar is more than he is allowed to even consider at his age, so it's all heavy. All he sees is movement so squats are right depth, smooth movement with no stalling, no forward dip, knees following feet, or dad gets told off. It takes a bit for an aggressive trainer like me to take criticism from a child with good grace, but I keep in mind that I have asked for it and he knows my voice sounding sharp after a set is nothing to worry about.

If you ever read my jounal, it may be worth considering that on all the squat sessions my coaching assistant is someone who is still losing milk teeth

Adding to Goldie's comment
Bench pressing and squatting the LO is not a bad plan they love being on shoulders and lifted about. I used to do a form of good mornings with my son, have him on shoulders knees slightly bent and lean forward until he was nearly able to touch the floor, the most difficult was having a weight that was shaking as he laughed like a loon, because of course what I was doing was so sensible.
 
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I actually do bench press him sometimes:p He gets a kick out of it. Then he'll have me go above him and he'll "bench press" me. He is a big guy too. He is like on the 90 percentile for for height and I am 4'11"! He's a strong dude too. If there are any exercises I can do that incorporate him he'll either participate or walk away and play on his own if he gets bored so that kinda stuff would work well.

Do you think the 35 mins of cardio is enough? The cardio may be the hardest thing cause when I am on the elliptical there is that physical separation. He always wants to climb on the elliptical with me. Sometimes I'll pick him up while on it, but I can only maintain that so long! I have been thinking for sometime maybe I should do 30 more mins in the evening after DH gets home. The problem I have with that is motivation:/ After dinner I just am not in the mood to exercise.

On the wii fit, can you do it with 2 players? I dont know if itll entertain him but if so maybe I can try him doing it too. He plays on PS3 some these days. We kinda encourage video games in our family:p My DH and I met through gaming lol
 
My son is nearly the height I was at 16 despite being nowhere near, so tall. He is also strong, broad build not from me genetically but works well for him.
Cardio on the elliptical could be one for when there is alternative entertainment, unless he can go on shoulders. However that is only one type of cardio and there are others he could join in with, cardio for weight loss is basically heart rate elevated but breathing without difficulty. He could help you keep check of that, if you can talk to him, breathing is easy enough.
You could do simple circuits where you do the easiest versions of each exercise a minute at a time continuously until you cross 20 minutes, this will combine everything into one and if you make it a bit of a laugh or have your LO counting your reps he will be learning too, everyone wins. By keeping the intensity low you will be able to keep going long enough to make it cardio.
We have used the wii fit many times and some of the fencing etc. is great, just a shame it takes so long thinking about it between bouts.
I have issues with training late too, not motivation as such just so much to do that is important, like lesson planning, that sometimes I end up missing sessions. Motivation wise I can understand after a hard day, which is why I’d rather train as soon as I wake, but we do what we have to.
My job makes people expect me to be a gaming freak. Ironically I virtually never play computer games, I prefer iron, walking and other boring old man stuff as well as being mental with my son.
 
I'll see what I can do. I am the heaviest I been since my LO started moving. I really want to loose this weight! To tell you the truth since having my son I didn't really watch what a ate or exercised otehr than playing with him. just running after the boy seemed to do the trick until recently. Maybe cause he stays engaged longer on one thing we don't run around as much. I am also hoping when it warms up (Hopefully in April) going to the lake will help. In the warm months we swim for 1-3 hours a day. It is not like doing laps, but I think just moving around in the water that long may help? I know it wore him out last summer.

CrazyOldMan, May i ask what you do? My DH is a programmer. I am a SAHM with a masters in economics. Working outside the home isn't for me! lol

Thank you so much all for advice. Any additional advice/suggests always welcome:)

Thanks for all the advice.
 
Many users of this site are giving nice information with us. Exercise is one of the best thing for any diseases and there are lots of benefits of doing exercise. Just you have proper guidance of any exercise.
 
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