Give me your advice...PLEASE?

This is how my "fitness" routine looks like:

3-4 times walk/jog for 60-90 min.

2-3 times a weeks yoga 30-60 min.

2-3 times a week frisbee 30-60 minutes 

1-2 times bike tours 3-7 hours (I know it's a huge range, but it depends on the weather)

45 minutes daily of crunches, push-ups, stretching, etc

Give me your opinion...I cannot give exact times a week, because I have chronic pain that decides on how much I can do a week....Also, I don't have the money to join a gym or buy weights right now...so I have to use my body as a "weight". My goal is to be fit...what am I missing to achieve that (in the "workout" department, I know that diet is the other component, but I think I am doing ok there...)

I really appreciate your help!!!

If you want to know if this is enough activity to help you loose weight and 'be fit', I'd say so.  I do abou the same amount of activity sometimes less, and so far I am down 6.5 lbs. Just remember you won't get immediate results, but slower progression is what will keep the weight off and keep the muscle tone.

Good Luck!

Thanks...yes, I guess I did fail to include that my questions is:

Will this, together with a decent sensible diet help me with fat loss and energy level/overall fitness in my life?

If your primary goal is weight loss and you're a beginner, this seems like a sensible way to get your feet wet in improving your health.

Generally, if you want to lose weight, your focus should be on going to sleep with around a 20% caloric deficit from your maintenence calories, and you should try to burn the calories off rather than diet them off.

It seems like you have a lot of low intensity, low impact cardio for your workouts. This is ok for a complete beginner, but if you want to see results come to you faster, you need to make sure that you're within your target heart rate zone during aerobic exercise (around 70% of your max heart rate). This is a little tough for beginners to accomplish for extended periods of time, but another solution to ease into it would be a little HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). Really short workouts such as 6x100m all-out sprints burn about as many calories as 20-30 minutes of walking, and they are definitely more intense and give your body an overall better workout.

Crunches and pushups are good to maintain muscle mass and promote the maintenence of lean body mass (LBM). Often times people lose sight of losing fat when they are trying to lose weight, and a lot of the lost weight comes from muscle tissue. The light calisthenics you're doing now helps prevent this, but weight lifting or doing more intense calisthenics (chin-ups, medicine balls, jumps for distance/height, etc.) is better. If you can't afford weights, invest in some resistance bands and a couple bricks (or even go hunting for some rocks, or use cans of Campbell's soup). When I can't go to a gym, I put cans of tuna in an empty pillow case and use that as my dumbbells (sometimes I even tie two weighted cases to a stick to have a weighted bar :P).

On another note, I noticed you said you have chronic pain. I'm not sure where your pain is, but since you do experience pain, make sure that you're doing all of your fitness exercises with correct form (especially since you're new and forming new fitness habits). Make sure you're not tugging on your neck with crunches and you're not completely killing your wrists from pushups.

Putting all that stuff aside, if you want to step it up from what you have now, the major things your workout routine lack are set times for workout, weights/dumbbells, and interval training for cardio.

I hope this helps you achieve all of your fitness goals! Best of luck.

Congrats on being into fitness and wanting to be healthy. I have all the respect in the world for people who take care of themselves. Now I do have some critcism of your routine, but this is based on what I have read, learned, and what has worked for me.

I see that money is an issue. So I wanted to recommend Gold's Gym. Gold's Gym is doing a great deal right now of $49 dollars down and $15 bucks a month. Even people with bad finances (me included) can afford this. I jumped at this deal with I heard about it. You really need weight lifting in your exercise regimen to truly transform your body.

I would stick with the yoga, because stretching and flexibility is important. You don't need to to do crunches everyday. Abs are just like any other muscle group. They need rest. You only need to work your abs 2-3 times per week. Great abs lies more in nutrition then anything else. The same could be said for doing push-ups everyday. If you work out a muscle group everyday, it never gets a chance to recover and get stronger. Since you can't lift weights and are doing bodyweight exercises, I would recommend doing them three days per week with some rest in between (Mon, Wed, Fri). This way you are getting some recovery time in.

Also, it seems like you are doing way too much cardio. Cardio is a component of fitness, but it one that people have put too much emphasis on. To maintain proper cardiovascular fitness, you only have to do 90-120 minutes per week. People end up doing a lot of cardio because they think that with all the calroies they will burn, their scale weight will go down. That is true. However, what usually happens is that they lose the wrong type of weight resulting in muscle loss. This what you don't want. Lean muscle is what you need to transform your body.

There are three components of body transformation and fitness. This will apply if and when you can get a gym membership.

1) Nutrition - Most important hands down. You have to make sure that you eat enough of the right types of foods. For example, they say that a person who is 180-200 pounds that exercises regulalry should get at least 3000 calories per day. One gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, 1.5 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight from whole grains and vegetables, and 30-60 grams of healthy fats are the norms. Also at least 1 gallon of water per day. One cheat day per week is allowed for 1-2 moderately sized cheat meals to offset metabolism and deal with cravings to prevent binge eating.

2) Strength Training - You should lift weights at least three times per week consistently. A good rule of thumb is to do two body parts per day during a 45-60 minute session. Three exercises per body part with three sets of 6-8 reps per exercise. Lifting heavy activates muscle growth faster. You can actually go even heavier if you want doing rep ranges of 3-5. I have gotten good results doing that.

3) Cardio - Like I said above, 90-120 minutes per week is all you need. This ensures you get enough to maintain cardiovascular fitness, and that you won't lose muscle. A good cardio program consists of both HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and steady state cardio. HIIT is done by mixing fast intervals going as hard as you can with slower intervals to recover. This mixes your body up because the pace is always changing. It can't adapt to the exercise. That is why you get better results than doing tons of steady state cardio. Example - Warm up for three minutes, then sprint as hard as you can for 15-20 seconds, followed by a brisk walk to recover for 40-60 seconds. Then continue to switch back and forth from sprint to walk for 15-20 minutes. Then do a five minute cool down. This elevates meatbolism for the rest of the day, spares muscle, and attacks bodyfat which is what you want. Do it twice a week on non lifting days. Then twice a week after lifting, do two 20-30 minute sessions of steady state cardio.

Thank you both for the advice.  My chronic pain comes from internal scarring which is part of the reason that I am limited to low impact cardio (it hurts to sprint)...

As for the Gold's Gym...sound like a great deal HOWEVER I am in Germany and the cheapest studio is about 60 Euro/month which is WAY too much money!

Thanks again!

Does Germany have "Jr" or Community colleges??  I take pe classes at the local comm college and for $50 I get 12 weeks of classes.  The weight room class is open lab so I can come and go as I please.  Of course the hours are limited unlike a gym but for me the price is right.