Excercising as a FAT person

There was a time when I would say I was in pretty good shape.  I was never a professional grade athlete and would never have made it on a collegiate sports team, but I would regularly run 5 miles in 30 minutes without worrying about it making me too tired for other activities.

I didn't used to think much about the exercise I did.  I had a lot of time to do it in and a lot of psychological drive to do it with. 

Now, I hold my breath to tie my shoes. 

Now, I find that I don't know much about exercise and there is not a lot of good material out there for people like me who are more than 100 lbs over weight and busy with life.  I have a hard time getting enough sleep on even one night in any given week.  How am I supposed to find the time to exercise and lose weight?  Here are a few notes from my thoughts about loosing weight:

1) Consistency is most important.  I am fat because I don't have good habits.  Establishing an exercise habit is the most important thing I can do.  It is more important than improving my diet or sleep.  Really it is.  I have set the goal of exercising 10 times a week.  Yes 10.  Why 10?  So that it becomes a core habit of my life.  How many times do you eat?  Go to the bathroom?  Brush your teeth?  Those are a few of your core habits.  More specifically they are habits required to maintain your body.  Why should exercise be any different?  And, if I don't make exercise one of the core habits of my life, I don't think I will be able to get or stay healthy.

2) Make it quick. Time is of the essence.  If I require myself to do a 30 minute workout, it will be difficult to find the time.  I need to make it a 5 minute workout.  I need to be able to squeeze it in and move on with my day.  The longer the workout takes the easier it is to decide that I don't have time.  A gym membership is completely out of the question.

3) Make it lite.  Being fat it is easy to get tired out.  And being out of shape it is easy to hurt myself by doing too much exercise.  The truth is that I am no longer familiar with my body.  If I do too much exercise in the morning I am miserable all day long.  If I do too much at night, I won't sleep well and will be miserable all the next day.  And it will be harder to convince myself to exercise again.

4) Track the exercise.  I have a calendar in the bath room that I put a number and "e" for how many times I exercised that day.  This has not worked very well for me.  I am also using it to track weight and other things as well.  I think that maybe it is too much stuff on the calendar.  Maybe it is too many goals.  But I think that recording the effort is important.

Again, the goal is to establish the habit.  Over time the exercises can evolve into more intense or more rewarding workout.  But for now... It has to be a simple routine.