Day 22 E is for Elephant

E is for exercise, and the way to get more exercise into your life is by eating an elephant. How do you do that? One bite at a time.

Yep, exercise, is a dirty word that a lot of people don't like to hear.  Few of us like to get hot and sweaty and we know it's even worse in the summer.

Exercise is an important factor in getting your day off to a good start. Moving around purposely gets the blood flowing through your body to your limbs. It wakes your mind.  If you can do this for at least ten minutes a day, you are off to a good start. Moving helps regulate and improve a host of things in your body: blood sugar, strengthening bones, toning your body and can aid in weight loss.

I've been regularly exercising for almost a year.  It has helped me lower my A1C score, the test that measures your overall blood sugar for three months. I also know that when I fell and broke my tailbone, my recovery was faster because I'd been actively exercising and building bone  density.

A lot of people don't know where to start. That was just one of the concerns I had.  I didn't grow up with a super active family. The only one of us kids that did anything regularly, year after year was my brother who played baseball every summer for a number of years.

If there was a bookworm in the family I fit the bill. Back in the day we had a tricked out bus that you could go to in order to check out books. Some of you may remember going to the bookmobile.  The only exercise I had on any regular basis was walking to and from the bookmobile from our home. In hindsight, it was probably the equivalent of four blocks - maybe. 

As a young adult, I was too busy preparing for my job as a teacher. There was homework to grade and lesson plans to create and implement. It was a great excuse for not working off some of the calories I was consuming and combating a less active life style.

I grew up watching  my mother trying to move to Jack LaLaynne's television program.

He would give the viewers an ordinary object like a kitchen chair and instruct them on how to use it for exercise. I guess somewhere in my mind I also equated exercise with needing an expert.

I had three fears to overcome. How to exercise, how to avoid unnecessary pain, and how to find an expert to teach me the proper techniques.

These days we have the Internet and we can do all sorts of searches and find all kinds of videos on how to do a push-up, a curl, a sit-up, a lunge. My earliest forays into the world of exercise was with a very old copy of the Canadian Air Force's work out program. There were a couple of charts to help you figure out how much exercise you could do or aim for based on your age.  With a couple minutes of warm-up the program went into leg-lifts, side lifts and a half dozen or so other exercises.

I did them in my room at college. Some days I was so tired (or lazy) I did some of the exercises while I was in bed. This program is so good that the actress, Helen Mirren uses it.

What I really learned from that experience was that exercise helped me look better by being toned, and exercise helped me lose weight.

Fast forward to now. As I mentioned, I've been serious about regular exercise for a year.  I decided I didn't like the way I was feeling and I needed to do something about it. I faced my first real "fear:" coming up with the funds to go to a gym. Once I made the commitment, the money for the gym was pre-allocated and exercising became more of a priority. I wasn't going to pay for membership and not use it!

Today, I got the cast off my left leg. The removal of plaster and cotton gave me a new lease on life, and I appreciated all the little things I would be able to do again like take a shower. I also set some fitness goals, using the SMART method (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). For instance I decided one of my goals would be to do one (achievable and realistic) pull-up specific) by July 1st (timely and measurable).  I'll keep you informed of how that one goes.

I've never been able to do a chin-up, ever. You have to grasp a bar way over your head and pull your body weight up enough that you can get your chin to and just above the bar.  When I talked with my trainer about it, she told me some easy ways to start working toward my goal.

Now, that's my goal. For others, moving around and exercising may be a brand new goal.  One of my acquaintances is just moving her arms from hanging at her side to over her head. She's been injured severely in a car accident and has to overcome the fear of pain. Even that small of a movement has helped her tremendously.

Start wherever you are at. I didn't decide on the chin-up goal until today - nearly a full year after I started working out. Make your goals realistic and set a time frame in which to get your goals done. Don't decide today that you are going to train for a 5k run when the run is a week away.

Start with Hal's 10 - 20 minutes a day and get your rear in gear.