To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn through activity. If you are unable to walk, you cannot burn calories doing cardio exercise -- exercise that uses the large muscles in your lower body. But you don't have to do cardio to lose weight. Focus your weight-loss efforts on watching your calories. If you are able and interested, you can also perform exercises while seated.
Step 1
Commit to changes in your lifestyle. Do not "go on a diet," because short-term or crash diets will not help you keep weight off. To lose weight and keep it off, you must make permanent changes to your patterns of eating and activity.
Step 2
Set a goal of eliminating about 500 calories from your daily diet. Decreasing your caloric intake by 500 calories a day should lead to a weight loss of about 1 pound a week, the amount recommended by many health and fitness experts, including MayoClinic.com.
Step 3
Read nutritional labels and research the nutritional and caloric information about the foods you eat. Use cookbooks, magazines and the Internet to find healthier, lower-calorie alternatives to unhealthy foods in your diet.
Step 4
Eliminate the foods in your diet, one by one, that contain excessive calories and inadequate nutrition. Good targets include full-sugar soda, sweets, snacks, and processed and fast food. Save foods like crackers, cookies, chips, candy, ice cream, pastries, donuts and baked goods for rare occasions.
Step 5
Reduce your dietary fat. Replace fatty meats with skinless chicken and turkey breast, and drink skim milk instead of whole milk. Keep to a minimum your use of heavy oils, margarine, butter and creamy sauces.
Step 6
Reduce your portions. Weight gain is not only a matter of what you eat, but how much you eat. Tame portion distortion by measuring out your servings using a measuring cup, following guidelines provided by recipes and package labels.
Step 7
Eat lots of fiber. High-fiber foods fill your stomach and help curb your appetite. They slow digestion and release glucose into your bloodstream, stabilizing your blood sugar and insulin . This dampens your appetite for longer periods of time after eating. High-fiber foods include beans, whole grain foods, fruits and vegetables. Fill half your plate with low-calorie greens, vegetables and fruit, advises the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Include water-soluble fiber in your diet. Water-soluble fiber binds with some of the fat in the other foods you've eaten and eliminates it with your waste. Foods with water-soluble fiber include carrots, broccoli, pears, apples, peaches, bananas, plums, cranberries, beans, dried peas, soybean, oatmeal, oats, rye and barley.
Step 8
Exercise in whatever way you can. Many paraplegics and quadriplegics become quite athletic and participate in competitive sports, the website Wheelchair and Ambulatory Sports USA reports. Ask your doctor or physical therapist about specialized exercise equipment for people who cannot walk. Equipment such as the Uppertone or Quadriciser may be available in your community. Depending on the limitations of your upper body, you may be able to perform upper body exercises intensely enough to increase your heart rate and enhance cardiovascular fitness, according to the April 1993 "Medicine and Science in Sports and Medicine." Even if you can't do cardio, you can still burn calories and enhance muscle tone.
References
- MayoClinic.com; Fast Weight Loss: What's Wrong With It?; Donald Hensrud; Nov. 20, 2009
- MayoClinic.com; Aerobic Exercise: Top 10 Reasons to Get Physical; February 2011
- "Medicine and Science in Sports and Medicine"; Exercise Responses and Quadriplegia; Stephen Figoni; April 1993
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute: Portion Distortion and Serving Size
- Wheelchair and Ambulatory Sports USA; About Wheelchair & Ambulatory Sports, USA
- U.S. Department of Agriculture: 2010 Dietary Guidelines
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