From idea to action

I get all excited reading fitness magazines and books.  I mark exercises to try, workout strategies, yoga routines, recipes, and even pictures I particularly like.  There I am, all inspired! 

Oh, right, you have to DO something to get the benefit.  I knew there was a snag.

Here’s my plan:  sneak a little bit of new into the old.  Maybe I’m not going to do a whole yoga progression, but I can decide that my waiting-around stance is going to be tree this week.  I have to do some kind of weight work, so I can try one new workout.

Steal this plan.  It’ll be fun.  Trust me.

My treat...

Treats are a wonderful thing, no doubt.  Even my disobedient dogs will sit if there is bacon involved—until they get the bacon, and then all bets are off.  Still, they got so happy that it was fun for me to give them treats.  Until we visited the vet, who suggested that the girls were no longer at their ideal weights.

We are human, which means that we have thumbs that can work can openers and other methods of controlling when and what we eat.  We also like treats.  Lest we have the same kind of conversation I had with the vet with our doctors, we need to pay attention to those treats.

Treats are not everyday food.  We don’t get a treat just because we are tired and whiny.  We don’t have to have a treat just because that guy two cubicles down has a birthday, or a new pie recipe, or an always-full candy jar.

The good news is that treats don’t have to be food-based.  We can get our toes painted a different color, spend half an hour swinging on the swings at the park (assuming no small people got there first), read comic books, go swimming, dance in the backyard.  Even napping can be a treat.

Whatever we choose for our treats, let’s make sure we really enjoy them.

"...itty bitty living space"

A lot of people wish they had time to exercise.  Today, I have genie powers:  we all have time to exercise!  Exercise does not have to take a long time and it doesn’t all have to happen at once.

Interval training is our best friend when it comes to saving time.  A half hour of intervals, in which we alternate segments of going as fast and hard as we can and segments of relative rest and recovery, not only burns more calories than an hour of steady state exercise, but it also pumps up our metabolisms for the next 24 hours.  Mix in some weights and we are good to go!

Sometimes finding an entire half hour is too much.  Let’s find three 10-minute slots.  The workout will be just as effective. 

Then there are the sneaky ways to exercise.  We can do calf raises while we brush our teeth, improving both oral hygiene and balance.  Stuck in line?  Let’s do some squats; worst case, we entertain the rest of the line.  Stuck in traffic?  Remember the trusty myofascial release duck and arrive with a much more relaxed set of traps.  Commercials during our favorite (non-pre-recorded shows?  Time for sit ups and push ups!  (And no, the sprint to the tortilla chips doesn’t count.)

We can do it.

I cannot tell a lie...

Let’s tell the truth.  Not that any of us are liars, exactly.  We just give ourselves, often, a little fudge factor.  Like when we underestimate the calories in that piece of fudge, for example.  Or maybe when the account of our swimming workout starts to include escaping from a giant fish at high speed instead of the actual 25 laps we struggled to complete.

The truth can be uncomfortable, but so can tight jeans.  When we consistently underestimate the quantity of food we consume and overestimate the amount and quality of our exercise, we may be surprised that the jeans remain tight.  A little more accuracy in our reporting might reveal that the problem does not lie with the dryer, after all.

What have we got to lose?

Also, never underestimate the power of a well-timed grape

My friend O is 11 and newly in possession of a spiffy road bike.  Pedaling is old hat—she has been riding tandem with her dad for a long time over long distances.  It is, however, different, when one is in charge of one’s own bike.  It takes some time to learn about steering and pacing and braking and the always-crucial timing of calling out to pedestrians and bikes before passing.  She practiced all of those things when we rode (almost 15 miles, with some small hills) yesterday and did a fabulous job.

This morning, off I went to spin class.  I have my own batch of things I am learning and I figured one of them out today.  More accurately, my body found the way to execute what my mind couldn’t properly explain to it.  I grinned like a kid at recess.

Sometimes learning takes a while, but it is always worth it.

Watermelon, on the other hand...

So, hypothetically, maybe, someone happened to find a pint of ice cream in the freezer.  Maybe that person happened to be having a rough day and kind of ate the entire thing at one go.  What, hypothetically, should that person do about it over the next days?

First, there are a few things that person should NOT do.  Like get depressed about it and do it over again.  That person should not decide that she or he is hopeless and doomed and will never be fit or healthy so why even bother at all.  This may be challenging because, odds are, the ice cream did not exactly agree with that person and he or she may be feeling cranky, tired, bloated, or otherwise out of sorts.

Noticing that icky feeling in the body is one of the things the unfortunate person should do.  She or he ate the ice cream in an attempt to feel good, and it didn’t work.  Paying attention to this may be useful in avoiding a repeat occurrence.

The sufferer should definitely get some exercise, but what he or she would normally do, not the most intense workout ever to eradicate all thousand calories at once.  This will not make her or him feel better.  It will not magically return the body to its pre-Fall state.

In short, the plan remains the same in spite of the deviation.  Just get back to work, eating and working out in ways that produce health and wellbeing.  All of this applies to anyone who is considering a full slab of ribs or extra apple pie or a vat of someone’s famous potato salad over the holiday weekend.  Just in case someone, hypothetically, might have this occur…

Said the Spider...

Lao Tse, currently spelled Laozi, according to Wikipedia, said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

What he didn’t say is that that single step can set off profound changes.  Imagine kicking a pebble with that first step and starting a rock slide.  Not that all change is bad.  (Except on my computer; software update has crashed it twice today.)  Sometimes that first step seems to be into an elevator heading for the sky.

Fitness can be a profound change.  We may not recognize ourselves.  We may find that the strength we have gained in our bodies has changed our power in the world.  Other people may treat us differently, in both good and less good ways.

We can react to that with fear, ice cream, and blankets, or we can gird up for adventure.  I vote for adventure.