Working out

Don't get down on yourself. One of the harder things I've faced has been sticking to a workout plan. I would keep using the bike and ride everyday if you can. Make a long playlist that you really enjoy so you can focus more on the music than exhaustion. I used to ride 20 miles everyday Mon-Fri and went from about 185-139 without a healthy diet.

As for strength conditioning you don't have to start out big. I started off doing 20-30 push ups & sit ups per day along with squats until I was tired. Then as your body adjusts you can start doing more. I would also recommend taking multi-vitamins and fish oil.

Hope this helps!

 

To add to what JordanM said, there have been articles written on how diet and exercise routines take super-human effort to maintain.

What you should do is just focus on finding your limits and staying within them. When I was a beginning to working out, I took a "no pain, no gain" mentality, and that resulted in me just injuring myself. I would go run, and then I could barely walk for four days. That's not how to improve.

You might feel silly at first and think, "gee, I really suck and can't do much of anything." But over the long term, as long as you just keep trying and don't hurt yourself, you will make real gains!

 

My apologies, this is quite long. Usually I don't put headers but I thought it'd help break it up a bit...

Intro
Basically like everyone has said, getting into better shape is not going to be easy. There is no miracle exercise that helps you get stronger without much effort. The only reason why your body would build muscle is because it's under strain to do so. You work out and after reaching your limit your body says "Omg that was horrible. I'd better build some muscle so that doesn't happen again." If things are easy then your body says "Meh, no need to improve."

Knowing Your Limits
That being said you need to learn your limits. You need to know the difference between sore and injured. If you're working on building up strength then I think it's natural to be sore afterwards because it is my understanding that you're basically wearing out your muscles so that your body will heal and build more. In this sense "no pain, no gain" is true because if you don't really work your muscles, you won't really get more. Now on the other hand, there is "sore" and there is injuring yourself. Wearing out muscles is okay. Tearing them is definitely not. Once you injure yourself your body isn't building muscle anymore, it's frantically trying to repair any extensive damage and you'll be out of exercising for a while. Very counterproductive.

Sore Vs. Injured
So how to tell the difference? From what you've said it seems like you know when to stop before injury. In my experience a throbbing or aching muscle pain afterward is okay. Having a hard time later on using those muscles you've worked on is also okay to an extent. On the bad side, a popping noise followed by intense, sharp pain means muscle tearing and weeks of icing and rest, and at worse medical attention.

Basically try to work out until you're fatigued, exhausted, and perhaps sore but not devastatingly so. Don't feel discouraged if you need to start small because everyone has different limits. Eventually if you stick with the same routine it should get easier and easier. That's when it's time to step it up a notch and do a little more.

What To Do
As for what to do, there is cardio work out and then there is strength work out. Running, biking, and things like that are mostly for cardio, building up your endurance and your cardiovascular system. Push-ups, sit-ups and weights work muscles. You'll probably want to do a mix of the two but my advice focus on the activity you enjoy the most. If you say you like cardio boxing then do that. When you feel comfortable, you can always add something else to your work out plan like a nice walk/jog, a small set of push-ups and sit-ups, a little biking, etc. Do only what you feel comfortable with. Start there and work your way up. That's usually why working out is difficult because it takes time and enormous amounts of effort.

Disclaimer and End
Now I'm definitely no expert but all of this comes from personal experience of being in a fairly rigorous sport since I was 8 years old so I think I learned a thing or two about working out. However I do hope a personal trainer or physician can give a little input and/or correct me if I'm wrong because I'd hate to misinform anyone.

I really hope this helps and I really hope that you stop thinking yourself as worthless and vulnerable. Maybe you feel like you need to improve yourself and that's fine, but feeling worthless is not okay. No one is worthless (*hug*)

 

I'd also recommend things like dance and swimming; not necessarily high strength or impact, but the extent to which you use the muscle means it tends to improve at a decent rate, or so I've found.

 

Hey, don't worry! You just have to start slow.

Also, with proper form, there is a lot of people who can't do half of a pushup.

 

I don't know if you plan on joining a gym to work out, because I've developed a habit of thinking working out and going to the gym as synonymous.

But, I worked up to where I am. It's hard to work out when you've never done it before, but it's all about turning into habit. I started out small: pull ups, push ups, and sit ups during commercial breaks. Then I started adding daily walks, which turned to daily runs (short distances to long distances).

Then, out of nowhere, I started changing my diet. And I'm becoming more fit as time goes on.

What I really needed to kick start my work outs is inspiration. If you have a tumblr or a twitter, start following health and fitness blogs (for me, following Men's Health on Twitter is my catalyst). Just seeing that other normal people are doing the same things I'm trying to do helps motivate me.

 

About not being able to do sit-ups- are you actually doing sit-ups, or crunches? Crunches are a LOT easier, not as hard on your back, and still get the job done. I do crunches, leg-lifts, and knee push-ups (did, I haven't done anything in ages). Don't be scared by the 20 push-ups thing. I doubt I could do more than half a full push-up at the moment, too, and I'm not in bad shape.

 

Situps are a stupid exercise that don't target your abs as much as they target your hip flexors. Crunches are much more effective (unless you do want to target your hip flexors...).

 

you always hurt like hell when you start a routine because your body is not used to the effort. soreness is normal.

 

If you do crunches I recomend doing them on an exercise ball, as it will help support your back.

As for not being able to do a pull up, those are hard. It took me three years and a couple of weeks ago I was finally able to do 1. It wasn't very cook, but I was able to do it.

 

Don't give up! Start out small and be proud of yourself for every minute that you spend on your fitness! Good luck!

 

get a membership at a fitness club (I am partial for anytime fitness, as it is affordable, and open 24/7), and you will have access to a wide variety of equipement that make it easy and fun.

As for pull ups, most gyms have assited chinup-pullup machines. It takes forever to be able to do them with just a bar because you will be overtraining like hell trying, meaning progress is slow. weight assited machines make it easy and safer to train yourself to be able to do a pullup-chinup.

 

Exercising and working out at the gym isn't for everybody. I personally hate going to the gym unless I am conditioning for a tournament. I just really don't like the small enclosed space.

I would probably suggest doing something you like to do. I like to just grab my ipod and take my dogs for a long walk to the dog park or a hilly trail. In highschool, me and my friends would just go to a open space and throw a disk around. Make it fun and it won't feel like its a chore.

Good luck!

 

This is great advice for cardio, but it is very difficult to find something to use as resistance training that you can 'fit in' to your day. Basically the only option is weight lifting of some kind, which means putting aside half an hour or so to allow you to do it properly.