I know this whole body weight workout thing is getting a little old, but until we can all hit the gym again, it keeps us moving. Do three or four rounds, depending on time and energy.
jump lunges | 30 |
1 leg squats | 30 |
pushup to side plank | 10 |
jump squats | 30 |
transverse punches | 30 |
1 leg ball wall toss | 10 |
| |
plank | hold |
superman | hold |
We continue to live in difficult times. Here are three kinds of exercise to deal with different kinds of stress.
1. Strength training. If we feel powerless, working to make ourselves stronger physically helps. Also, we can take out any negative feelings on the weights because they don’t mind.
2. Cardio. Nothing helps mood more than getting the heart rate up. It also helps our brains function better.
3. Yoga/Pilates. Slowing down and paying attention to the breath helps calm us. Some of us are good at meditating. The rest of us can use a little help. Breathing consciously while moving is a good way to transition ourselves into the peace-inducing process of meditating.
Go play.
When I was in college, I used to joke that the format of a lot of my non-literature courses consisted of presenting two opposing views, a bunch of discussion, and the conclusion that we need both views in some combination. While I don’t know if this is a valid way of instruction, it did prepare me to embrace the paradoxes of life. The one I have in mind today is about how well we do things.
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Yes. To both of those.
Some of us don’t like to work out because we think we are not good at it. Maybe we are right and maybe not. I am not here to tell anyone how to feel, but at some level, it doesn’t matter. Working out is good for us, even if we do it poorly. We do lots of things we don’t like that have much fewer benefits for us. It is okay to be slow/awkward/new/confused/weak/whatever. The workout will take us however we are and leave us a little better (and tired). The culture will have us think that we shouldn’t do anything we aren’t experts at. We’ll always be able to find (jerky) people to make fun of our mistakes. Let’s take away their power and do stuff that makes us better.
Want an example? I am not a great swimmer. I can’t seem to figure out how to breathe on the left side. I’m slow. I’m not skinny. If I put in a bunch of time, hired a coach, practiced a whole bunch, I could probably overcome most of those issues and get to be a better swimmer. Or I can just get my butt in the pool and go, knowing that the exercise is good for me and that I will feel pleasantly sore and chlorinated at the end. (Fine. I know I can’t go to the pool right now, but it’s still true in principle.) It is all right to be bad at it.
However, as I keep swimming, I notice stuff. I figure out that some parts hurt if I use them wrong. I think that it might be a good idea to learn what good form might be so I don’t injure myself.
The same stuff applies to weight lifting. It is all right to be bad at it. We don’t have to lift heavy or do a gazillion reps. We need to pay the minimum amount of attention to form and safety and after that we can just show up, do the work, and get out of there.
We need to let go of our ideas of perfection in order to show up. Once we’re ready to work, we can think about improvement in a kind and gradual way.
Go play.
I write my blog ahead of time, so I hope that by the time this post gets published the air quality has improved. If so, go workout as usual and think of this as information for the next batch of fires (hi, climate change!). If not, here are some thoughts about how to get a cardio workout inside in fire season during a pandemic when it is hot.
Those of us who have cardio equipment and air conditioning are golden. Carry on, folks, as usual.
Those of us who have cardio equipment who usually rely on fans and ventilation from outside to make the workout tolerable are still in pretty good shape. We may find ourselves hotter than usual and we may find that we want to take the intensity down a bit until we can throw open all the windows and doors. We want to pay attention to staying hydrated even more than usual and watch ourselves for overheating.
If we do not have the blessing of cardio equipment on hand, we still can work out. (Keep in mind the tips above for those of us who don’t have air conditioning.) We just have to be a little more creative about it. The most important tool will be a timer. This is one of those times when we can all give thanks for intervals because they help us avoid boredom. What we want to do is this: pick out some cardio exercises (jacks, burpees, step-ups, mountain climbers, woodchoppers, high knees, jump lunges, etc.) and alternate minute segments of those with minute segments of walking around the house. If we pick five different exercises, we’ll want to do two or three rounds of the whole thing to get 20 or 30 minutes of cardio in.
All of us need to remember that our bodies and minds are stressed right now. We may not be able to work out as hard or as long as usual. This is okay. Doing even a little bit will help our moods and our bodies.
Be safe and go play.
woodchoppers | 30 |
squats | 30 |
good mornings | 20 |
lunges | 30 |
jump or hop ups | 30 |
punches | 30 |
| |
Russian twist | 10 |
femur arcs | 10 |
Yesterday I wrote about why we might want to get the sugar out. Today, I offer some tips on the how.
1. Taper. Sugar is addictive. We may find that we have headaches or we might be irritable as we cut down the sugar on our way to cutting it out. Some of us can deal with cold turkey, but others of us might want to be a bit more gradual about it. Maybe we start by making breakfast a sugar-free meal, or we cut out that after-dinner ice cream before we move on to more aggressive measures.
2. Cook from scratch. As I mentioned yesterday, almost all prepared foods have sugar hiding in them. Making our own salad dressing can be easy and fun and cheap. We can simmer our own spaghetti sauce. Slow cooker oatmeal is better for us and cheaper than instant, sugary packets.
3. Make the non-sugary beverage a treat. Put a slice of lemon in the fizzy water. How about some mint in that pitcher of water in the fridge? Beware the fruit juice, though, because it has a lot more concentrated sugar than whole fruits.
4. Cheat, but carefully. This will require some experimentation. Some of us can manage a weekly dessert without falling headlong into the candy aisle, while others can’t. Some of us can have a bite of our kid’s or partner’s or parent’s sweet thing without needing to get our own. Maybe we can deal with a teaspoon of sugar in the morning tea, but anything more flips us into total sugar indulgence.
5. Eat the fruit. In general, the sugar that occurs naturally in food tends to be a reasonable amount. When sugar accompanies the fiber, vitamins, and minerals in actual whole fruits, we get some nutritional bang for our caloric buck. It is okay to enjoy food and eating. What we want to do is eat a variety of foods. So please do not take this as license to eat all watermelon all the time.
We can do this.
My name is Janet and I’m a sugar addict. I am not unique in this. I think all of us have those foods that are our dietary downfalls, the things that we had better not have in the house or we will eat all of them, all at once.
There are a couple of things about sugar in particular that make it problematic. One is that sugary foods often don’t have a lot of other nutritional value. We get sweet calories and not much else. On the whole, most of us don’t need any extra calories of any kind and we’d all do well to make the calories we do get serve multiple purposes.
Sugar is also pretty much ubiquitous in our food supply. It’s in almost every processed food, from spaghetti sauce to crackers to salad dressing. Notice that none of those foods are things we think of as sweets. If we set out to purge the added sugar from our diets, we have a lot of work to do. Unless we really love reading labels and we enjoy the process of discovering new synonyms for sugar (hint: honey and agave nectar and corn syrup and a lot of others are still sugar), the fastest way to get the added sugar out is to cook and eat from whole foods.
Sugar contributes to one of the hot buzzword problems of our time: inflammation. Inflammation has been implicated in all kinds of stuff from diabetes to rheumatoid arthritis to cancer. Basically, a chronic inflammatory response in the body leads the immune system to attack healthy tissues leading to nasty results. There are all kinds of drugs that help with inflammation, including our old friend aspirin, but dietary intervention can be very effective. Anecdotal evidence is not the same as actual proof, but in my personal bodily chemistry set, I have a lot less muscle ache when I cut the sugar.
Then there is sugar’s relationship to one of the big health issues that a lot of us face: metabolic syndrome. A growing number of folks suffer from multiple chronic diseases: heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol/triglycerides. Most of these have a high correlation with obesity. While there are multiple factors that contribute to obesity, we can’t ignore that excess calories don’t help.
Now, I admit that all the good reasons in the world can’t always compete with say, chocolate chip cookies. We have a built-in love for sweet stuff. This is where we have to put on our big-person pants and deal. I am not a fan of motivation by stick, so here are some positive things to focus on while we make adjustments:
We will feel better. Our base-level sense of well-being will improve. We’ll get up in the morning less stiff, less sore. Stuff we haven’t been able to do (hi, bike!) may become available to us again.
We will look better. Sure, it’s not the most important reason, but it would be all right if our beautiful insides were reflected in our beautiful outsides.
We will live longer. We have good stuff to stick around for: love, adventure, grandchildren, a real haircut…
Let’s do it.
