I was one of the thousands of readers who cringed when I read Penelope Trunk’s “Regular Exercise is No Longer Optional.” I was a bookworm child, in a sedentary family. I learned to ride a bike at 23. I saw exercise as a means to one end: weight loss. I use the past tense because I’m most of the way through transforming my attitude towards moving more - a minor miracle for me. Here are some things that helped me.
A Personal Trainer
“Duh!” I hear you say? Well here’s the thing: we didn’t work out in a gym and that was a revelation to me. I learned exercises I could do anywhere, for any length of time, without much more than a few small things (like the evil jump rope). Finding a good one is as hard as finding a good therapist, ask your friends. She has basically reintroduced me to my body, helped me figure out what to do, how to do it and what to do if something hurt. She told me to run more slowly so I wouldn’t get shin splints and I’ve picked up some killer kickboxing moves.
Jumping Rope
A minute of jump rope is like running a mile or something (ok not exactly). My trainer’s two mantras that I have internalized are you can do a minute of anything and you have to be bad at something before you can get good at it. Like most know-it-alls, I don’t like being bad at something so learning this was humbling and liberating. At first I was very, very bad at jump rope. Now I am ok at it. Pretty soon I’ll be rockin’ it.
Getting out of my own way
I highly recommend Martha Beck’s book The Four Day Win. She has many great strategies for befriending your body and achieving thinner peace, har har, but it’s based on the premise that you will see the fruits of your smallest efforts in just four days, which gives you momentum to keep going. I began to do the exercises in this book, which takes a holistic approach, addressing every area of your life for the causes of overeating and not taking care of yourself by moving more.
I decided to do 20 minutes of cardio at a gym near my office four days per week (increasing convenience by joining a gym 2 blocks from work because it’s winter in NYC and I can’t go to the park when it’s dark at 5PM). I was so high on endorphins by Friday (the day I work out with my trainer) that I actually looked forward to going again on Monday. It felt like invasion of the body snatchers. And I lost two pounds, so even when I’m a little sluggish on a given day, I just go. It’s like brushing my teeth, I do it every day. And it’s easier to get into a rythm of getting a gym bag together if I just know I go every weekday. This is a major, major miracle for me.
More Fun than Sex or Like Brushing Your Teeth? Just Do It.
Exercise is a horrible word for things like dance, play and gettin’ jiggy with it. Jonathan Fields of Sonic Yoga had a really inspirational post on how to make exercise more fun than sex (almost). Hey, sex counts as exercise too!! For me, the playful kinds of movement are icing on the cake. I’m reforming my identity into someone who goes to a gym every day. I have all sorts of negative feelings around the word exercise that it helps me to just be neutral as in “I brush my teeth every day, I go to the gym every day.” Do whatever it takes, get a buddy, a trainer, take classes, join a team sport, but just do it.
The Weight
All summer I attended a boot-camp style fitness class in the park near my apartment. We ran, did squats, lunges, stairs, push ups, carried logs - you name it. Weight lost: none. For the past two months I’ve worked out with a personal trainer one to two times per week and attended a kickboxing class once a week. Weight lost: none. I joined Weight Watchers a month ago and started writing down everything I ate. Weight lost: 4 pounds.
Now before you get discouraged about losing weight, especially if you read Gary Taubes’ amazing article (from his new book Good Calories Bad Calories) on why most of us believe exercise makes us thinner. Myriad, myriad, myriad advice is out there but it all boils down to high fructose corn syrup is evil and eat better, move more. And exercise does aid weight loss by building muscle mass which burns more calories yada yada and boosting metabolism yada yada.
That said, there are just too many reasons to exercise so see you at the motherf*ng gym!
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