Photo by Richard Yuan, and used under a Creative Commons license
I joined the student rec center yesterday, and today I went to work out in a fitness center for maybe the third time in my life.
I’ve never enjoyed exercising inside, but then again I’ve tended to live in places where I can ride my bike comfortably year-round. When I previously lived in places with crappy winter weather (Hello, Iowa!), I’ve tended to have to walk a lot in winter anyway because either I didn’t have a car or I lived close enough to campus that I wasn’t allowed to purchase a parking permit and the bus route didn’t come close enough to my apartment to make riding it worthwhile, so I had to walk a lot.
Not so here. We live five miles from campus, and because I commute with Lucas, my part of Boise isn’t the most bicycle-friendly, and (let’s face it) I’ve been focused more on work than on staying healthy, I haven’t been riding my bike as much as I should.
But my recent bout with pneumonia, plus the fact that my weight has for a couple years been hovering 0.1-0.3 points above the “normal” BMI range for my height, has made me realize I need to maintain better health. For me this means mostly cardiovascular health, but I ought to toss in some strength training, too.
It’s been inspiring to see my friend Jeff Mather really dive into his explorations of athleticism and healthful living. For Jeff, that means untangling what it means to be an active person with diabetes, how to overcome mental blocks as well as physical ones with regards to endurance and certain kinds of exercise (e.g. open water swimming), and how to keep track of a variety of health indicators (he’s writing an iPhone app).
I’m nowhere near as ambitious as Jeff, and I don’t face the same magnitude of obstacle he does–I’m fortunate that my own variety of autoimmune challenge has been under control for almost 20 years now–but I’m ready to take some little steps back toward the relatively fit form I enjoyed prior to Lucas’s entrance on the family scene. I’m also realizing that I’m not the dieting type, so whatever weight loss I want to achieve, I’ll need to do it through burning calories rather than drastically reducing their intake.
Accordingly, this morning I erged vigorously for 2100 meters, then walked (and even ran) on the treadmill for half an hour, then tried out some weight machines for another fifteen minutes or so. This evening I gardened for about an hour and a half, digging holes and hauling soil and setting stakes. The result? I’m feeling very virtuous.
I’m trying out various workout routines now so that I can (a) establish the habit of exercising and (b) figure out which one will work best with my schedule and avoid the heaviest traffic at the rec center.
How do you fit exercise into your day? And how do you keep yourself motivated? What recommendations do you have for someone just getting back into exercising after a long hiatus? And if you’re an academic, do you exercise at your campus rec center–and if so, how do you navigate sweating (and swimming) near, and sharing a locker room with, your students?
I’ve become slightly obsessed with understanding health and exercise lately. Over the past year I took up running and have nearly moved my BMI into the merely “overweight” category. Yeah, still going there.
I’m goal oriented and project oriented. I started the whole thing with the goal to be able to run a mile. And I made my way to 3. Then I wanted to be stronger, so I got a trainer who made my gym amblings less aimless. And now, well, I’m training for a half marathon. So that’s a big project. But having a goal to work toward and seeing progress is really motivating to me. Set small achievable goals at first – a distance on the treadmill, to visit the gym X times per week, to erg another erg or whatever seems good to you.
For me, the key is enjoying whatever activities I do. I really like playing outside, and playing outside with friends is even better.
Sounds like you had a great workout already
For me exercise is all about being social. My walking partner moved 6 hours away and we both gained weight! ick! So our current strategy is to walk and talk on the phone. I’d kind of like to get a second friend roped into this so I’d have more mornings to walk/talk since this seems to work for me. But not sure who to ask since most of my other friends are much more serious or individual exercisers.
As the comments so far have shown, it’s important to find what works for you. Try different things out and see what sticks. Find what you like… or at the very least something you can learn to like.
To a certain extent, I’m also one of those goal-oriented, project-type people. Knowing that I wanted to run a half-marathon in March gave me something to work toward and kept me motivated over the longest, snowiest winter I can remember. Having a reasonable plan, which I found online, helped keep me moving forward without feeling aimless. (That’s a failure mode for me.)
After a while all of the cycling (and running and swimming) just became habit (in the addiction sense). After doing it long enough, I didn’t feel right on days when I didn’t do something athletic. That’s just an argument for sticking with it until you get over the initial “I don’t really want to…” hump.
One very concrete thing I did that really helped–although I didn’t know it was a contributor until much later–was juggling my schedule just a little. A coworker wanted to carpool a couple years ago, and switching to his 7:00AM-4:00PM schedule got me home about an hour-and-a-half earlier. Suddenly I had all of this extra time. It’s probably not a coincidence that a month later I started exercising after work.
Good luck!