Keira's Transformation (I hope!)

Hi, I have struggled with my weight and with staying focused and motivated (I have adhd) most of my life. Today i finished half of like a very beginner basic home exercise (somethjng on bodyfit called 'Your Transformation Starts Here') and between the ridiculous heat (we are climbing to 115 fahrenheit later) and (mostly) being very very out of shape I am drenched in sweat, so, that feels like what i can get done today. Hoping to get more done next workout! For now i am drinking iced tea and hiding from the horrible day star. This is the first time in quite a while i have tried to work out.

Its going okay so far. I did have to go a little light on some of the exercises but for the most part i am keeping up with it. I think i will do the walking portion in the actual outside tomorrow instead of meandering around the apartment XD

I kind of fell off the wagon with exercise the last two days even though I'd only been going about six days when I did... I've been pushing myself to do better on a lot of fronts and I kind of feel overloaded and like my current exercise program - a generic beginner workout routine - isn't quite right right. I got a lot of unwarranted suggestions from friends and it made me anxious about what I'm doing, and I am kind of recovering from bad career burnout. I'll start again tomorrow, for sure!:)

I have been doing exercise again the last few days. I decided to just try to figure out what my max reps at anything were since I don't have a ton of weight so I mostly am limited to body weight. I don't really know a ton about exercise but tentatively - I can do about 40 situps, basically no pushups (25 knee pushups), about 40 squats. I did like seventy bicep curls with the little 8 pound weight I had gotten at some point - so I got new weights (15 pounds) that feel a little 'heavy' for me. But for them max reps for bicep curls is maybe closer to about 50 ish? its hard to tell. When do I hit max reps? Like the amount of stuff I don't know, I recognize at this point is a lot greater than the stuff I don't know. I'll try and come up with some good questions at the end of this. I'm not really sure if max reps or like one weight max would be better. I can't really afford to buy equipment or supplements really (unemployed at the moment: hopefully soon I'll find something). Part of my purpose I guess for doing exercise and wanting to lose weight and get in shape - well there's several I guess. I want to lose weight; I think I'm at an unhealthy weight now, like pretty unambiguously (I'm about 5'10" and 330 pounds last I checked - my scale is here somewhere in one of these moving boxes, but a lot of them are stuffed in closets and difficult to get to). What I really want is specifically to lose body fat. Some of this is to qualify for transition related surgery stuff (there are health risks to getting some kinds of surgery while overweight). And then I'd like to get stronger because I am just physically weak and I would really like to be able to use my body to do more things, like climb a rope, or maybe do a headstand or pullups or pushups or whatever. I really admire the physiques of like some of the women who do fitness stuff, either mma or like there was this workout person on youtube, zuzanna who looked really great, but she works out like, inhumanly hard from my lazy office worker's perspective. I know I won't perfectly look like them because I went through the wrong puberty once, like it or no, as a teenager, and it did a lot to my body. But I know I won't look totally mannish either (despite starting late second puberty has been generous to me so far) and I'll look a lot better than I do now. Either way I figure this can be beneficial to my health, as long as I don't push it too hard too fast, and as long as I do manage to challenge myself consistently, something I've never been historically great at doing. I'm kind of a quitter, tbh. Some of that comes with adhd - my life could be called a series of 3 or 4 week intense interests which guttered at the end and then getting fired up by something else. For a long time the longest I'd ever held a job was 4 months, at my first job, and the rest were all a month or less - then I started getting older and being able to sustain interest longer, especially once I figured out that passion was the fuel I needed to do things and that it has to be cultivated intentionally (something I am still trying to learn how to do well). Oh yeah, questions. How do I REALLY know when I've hit max reps? Is max reps even that important or is it better to look at 1 rep max weight? or some other figure? I am just starting to try to get into shape. Is it better to lose fat first or build muscle first? Or a little of each? I feel kind of eager to do both to be honest. Losing fat is a big part of my desire but I'd also like to get at least a little bit of a physique going eventually ya know? I've never been a 'fit' person my whole life. I feel like its a whole side of the planet I've been avoiding a lot the last decade and a half at least, along with like, going outside, uh, doing things that aren't abstract like code or art, 'playing' physically generally, idk. I don't nec. need an answer i'm sure a lot of these questions are in forums and I might think of more as I read. Just listing them down. If I'm gonna be here and use this site I might as well get something out of it by reading what's here. One insight I had is I don't ACTUALLY need to know what my 'real' max is perhaps. Because how much I am willing to do, even if I'm wimping out early, is still helpful. I've read that exercise kind of toughens / strengthens things like pain resistance / stress tolerance. So either way working at whatever, 75%? of max on the regular and then retesting / updating reps / weights should work regardless of whether I'm hitting my physiological like... max best lift or something if my muscles were run by a robot instead of my brain..idk

Today so far:
45 bicep curls (15 lb / side) - this was to assess what my max might be
I also 'benched' the 15# weights (30 lb total??) like 30 times but it was really not much resistance
50 crunches
I have to get on top of job hunting but I'll do some more exercise in the evening I guess.
(update - I got distracted and didn't do anything)

30 dumbbell rows 15# each side (my max is around 30)
30 bicep curls 15# each side
30 situps
18 knee pushups
may add more later today

I fell off the wagon the last few days. Today I hit a burst of energy but I had housework to do so I figured it sort of counted for both - I assembled 2 bookshelves and picked up all the trash in the living room, did all the laundry in the house, hung it and assembled my new work desk. It was 85ish today so I am sweating all over regardless. There was some lifting getting bins onto the shelves, which ran up to the ceiling, so, it ... kind of counts? Back to working out - or maybe starting working out- proper tomorrow haha, I'll start the all-pro workout #1 then.

Nobody responded to anything I asked or wrote and I read some people saying transphobic stuff in one of the forums. Not for me. I'll go subscribe to something else.