Six things

The kind of stress and boredom many of us are experiencing these days can lead to overeating.  Here are six things to do instead of snacking:

1.     Drink water.  It has no calories, improves mood, and gives us an excuse to get up from time to time when we need to use the bathroom.

2.     Go outside.  The dog will like us better.  We will feel less stir crazy when we see the sky and feel air moving.

3.     Knit.  Or sew or do woodworking or whatever requires two hands.  Then there are none left over for shoveling popcorn into our pieholes.

4.     Type.  This is a good time to catch up on all those emails we owe folks.  We don’t need crumbs in the keyboard.

5.     Exercise.  It is really hard to eat and lift weights at the same time.  It’s not impossible, but really, safety first!

6.     Sleep.  We can all use more sleep.

Keep Growing

Both of my certifications (personal training and Pilates) require continuing education to keep my skills sharp and to expand my knowledge.  This is a good thing.

However, I also find it useful to go back to the beginning from time to time, especially with Pilates.  When I return to the early sets of exercises from my first Pilates training, I find that my experience in my own body and with clients has enriched my understanding of what those exercises do.  Every review brings depth.

We need both new information and deep understanding.  Sometimes one is more useful than the other—if we’re feeling stagnant, trying something new is good—if uncertain, revisiting an old workout can be its own kind of revelation.  The key is that we keep growing.

No barriers

Some of us are fitness maximalists.  We want All The Toys.  We have special shorts for biking, special shoes for running, special music for weight lifting, special color-coded charts for everything we do, optimally electrolyte-balanced drinks, and superfood endowed snacks.  Then there are those of us who just show up and do whatever.

I am not here to criticize either approach.  After all, my home gym is also my workplace and so has pretty much one of everything and sometimes two and yet I use the same pair of cross-training shoes for most of my cardio and I don’t own any padded shorts.

The key is:  what works.  I could not handle the deep boredom of most cardio without music, so I make sure I can listen while I sweat.  When I did long distance biking, I had my preferred energy packets and my favorite drinks, but I also knew I could get by on water and GORP if needed.  If those fancy weight training gloves get you to show up, use them.  If having to track down all your gear gets in the way, skip it.

Either way, it makes sense to make working out as simple as possible for ourselves.  When we have a place for our stuff and can grab it and go, we are more likely to do the workout.  Let’s not add any more barriers.

Monday Workout: More Pilates

Let’s do another Pilates mat workout.  A lot of it is like last week’s, but there are three new exercises (marked) that I will explain after the exercise list.  Remember to go slow and breathe.  Pilates is definitely not a race.  Skip anything that doesn’t feel good in your body.

pelvic clock
bridging
side to side	new
dead bug/femur arcs
chest lift
hundred
side kick
dart
quadruped
leg pull	new
leg pull front	new
saw
mermaid
standing roll down

Side to Side:  Start lying on your back, knees bent, heels in line with your sit bones, feet flat on the floor.  Stretch your arms out at shoulder level.  Inhale.  As you exhale, take both knees toward the floor on the left side of your body; they may or may not touch the floor.  If you want to increase the stretch, you can look over your right shoulder.  Inhale to return to the starting position and repeat on the other side.  Do an even number of repetitions.  If you want to vary the exercise, you can hang out in the twisted position for a while—it’s relaxing!  Another variation is to do the twist and then extend the leg that ends up on top so that the knee is straight.  A third variation is to do the whole thing beginning with both legs straight and pointed toward the ceiling.

Leg Pull:  Begin sitting tall with legs extended in front of you.  Place hands slightly behind you on the floor.  Hands can point toward your hips (most challenge), away from hips (next most challenge), or out toward the side (least challenge)—choose the one that works best for your body!  Exhale and lift your hips so that you are a straight line from ankles to shoulders (like a plank position, but upside down).  Inhale and lift one leg.  Exhale and lower it.  Repeat on the other side.  Do an even number of repetitions.

Leg Pull Front:  Begin in plank position, wrists directly under shoulders, body a straight line from back of head to heels.  Exhale and lift one leg, keeping hips level.  Inhale to lower.  Repeat on other side.  Do an even number of repetitions.

Stealth Cardio

Some people don’t like vegetables, so some other people who want those vegetable haters to live long and healthy lives figure out ways to hide veggies in recipes when appealing to reason doesn’t work.  I like most vegetables and have a Mom Look that can compel at least the consumption of a character portion of almost any food.  But I’m going to apply the principle to cardio exercise.  Here are four ways to “hide” cardio in stuff we do anyway.

1.     Do it faster.  Raking up leaves in the yard?  Do it as fast as possible!  Set a timer and try to beat the clock!  Also works with general tidying, vacuuming, and the like.

2.     Do it inefficiently.  This works particularly well if you live somewhere with stairs.  Take a separate trip up and down for each item that has traveled to the wrong level.  Go back for the sweatshirt you forgot upstairs or the glass of water you left downstairs.

3.     Do it while you’re waiting.  Reheating lunch in the microwave?  That’s two minutes of dancing or jacks or jump squats or skating back and forth on the kitchen floor in socks.

4.     Do it as a contest.  Race your spouse to get the trash cans out for garbage day.  Challenge your kid to laps around the table.  Make a bet that you can do one more jumping jack than your roomie.

And if all those things seem just too silly, then turn up the music, put on your grown-up exercise pants, and just get the cardio done.

Choices!

What with the way the world is going right now, all our usual patterns are disrupted.  No kidding.  One consequence of this disruption, as we build new patterns, is that our bodies respond.

Sometimes this is a good thing.  Cricket, my dog, loves this new thing where she gets more than one walk a day.  We’ve even been taking different routes, which means, of course, that there are New Things to sniffle and pee on.  For her.  For me, it means that I have to pay attention to which shoes I wear; more walking aggravates some of those less pleasant “features” of my body if I don’t wear the supportive shoes.  It also means that the old, shorter walks don’t feel like enough of an energy burn—that’s because I’ve adapted to a new level of activity.

The downside, hinted at above, is that we can develop new less than fabulous patterns.  All the extra typing I’m doing is reminding me that my wrists are considering giving in to the carpal tunnel torture.  Those of us who are exercising more may find ourselves more sore in unexpected places.  Those of us who are exercising less may find that our joints do not appreciate all that stillness.

The best news?  We have choices.  We can choose the things that make us feel better.  We can pay attention to form (yes, even while sitting at our desks surfing the web).  We can come out of this with both bodily and mental resilience.

We can do this.

Lugging Guilt Does Not Build Muscles

Under normal circumstances, I find myself encouraging people to do more.  These are not normal circumstances.  I have written more lately about doing less and chilling out than possibly ever before, but some folks still need to hear more about that.

Here’s the deal:  times are stressful.  Not one of us needs a single other thing to feel guilty about.  If exercise makes us feel better, we should do it.  If we don’t feel up to it, we should let it go.

In more detail, here is what I suggest.  Figure out a minimum acceptable level of activity.  This is not the time to go all macho (it is almost never the time to go all macho, really…).  My absolute base minimum is that I have to walk the dog around one block.  If I’ve done that, cool.  I’m still alive.  I can get on with whatever else urgent is there.  Having a really easy-to-meet minimum target is exceptionally freeing.  There is no more guilt to lug around.  And what usually happens is that the very act of starting out improves my mood so much that I do much more than my minimum.  If I don’t, no big deal.  But most of the time, I walk about a half hour, come home and feel like doing spin or Pilates or yoga.  And then in the afternoon I feel like walking more because I need to go outside.

Exercise is NOT something we do to punish ourselves.  If it does not feel good (in the larger sense, if not always right in the very moment we are doing it), don’t do it.

Our goal is to stay healthy right now, by whatever means necessary.  We can get back to hard workouts when this is done if they feel like too much to handle right now.