From sedentary to strong

I love my country, but you have to admit this is funny because it's true.

I’m not breaking new ground here when I point out that American lifestyles are crazy-sedentary. In fact, that sentence might just get me nominated for Captain Obvious 2012 (remember me come awards season!). For real, we sit at home and we sit at work and we sit in our cars and then, at night, we switch it up by lying in bed, just for a change of pace. 

My job – teaching on a university campus – is a bit more active than a regular office job, because at least I walk to classroom buildings and stand throughout the day. But when I decided to start becoming more active, I knew that that wasn't enough, so I started doing two things: I walked twice a week at a local park and I began a love/hate relationship with Jillian Michaels’ workout DVDs that persists to this day. 

My teaching schedule back then was a bit wonky. Every Tuesday and Thursday I would finish up at one school around 2:30, then drive 45 minutes to another part of town and wait for my 7:30 evening class to start at another school. (If you think it would make more sense to go home in between classes, you have clearly never lived in Atlanta.) I'd been doing this schedule for a while and my routine was to bring my laptop, head to Starbucks, and get work done (by "work" I am referring to Facebook). I knew that there was park near my evening school - I'd once used it as a meeting spot for a friend who was passing through town - so one Tuesday afternoon I packed up my laptop, my textbooks, and my tennis shoes. 

To say I was “out of shape” would be an understatement. The beautifully shaded trail around the park was 3 miles but it felt like it might as well have been 30. I started with 1.5 mile loop and walked it rather slowly – a mosey, a ramble, a stroll. It was boring. I got passed by little kids and grandfathers and SAHMs sprinting by with jogging strollers. I'd always heard that people enjoyed walking because they could process and be still and ponder life's problems. I decided I'd rather listen to Ira Glass and started clearing out my podcast backlog. One day, after I'd been walking for 3 or 4 weeks, I got ambitious and tried interspersing some jogging intervals. After 30 panting seconds I started to wonder if an ambulance could make it to the back of the park where I was, so I backed off on those, but I kept walking. I walked and walked and walked and walked. Some days I dreaded it, some days I looked forward to it, but every Tuesday and Thursday I did it.

I had been walking for about two months when, one day, my walk was rained out. I was ticked. Angry at the indignity - how dare Mother Nature force me to be cooped up in a Starbicks for 3 full hours! That's when I knew something inside had clicked and, although there was still a sense that I was exercising because I should, I also realized it was something I enjoyed. Sure, not on the same level as I enjoyed season 2 of Project Runway, but it was enjoyment nonetheless.

So walking was one thing I did - later, as I learned more about fitness, I would realize that my walking was about stamina and endurance. The DVDs, on the other hand, were about intensity. 

Let's be clear. Jillian Michaels' DVDs kicked my butt (literally, in fact – Jillian has one cardio move called “butt kicks” where you run in place and try to kick your own butt. She’s nutso, that Jill). I knew they were supposed to be tough, yes, but bought the 30 Day Shred DVD for one simple reason – it promised a 20 minute workout. Twenty minutes?!?! I can survive anything for 20 minutes. I was slightly bitter when I put the DVD in the first time and the counter said the workout was actually 27 minutes long. Liar. I tried it anyway. 

Oh. My. Word. This was almost 2 years ago and I still have vivid memories of almost passing out during the warmup. She wanted me to do jumping jacks. For a warmup? Are you smoking something, Jill? 

Jill was not, alas, smoking anything. She expected me to do jumping jacks, so jumping jacks I did. I didn't do a lot at first. I modified, I rested, I looked at her on the screen and yelled (well, thought about yelling. I didn't have the breath for anything over a gasping grunt). Slowly - really, really slowly - my heart didn't pound out of my chest after the first interval of cardio. Strength moves that I started off by only using body weight moved into using 2, then 3 pound hand weights. Eventually, I had to break down and get 5 pound weights for some moves and I felt strong.

From the beginning (er, pretty close to the beginning) I wrote down my exercise for the day on an "Animals of Africa" wall calendar that I'd gotten off the freebie table at work. I didn't know it when I started, but some days the only thing that kept me going was knowing that, once the dumb workout was finished, I could write something in that day's square. It wasn't much, but it was an accomplishment. Looking back on that calendar now I love seeing how many little squares are filled. Each day represents a day that I did something intentional, something under my control to feel better.

It didn't happen overnight. That's the hardest part, really, in making a decision like this and sticking with it: What I talk about above took, in some cases, over a year and some things I'll always be working on. There's occasionally a frustration in knowing that reward for getting more fit is that you start to have to make stuff harder. Jumping jacks are absolutely no big deal for me now but mountain climbers in plank position are of the devil. I can deadlift quite a bit of weight but my upper body is still ridiculously weak. Eh, that's OK. Part of the challenge.

So that's a little bit about how my exercise plan got started. Notice I haven't talked about food once? That's because, at this point, I still wasn't thinking about it. My next post will be all about the magic diet I went on that allowed me to lose 10 pounds a week without even trying!*




*This is a lie. But maybe you'll come back to read anyway?