Four Letter Word

I know that for a lot of you, like me, exercise is a 4 letter word.  Unless we find something fun to do.  See, I love skiing & tennis, but one takes a whole day and one requires someone else, so they are not good for consistent routines.  I’m not here to harp on you and say “YOU NEED TO EXERCISE!!” (But if you need someone to say that to you, I’ll gladly lend you my father.)  But giving away that pair of jeans last week because they didn’t stay on my hips anymore, that felt good.  It started in December when I found an app for my iPhone.  It’s called Fleetly.  I know that there are other apps out there and those are great for you, but this one is great for me.  It has two different sections (workouts vs. exercises) – basically cardio vs. strength training.  You find your exercise (I’m going to call everything exercise because it makes it easier for me.), then log it.  Depending on what it is, you include how long you did it, how far you went, how many reps you did, or how much weight you used.  It then gives you points.

They're big & happy & make me feel good about me

It keeps a history of your exercises as well.  When I’m doing well, it makes me feel good and when I’m not exercising it makes me want to add more.  (See how this is beneficial?)

That Ab Workout in there is a killer

It also has pre-determined workouts.  There are all different categories: strenghten, tone, lean or power house (needless to say I have not done any “powerhouse” workouts).  There are also different ones for if your traveling, or if you don’t have any equipment.  The other thing that helped me was finding small, easy things to do on days when I didn’t have time to get to the gym or run.  This blog post was great, and I used the days in between my runs.  There are three (and possibly four) of these workouts, but I still have yet to get through all 20 days.  I am okay with this though!  And that has made the whole difference.  Some days are good and some days are bad.  But being okay with missing a day has made it easier.  It doesn’t mean that I want to miss a day.  I used to have this mindset that if I missed a day I had to skip that workout and continue doing what I was planning on for that day anyway (which was stupid & hard!) or that I had to start from the beginning.  I have come to realize that I am not competing for anything, so exercise in any form is good.  Like the day after I was sick and I walked to Whole Foods & back and the 1.4 miles nearly killed me.  That was not my top physical day, but it shouldn’t have been either.  I still got out to do something.

I hope that you can find something to motivate you like I have, and I just want to remind you that giving away clothes because they’re too big FEELS REALLY GOOD!

You’re also probably wondering how this affects my diabetes.  Well, I don’t exercise at the same time consistently so I’ve had a hard time figuring out a pattern.  I do feel better though.