How To Burn Calories Without Even Trying

I have found that I am in love with my fitness app on my phone.  Really, truly in love.  Who knew that thirty minutes of snorkeling would burn 272 calories?  Not moi.   It doesn’t feel like exercise to me.  To me, it is utter bliss.  Gliding though the water hearing nothing the heightened sound of your own breathing, eyes scanning the ocean floor in hopes of spotting a sand dollar, seeing the occasional fish dart past – this, I could do all day long.  But as I was snorkeleling along, I realized that this is a leg workout, at least to some degree, with the water and fins providing resistance.  So when I finally pulled my pruney self out of the water, I thought to myself “What the heck.  Can’t hurt to look it up, right?”  I pulled out my trusty phone, opened up the app and typed in snorkeling.  Ah-ha!  There it was.  All I had to do was punch in the number of minutes I had been pretending to be a fish (a fish mind you,  something sleek and fast like a barracuda, not a manatee, even if I resemble one!)  I was ever so pleasantly surprised to learn that thirty minutes of snorkeling equaled 272 calories burned.  Oh joy!  Oh rapture!  I have found another way to cross train and it’s fun!  Something I love to do!

As I parked my keester in my beach chair and commenced to pat myself copiously on the back for my discovery, a niggling doubt crept into my waterlogged brain.  Was this just a little bit too easy?  And isn’t letting myself get away with a measly 272 calorie burn almost like, well, cheating???  As I gazed at the crystal, turquoise water that was calling for me to come and float and be lazy, bobbing in the warm Gulf waters with my foam noodle, I knew what I had to do.   I had to earn that bobbing time.  With a reluctant sigh, I hauled my carcass out of the beach chair and started walking down the beach, GPS –enabled phone app in tow to tell me how far I trekked.

A funny thing happened about fifteen minutes into my walk.  I started to feel pretty darned good.  I think it might have been those sneaky endorphins again.   I didn’t walk at quite the sidewalk-burning pace I do when I walk in the neighborhood, but I walked over three miles and for an hour and twenty minutes.  Mission accomplished.  I had met my daily fitness goal and rewarded myself with a long, relaxing bob in the Gulf waters with my beloved foam noodle.  And a margarita at the Old Salty dog on my way home……….

Habit Forming

Let me begin by saying, yesterday was not day one of my new diet and exercise regimen.  It actually started a week ago today when my friend Renae came to town and announced that we would be walking while she was here.  She had started a walking program and was determined to stick with it.  I was glad to walk with her, because I like to walk and have used this method to melt off pounds before, with a modicum of success.  Time to form a new habit.  I've done it before and I can do it again.   

We walked three miles on Friday and three miles on Saturday.  I felt reasonably good about our persistence in the face of what I like to call “Vacation Syndrome”.  You know about that one, right?  It is the insidious disease that infects us when we are on vacation.  The constellation of symptoms include a tendency to eat out for almost every meal, because hey!  We’re on vacation!   Other symptoms are a frightening sloth that creeps over the body once it is planted in a beach chair with a book and a fruity drink with an umbrella sticking out of the top.  We are entitled to this because we are on vacation.  Vacation Syndrome inertia can make it nearly impossible to lift that oversized rear end out the beach chair and go for a walk.  But we did it.  And as a side note, just let me say that three miles of walking barefoot in the sand is one heckuva workout!  It leaves the calves quivering and crying out piteously “Why oh why are you abusing us so???”  Which leads to yet another, even more vile symptom.:  because we actually exercised while on vacation, we have now earned the right for yet another fruity, umbrella-clad drink and another dinner out on the town.  Do you see where I’m going with this? This syndrome causes  a chain reaction of symptoms that often results in food comas, sunburns, large, Hawaiian print muu-muus and double chins.  Not a pretty sight.

As I said, I was reasonably encouraged that we walked in the face of Vacation Syndrome for two days in a row.  Alas, for the second half of the vacation we succumbed to full on Vacation Syndrome.  No walks for two days.  More magnificent dinners out on the town and the consumption of more adult beverages than should have been allowed. The horror!  Then, on Tuesday when Renae left I had to return to the inevitable backlog of work that piled up when I was on vacation.  No walk for me that day – I needed to recover from my vacation and the appallingly busy day at work, so I just watched Dancing With The Stars, butt firmly planted in the recliner and attempted to assuage my guilty conscience by eating a Lean Cuisine for dinner.    Yeah, like that really helped…..

When I woke up Wednesday morning, I was hit over the head with the ugly truth:  I had not walked or exercised for three days in row!  How was I supposed to get in a healthy exercise habit if I skipped three whole days?  I remember reading somewhere that it take two weeks of repetition to form a habit.  I want my exercise to become a habit and skipping three days in row was no way to accomplish this goal.  So immediately after work on Wednesday, I laced up my trusty New Balance walking shoes, plugged my iPod earbuds firmly into each ear and cranked up the tunes.  I set off on a fast paced journey down memory lane, thanks to the musical stylings of KC and the Sunshine Band, Sister Sledge and the Bee Gees (Saturday Night Fever anyone?).    And it felt good!!  Yesterday I spent my lunch break sweating it out on the elliptical trainer with a movie in front of my face and it felt good!!  And today I spent my lunch hour walking again, motivated by Kool and the Gang, The Ohio Players and Thelma Houston, among others.  And it felt really good!!  (And yes Randy, I will download some Earth Wind and Fire to my iPod.)   I even think I just might have felt the tiniest endorphin rush.  Just a tiny one, but it's a start. Maybe this is why I feel so good!  I remember well my days as an athlete and I know my endorphins,.  They are glorious! And the best thing about endorphins is that they make one crave more endorphins, thereby motivating an endorphin-crazed person to actually work out more frequently in order to satisfy that craving.  This is a good thing.

So dear readers, can you guess what this means?  I actually accomplished my goal of exercising five times in the space of a week and I survived.  And I feel really good.  I think I am going to like this new habit….

P.S. - I don't want to jinx myself, so I'll just whisper it quietly.... I have lost three pounds.  Shhhh....

Getting started

OK.  It’s time I admitted something.  My body has failed me in epic proportions.  Of course, I am equally to blame, as I have failed my body, too.  I went from being a spectacularly fit aerobics instructor, weight lifter, cyclist and martial artist in my thirties to being a fifty-something, non-athletic  blob.  Well, not a total blob.   Maybe more of a midsection blob….  I still have some amazing muscle tone, probably thanks to the aforementioned exercise of years past.  Although there is definitely some fat marbled into those muscles, my legs are very toned and a simple flex reveals that I still have biceps and triceps, in spite of the incipient bat wings that are desperately trying to attach themselves to my upper arms.  I have fought them ferociously and am so far winning that war.  Even my larger than yesteryear butt is still toned.  Fat-marbled, but toned. Go figure.  But my back, lats, obliques and abs (what abs?) are nothing but flesh-toned Jello.  Pasty, white, flesh toned Jello, I might add, as my midsection does not reveal itself to the sun or innocent passers-by at the beach.

In my thirties, I taught aerobics.  Step aerobics and karate aerobics.  I wisely knew that if I wasn’t the teacher and thereby obligated to show up for class, that I would in fact not show up for class.  So, for completely selfish reasons,  I taught aerobics.  At one time I was teaching at three different places all at once:  Gold’s Gym, the YMCA and the karate school where I started studying martial arts at age 34.  I was busy!  And very fit.  But somewhere along the line, life intervened.  My kids got involved in their own (multiple) sports and Boy Scouts and piano lessons.  My schedule was beginning to overload and I had to let some of my aerobics classes go, as well time at the dojo, time on my bicycle, time lifting weights.  Still, I was teaching enough to maintain an adequate fitness level and keep gravity at bay.  Then, at age forty, I changed jobs and found myself having to take call.  Being on call for my job was the death knell to my part time career as an aerobics instructor.   It was also the death knell for my figure.   It was a gradual demise until my divorce-induced stress eating pushed me to my highest weight five years ago and I was ready to have a funeral for my poor, long lost normal-sized body.   But, I managed to pull myself out of my funk, start walking and dieting and I dropped 30 pounds.    However, like a bad penny, some of that weight has turned back up over the past three years.  I have gotten lazy.

I have decided that I no longer have any excuse not to do something about this sorry state of affairs.  I work from home now and no longer waste three hours of my day attempting to make myself presentable and then making a ninety mile round trip exodus to work every day.  That is three whole hours that have been added back into my daily life, Monday through Friday.  That’s fifteen hours, folks!  Fifteen hours that I could be exercising!  Well, not quite.  I think my body would go on strike if I actually attempted to exercise for fifteen hours in a week’s time.  And said strike would most likely be severely painful, possibly resulting in my untimely demise.  But I can surely add in one hour of exercise a day, right? Well RIGHT????  Sigh……  So, it is time to start a blog to help hold myself accountable.  This is tool, just like the food logging and pedometer apps on my Android phone.  I need motivation!

I say all of this as I get ready to jump on the elliptical trainer and attempt to melt off a few ounces of fat.   Even as we speak, I am contemplating mopping my floors as a way to procrastinate and put off the  mind-numbing  trek on the elliptical.  Pathetic, I know.  But it is hot and humid out there today, so I have already talked myself out of walking outdoors.   Besides, all of the experts say that you need to mix up your exercise routine.  So I am alternating between walking, the elliptical trainer and other sweat inducing activities such as trying to a erect sun shelter on the beach with a sea breeze that is trying to take the shelter airborne in kite-like fashion.   Just ask my friend Renae about that one!  But I digress.  The elliptical trainer is staring me in the face with mute disdain.  Its attitude is one of “Go ahead punk, make my day.”

Fast forward forty-five minutes and gallons of sweat later.  I have just spent my lunch break trying to exercise away the calories that I will eat for dinner – carefully measured calories, but calories none the less.  I beat the elliptical trainer into submission.  I burned actual calories and got an aerobic workout at the same time.  I have set a goal – I will exercise at least five days a week.  So, little blog of mine, are you going to hold me to it?  Stay tuned…..