Thanks Helix - you have just reminded me to check the place down the road where the criteria for doing a particular yoga class is that you can walk unassisted. I am somewhat intimidated when the person next to me seems to have a jointless rubber body,
I know I should be able to just concentrate on what I am doing but in the past I have found that difficult because of not hearing the instructions clearly or because the instructor presumes everyone knows what a downward facing cow is.
I'm doing ok with a little bit of knowledge and some youtubes. It's not as great as real live classes where you get stretched and adjusted, and I struggle with concentration but I think I am getting the hang of it a bit - just a week in.
Did a bit of stretching this morning, and finding my ballet bar very useful for support! Then did my 20 x up-and-down-the-Close. Wrapped up warm, but no wind. I was thinking to myself, I wonder if people might wonder why I do this- somewhat boring! -- walk but the answer is clear, isn't it? You just know you're going to feel better when you finish!
I'm certainy really pleased I have the tap board and here, too, the bar makes my efforts much safer! .
As for the "boringness" of your walk around the Close, it doesn't sound any more boring than the daily amble I did when I was staying with my sister during the first lockdown - I felt that I should do something, and walked the same route round the block most days. Not exciting at all, but enough that I felt better for it (and less good if I missed it).
It also resulted in people noticing that I'd lost a little weight, which was No Bad Thing.
At this time of year, the options for walks are either a standard tramp on tracks through the Forest, which gets boring if we do it daily and is busier than the last lock downs as the rules are slightly different*, dry shod round the town, ditto, or excitingly / dangerously slippery. Most of my regular 10,000 step walks are ankle deep in mud in places.
It's also irritating that we're back to one walk a day as it's harder to get enough steps in walking around the town in one walk.
* travel is allowed to get to an open space for exercise - which is encouraging lots of parking on the edge of most easy to walk open spaces around here.
I have two main walks; across the council estate to the village, past the memorial to the church and off into the countryside lanes; or across the new estate and guided busway towards the nature reserve and lake. So both start off rather urban but end up rural. But I find the urban interesting, I like architecture and observing people.
I have a research seminar in half an hour and I’m enjoying meeting my fellow students online, it didn’t happen last year as there were few online research students then. I may do some marking later...
I will also eat some birthday cake from yesterday.
I would normally head into urban walks at this time of year, with camera in hand, where there are lots of canals, river and other city paths to walk. This year I would rather not be people observing at close quarters.
We're lucky living somewhere with various Royal Parks in easy walking distance. At the moment we're trying to avoid those and instead doing loops of various local streets. We've found out a lot more about this neighbourhood than we had before.
I'm trying to get back into Pilates. From March to August I did some most days. Then I went away for a couple of weeks, then had a nasty cold (not Covid) and haven't really done much since. My ab muscles are a bit stronger than before the first lock down, but still need a lot of working on.
Is it very sad that I am more excited about my 2 days a week in the workplace meaning I get 2 walks per day on those days, rather than the 1 a day on my 3 online-classroom-based days?
Actually, it's not just the two walks a day, it's the general activity in the workplace as well which suits me far better. I have long gone past the creating activity in the home/gardens working for my fitness in the same way. (And, I am pleased to see those of my students who are in the workplace and my colleagues for real, not just over on-line classrooms!)
I've gained a good deal of weight in the past few years, and have had a life-long struggle to manage my food intake and exercise, sometimes clearly moving into disordered eating. Recently, my physician recommended I explore a Mediterranean Diet since my cholesterol numbers were heading in the wrong directions, as was my blood pressure. After 3 months, my weight has not changed, but - miracle of miracles - at my appointment yesterday, my blood pressure was well within healthy range, and my cholesterol levels are (slowly) headed in the right directions!
It is really weird for me to be separating weight from other healthy indicators, but it seems to be a good thing for me at the moment. Lots of veg, lots of vegetarian meals, almost no red meat, a glass of red wine each day.
Questioning. I was listening to a short interview on the radio this morning with a Canadian researcher. He was working with a group of people with high blood pressure. He had the study group walking to measure effects on their health, and to give the control group an alternative exercise he gave them stretching exercises, mainly of the larger lower body muscles.
The walkers lost some inches around their tummies, but to his surprise the control group experienced significant lowering of the (previously high) blood pressure.
I found this fascinating because at present I have to limit walking with my Nordic Walking Poles due to a shoulder injury, but I cant still stretch lower body muscles,
I will need to work on my fitness before the cricket season (whenever that will be this year...). We took some veg over to the Parental Knotweeds yesterday, about six-seven miles, on the pushbikes and not to put too fine a point on it, I hurt. All the way up my right leg, especially the hip and knee. Today I went out and did a circuit, probably about the same distance, and cycling uphill into the wind and cold really made my lungs burn - though the leg wasn't as bad, thankfully.
That sort of distance used to be one leg of my daily commute... I'm badly out of shape. Worse, my lockdown weight loss is obviously at least in part from my arse muscles, because the saddle is now most uncomfortable!
Swimming! I miss swimming. It’s a year now since I was able to go to a pol and do my weekly km. however we are going to be moving to the sea. Maybe I will be one of these hardy souls who swims in very cold water every day. Probably not a km though, if I do, as I might well get hypothermia!
Ooops - yes - sorry. Here in our Covid protected little world it is too easy to forget how sheltered we are from the brutal facts so many of you are facing. For the past several months the biggest hassle we've had was that the pool had to open an hour late because we went up to our level 2 (of four) and therefore we public had to wait until the squads were through as maximum usage was 100 (or maybe fifty, but we Joe Blows would push it over).
Which meant I couldn't swim because my day became too squashed. But that's really the Covid equivalent of a First World Problem™ when I recall all that so many of you are experiencing.
I'm genuinely sorry. It was a silly post in these dark times.
No, it was good to remember that some people are still swimming! Glad for you.
In pre-covid days I would go to the local pool after my stint at the church toddler's group (also no more). It is a hotel pool and only 10 metres long, but I used to get it to myself at that time, and I got in free "because you send us so many funeral teas!" Swimming 100 lengths was a great way to cool my ringing ears after the racket of the toddlers.
It does seem like a different world now, though.
Just had my annual diabetes check (via phone) with my GP. My figures are fine, my liver function 'is the best it's been in 10 years' - which, given the number of empties leave this house for the bottle bank, makes me wonder if their instrumentation is up to scratch. However, I'm not going to argue.
I do find, now that the weeding season is back, that my shoulders are hellish stiff (it was ibuprofen in the small hours last night). I think I need to reinstate a couple of upper body foundation exercises from T'ai Chi see if that helps.
Have you seen Drinkers like Me - Adrian Chiles? It was first broadcast a year or so ago and discusses his drinking at the time. His bloods didn't show any damage, but a liver scan did. He has since cut down on his alcohol consumption - link to Guardian comment.
I've been teetotal throughout lockdown - stopped my fairly modest consumption when my daughter came home after one too many midnight hospital visits. I didn't ever do it, but I didn't think slurring alcoholically at the paramedics would be a good optic. Nor was I so good at dealing with breathing difficulties in the middle of the night with drink taken.
I was doing so well on my aim to walk 2,000 miles this year, doubled as I normally walk a fair chunk just walking around, so trying to include some extra walking, was on track at the end of January and February, but this month has not been so good. Sick offspring has meant she's not been up to walking much or being left for me to get out for better walks.
I'm happy to read about swimming too. I managed some glorious swims in a lake and the sea when we visited a friend in Italy in August, but haven't been to a swimming pool since January 2000.
I've been doing a lot of walking in the local neighbourhood and exercise videos. My husband bought me a set of weights for Christmas and we've both been using them. I think they are working to a degree.
A friend of mine in Northern Ireland is swimming daily in the sea with a few other people - she posts about it on FB with photos, and it's nice to see. I'm kind of tempted to try swimming in the sea near me too, but it would be a bus ride for me, and I don't like taking the bus during the pandemic, as distancing doesn't happen, and people often remove their masks when they sit down. Plus I don't have a swim buddy, and there was a case in the news of a guy who went for a swim in the sea and died, and people are being advised to have a swim buddy if they swim in the sea. So my exercise continues to be just walking in the woods. I'm doing more of it now the weather is sunnier and less wet - it got a bit too muddy to walk there for a while.
I have gained a stone in weight during the pandemic, and however much I walk, I am not losing the weight. But I am also eating chocolate and crisps. I did try stopping eating chocolate and crisps, for six weeks, but I didn't lose any weight and I felt more miserable, so I decided to start eating them again, and now I feel happier. And I can't bring myself to care that much about the weight gain. I will be fifty in a couple of years, and I always think people are supposed to be a bit stouter when they reach fifty.
I managed some glorious swims in a lake and the sea when we visited a friend in Italy in August ...
Aaarggh ... but there's no lines on the bottom!
The one time i took part in an ocean swim event it was in crystal clear and suitably temperate water at Byron Bay in NSW, (OZ). The water was pleasant. The prevalence of (live, fortunately) bodies was ghastly. The Very Large aquatic beasties swimming around ten metres below me were deeply disturbing. Apparently there were many shark spotters on duty, and these weren't sharks, but very unsettling nevertheless.
I'll stick to pools! But it's good to be back at it regularly, though i mutter and curse each morning as I head off to town and the pool at five o'clock
Still using my tap board once a week for half-an-hour's tapping (or rather shuffling without leaving the ground!) and walking up and down the Close, but went to a physio last week because a niggling soreness just below left knee needed attention. Full range of movement okay, but the spot sore to the touch is, the physio told me, almost certainly a slightly torn meniscus! Just a bit more of focused exercise required and I'll probably go back for one more visit to check, butt I do like to know what's what!
I am getting more and more unfit and overweight. The problem is I've burnt through every type of exercise I can think of.
Running I have never been able to do. My legs and lungs are in such pain after 100 yards of slow jogging that how anyone can run further and faster than that and apparently actually enjoy it is as mysterious to me as the outer reaches of the visible universe.
Cycling - fine until it gets hard. Happy to potter but it's not helping me get lighter or fitter. Any exertion just makes it Stop Being Enjoyable.
It's like I have a deep and unshiftable hatred of actual exertion. I walk, but slow down for hills. If I do push myself I just don't want to go out again for days because I hated the last time so much.
Swimming's not possible at the moment but I find most swimming pools far too cold anyway.
Sports of any kind are out because my co-ordination is so appalling that my terrible performance makes the experience incredibly depressing. Play tennis against me and you'll win if you're able to hit the ball. I remember at school the teacher going on about hitting the ball into a particular part of the opponent's court when it was more than I could do to hit it at all, so let's say I got left behind. I can't kick a ball in a straight line. I can't hit balls with bats, racquets or anything else with any reliability. Squash balls I can't even see when they're moving.
I'm well pissed off with how I'm getting but I can't find anything I can do that I don't hate with the burning hatred of a thousand suns.
I'm with you in the burning hatred/total incompetence at any kind of athletic or sporting activity. There is one, and one only, form of exercise that I have stuck with (intermittently) for the past 40 years - T'ai Chi. You can't 'fail': it doesn't humiliate you.
Classes are suspended at the moment, though I could still practise on my own (and occasionally do) but I know I can get back into it even after a lapse of years.
I feel your pain, Karl. I was completely rubbish at sports when I was at school*, and running brings me no pleasure whatsoever.
I will occasionally go for a walk, but never very far, and like you I hate hills (having lived halfway up an almost vertical hill in St. John's may have something to do with it). When the first lockdown hit, I started to have a short walk (no more than about 10-15 minutes) each day as long as the weather was decent, just to get me out of the house, and I think I actually lost a little weight - or so my family said.
Now that I'm commuting to work, I have no choice: 10 minutes' walk to and from the station every day, plus another 10 or so minutes from the bus stop to Waverley on the way home. I don't know if I'm keeping the weight off: I seem to be eating far more than I need to, but I do love my food!
There's a beautiful loch right behind my flat with footpaths all round it, but I've yet to fully explore it: walks that take longer than about 15 or 20 minutes just aren't my thing!
* except for the time I mysteriously came first in the sack race
I love hills. Big ones. Not little ones that only exist to make one bit of land a bit higher up than another. Hill walking is about the only thing I can do that involves some exertion and I don't hate. However, lockdown has made the hills - the proper ones - inaccessible.
I have however always said that I find the climbing up hills part of climbing up hills rather trying. I like being on top of them; I like the sense of having made it to the top, but the actual process of getting there I more endure.
We got out for a decent walk today - sunny day, ground drying up, so not so much of a continuous bog to traverse, just intermittent. I'm afraid my idea of a decent walk was 10.8 miles, over 25,000 steps. We try for 10,000 steps a day, although with my daughter not so well, that's been a challenge lately.
I am short (4 foot 11) and plump and entirely unsporty; my little legs aren't made for it. I put on weight very easily. I keep fit by going for a 2 mile walk every morning, even if I don't want to (though I generally do, I like walking and it's good for my mental health). Before I got long covid (with its uncontrollable fast heart rate) I was doing 10, 000 steps a day which usually meant 2 walks. I was also teaching myself jogging, using a programme that started with me just slow jogging for a couple of minutes, then walking, then a couple of minutes again. In a couple of weeks of gradually increasing times I could slow jog for 15 minutes non-stop. I've started teaching myself again now my heart rate is better.
From a losing weight point of view, low carb, or even carb free, works for me. Having bipolar disorder actually helped me with this as dieting is very psychological.
I go for a walk most days, even if it's only to the local supermarket, though for five or six miles a couple of times a week. I also do exercise videos most days too, often with my husband which makes the whole things much more fun. We also go and play frisbee on our local playing field. I just like being there as it's full of people of all ages doing various forms of exercise and sport, or if the weather is like yesterday just enjoying being outside.
I've got so used to doing some sort of exercise each day it that I feel a bit edgy if I haven't. I'm feeling like that at the moment so think I'll go and do a fitness video.
I've been walking a lot, and I generally like it, but I'm realising I'm tiring myself out, and I'm pretty exhausted, because in non-covid times I think nothing of taking a bus if I'm getting tired, but I'm trying to avoid buses in general. I took a bus to my osteopathy appointment and back, last week, as that's not possible to walk, and I realised what a huge relief it was to be on a bus taking me all the way home. So now I'm trying to take buses a bit more, at non-busy times.
Yesterday I swam in the sea, with a small group of people who do this regularly. I hadn't done it before, and it was a bit of a shock to the system, because of how cold the water is, but I'm glad I went. I hadn't been swimming for over a year, because of gyms being shut, and I had really missed it. I can feel the good effects in my shoulders, which had got really tight and sore - it has helped loosen them.
Being able to slow jog for two minutes is uninaginable for me. My legs hurt after twenty seconds.
So much physical stuff assumes a starting point I can't reach.
I went through a phase of walking on a treadmill in front of the TV. I didn't enjoy the walking at all, but the TV gave me something to do, and little incremental goals to match my stubbornness against ("I'll force myself to do 4mph until the adverts, then can back off to 3.5 mph"). It fell by the wayside because of competing demands on my time from various domestic tasks, but if that hadn't happened, I think I could have kept it up. The walking on the treadmill was no fun at all, but the TV provided enough of a distraction that I could force myself to get on with it.
(Actually, the thing that's done the best about controlling my weight in lockdown is wearing a belt. I've lost a few pounds since I started wearing a belt cinched one hole tighter than I'd normally have it, because I don't want to eat such large dinners.)
Walking up and down the Close was very pleasant this morning - boring, but pleasant, because it was warm and no wind! Now being aware of my slightly torn meniscus (:) I have been taking care to walk with my left foot a little straighter, i.e. not slightly pigeon-toed, and it seemed to work.
I bused into town yesterday and walked the mile and a quarter home, with an increasing load of shopping, and in the teeth of strong winds. I was as they say, a hattered sheep.
Today I throttled back to just a couple of hours pottering in the garden (I specialise in sedentary weeding).
Being able to slow jog for two minutes is uninaginable for me. My legs hurt after twenty seconds.
So much physical stuff assumes a starting point I can't reach.
I'm up to over 95kg...again...arrghh. I got this down last time using one of those 'couch to 5k' procedures - no tech gizmos, just following the instructions using a watch with a second hand. They start really slow - jog 30 secs, walk for 2 mins etc - and, to my utter amazement, I was jogging for 30 mins straight by the end of it, about 3 months later.
But if you're heavy like me, watch it - more recently I've buggered a tendon in my ankle, I think by running on it while too heavy (plus maybe a motorbike accident). Now it's just walking and cycling for me. If I ever go back to work, that's how I need to get there and back, about 6 miles a day. It's the only way I can bring myself to do it, when I have to get somewhere anyway. Luckily public transport is shite for work
I personally like kettlebell because it is both resistance and aerobic at the same time - I can do it for less than 10 minutes and then not have to think about exercise for the rest of the day.
I honestly think some people just can't jog/run easily. I've never been able to, even when I was really skinny. It's just too much harsh jiggling of my body up and down, and it's horribly uncomfortable, like I'm being shaken. Maybe a sensory overload type thing, and painful too, kind of feels traumatic on my body. Another aspect is if you wear glasses, they jiggle up and down on your nose, and for me, this makes my vision become harsh fast-moving images, so I get visual sensory overload too. Plus, my heart rate goes ridiculously high when I run, and everything hurts, and I get dizzy. I've tried many times in the past. I once had a friend who suggested I go jogging with her - she said we'd start with an easy jog, and she assured me that even if I didn't like it, I'd feel great afterwards. I tried, really wanting to learn to enjoy it, but I didn't feel great at all, at any time.
Swimming, though, I can do that because the water stops it being harsh and juddery on my body. The feeling of the water is soothing and actually helps reduce any sensory overload I may have had prior to swimming. Plus I am horizontal, which reduces heart rate. I always feel great after swimming.
Another good thing is trampolining. I have a mini trampoline in my living room. That doesn't jiggle me in the same way as running - it feels cushiony, not harsh, to bounce on it, and it helps you along by pushing you up. I find it weird though doing exercise on the spot rather than moving forward. I have to think of songs to sing, so there is a sense of progression, and then I get out of breath, because it's hard to sing and bounce. So I never bounce for very long at a time.
I personally like kettlebell because it is both resistance and aerobic at the same time - I can do it for less than 10 minutes and then not have to think about exercise for the rest of the day.
I have kettlebells, for that very reason. I had a guy at the gym show me how to do it properly, but I've also found (for myself) that it pulls on my joints and is quite easy to get the technique slightly wrong, I think because I'm too bendy (I have EDS) and then it can hurt my neck and shoulders or my back. Which is annoying, because it seems a very convenient kind of exercising.
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I know I should be able to just concentrate on what I am doing but in the past I have found that difficult because of not hearing the instructions clearly or because the instructor presumes everyone knows what a downward facing cow is.
I'm doing ok with a little bit of knowledge and some youtubes. It's not as great as real live classes where you get stretched and adjusted, and I struggle with concentration but I think I am getting the hang of it a bit - just a week in.
I'm certainy really pleased I have the tap board and here, too, the bar makes my efforts much safer!
As for the "boringness" of your walk around the Close, it doesn't sound any more boring than the daily amble I did when I was staying with my sister during the first lockdown - I felt that I should do something, and walked the same route round the block most days. Not exciting at all, but enough that I felt better for it (and less good if I missed it).
It also resulted in people noticing that I'd lost a little weight, which was No Bad Thing.
It's also irritating that we're back to one walk a day as it's harder to get enough steps in walking around the town in one walk.
* travel is allowed to get to an open space for exercise - which is encouraging lots of parking on the edge of most easy to walk open spaces around here.
I have a research seminar in half an hour and I’m enjoying meeting my fellow students online, it didn’t happen last year as there were few online research students then. I may do some marking later...
I will also eat some birthday cake from yesterday.
I'm trying to get back into Pilates. From March to August I did some most days. Then I went away for a couple of weeks, then had a nasty cold (not Covid) and haven't really done much since. My ab muscles are a bit stronger than before the first lock down, but still need a lot of working on.
Actually, it's not just the two walks a day, it's the general activity in the workplace as well which suits me far better. I have long gone past the creating activity in the home/gardens working for my fitness in the same way. (And, I am pleased to see those of my students who are in the workplace and my colleagues for real, not just over on-line classrooms!)
It is really weird for me to be separating weight from other healthy indicators, but it seems to be a good thing for me at the moment. Lots of veg, lots of vegetarian meals, almost no red meat, a glass of red wine each day.
The walkers lost some inches around their tummies, but to his surprise the control group experienced significant lowering of the (previously high) blood pressure.
I found this fascinating because at present I have to limit walking with my Nordic Walking Poles due to a shoulder injury, but I cant still stretch lower body muscles,
Whoops I can still stretch my lower body.
Given how tricky Blood Pressure meds are I thought it was worth a go.
That sort of distance used to be one leg of my daily commute... I'm badly out of shape. Worse, my lockdown weight loss is obviously at least in part from my arse muscles, because the saddle is now most uncomfortable!
Well done all of you herculean types!
Which meant I couldn't swim because my day became too squashed. But that's really the Covid equivalent of a First World Problem™ when I recall all that so many of you are experiencing.
I'm genuinely sorry. It was a silly post in these dark times.
In pre-covid days I would go to the local pool after my stint at the church toddler's group (also no more). It is a hotel pool and only 10 metres long, but I used to get it to myself at that time, and I got in free "because you send us so many funeral teas!" Swimming 100 lengths was a great way to cool my ringing ears after the racket of the toddlers.
It does seem like a different world now, though.
I do find, now that the weeding season is back, that my shoulders are hellish stiff (it was ibuprofen in the small hours last night). I think I need to reinstate a couple of upper body foundation exercises from T'ai Chi see if that helps.
I've been teetotal throughout lockdown - stopped my fairly modest consumption when my daughter came home after one too many midnight hospital visits. I didn't ever do it, but I didn't think slurring alcoholically at the paramedics would be a good optic. Nor was I so good at dealing with breathing difficulties in the middle of the night with drink taken.
I was doing so well on my aim to walk 2,000 miles this year, doubled as I normally walk a fair chunk just walking around, so trying to include some extra walking, was on track at the end of January and February, but this month has not been so good. Sick offspring has meant she's not been up to walking much or being left for me to get out for better walks.
I've been doing a lot of walking in the local neighbourhood and exercise videos. My husband bought me a set of weights for Christmas and we've both been using them. I think they are working to a degree.
I have gained a stone in weight during the pandemic, and however much I walk, I am not losing the weight. But I am also eating chocolate and crisps. I did try stopping eating chocolate and crisps, for six weeks, but I didn't lose any weight and I felt more miserable, so I decided to start eating them again, and now I feel happier. And I can't bring myself to care that much about the weight gain. I will be fifty in a couple of years, and I always think people are supposed to be a bit stouter when they reach fifty.
Aaarggh ... but there's no lines on the bottom!
The one time i took part in an ocean swim event it was in crystal clear and suitably temperate water at Byron Bay in NSW, (OZ). The water was pleasant. The prevalence of (live, fortunately) bodies was ghastly. The Very Large aquatic beasties swimming around ten metres below me were deeply disturbing. Apparently there were many shark spotters on duty, and these weren't sharks, but very unsettling nevertheless.
I'll stick to pools! But it's good to be back at it regularly, though i mutter and curse each morning as I head off to town and the pool at five o'clock
I did, however, have a decently long walk with some of my family yesterday, which clocked up 8,000 steps on someone's step-o-meter thingy.
Running I have never been able to do. My legs and lungs are in such pain after 100 yards of slow jogging that how anyone can run further and faster than that and apparently actually enjoy it is as mysterious to me as the outer reaches of the visible universe.
Cycling - fine until it gets hard. Happy to potter but it's not helping me get lighter or fitter. Any exertion just makes it Stop Being Enjoyable.
It's like I have a deep and unshiftable hatred of actual exertion. I walk, but slow down for hills. If I do push myself I just don't want to go out again for days because I hated the last time so much.
Swimming's not possible at the moment but I find most swimming pools far too cold anyway.
Sports of any kind are out because my co-ordination is so appalling that my terrible performance makes the experience incredibly depressing. Play tennis against me and you'll win if you're able to hit the ball. I remember at school the teacher going on about hitting the ball into a particular part of the opponent's court when it was more than I could do to hit it at all, so let's say I got left behind. I can't kick a ball in a straight line. I can't hit balls with bats, racquets or anything else with any reliability. Squash balls I can't even see when they're moving.
I'm well pissed off with how I'm getting but I can't find anything I can do that I don't hate with the burning hatred of a thousand suns.
Classes are suspended at the moment, though I could still practise on my own (and occasionally do) but I know I can get back into it even after a lapse of years.
I will occasionally go for a walk, but never very far, and like you I hate hills (having lived halfway up an almost vertical hill in St. John's may have something to do with it). When the first lockdown hit, I started to have a short walk (no more than about 10-15 minutes) each day as long as the weather was decent, just to get me out of the house, and I think I actually lost a little weight - or so my family said.
Now that I'm commuting to work, I have no choice: 10 minutes' walk to and from the station every day, plus another 10 or so minutes from the bus stop to Waverley on the way home. I don't know if I'm keeping the weight off: I seem to be eating far more than I need to, but I do love my food!
There's a beautiful loch right behind my flat with footpaths all round it, but I've yet to fully explore it: walks that take longer than about 15 or 20 minutes just aren't my thing!
* except for the time I mysteriously came first in the sack race
I have however always said that I find the climbing up hills part of climbing up hills rather trying. I like being on top of them; I like the sense of having made it to the top, but the actual process of getting there I more endure.
From a losing weight point of view, low carb, or even carb free, works for me. Having bipolar disorder actually helped me with this as dieting is very psychological.
I've got so used to doing some sort of exercise each day it that I feel a bit edgy if I haven't. I'm feeling like that at the moment so think I'll go and do a fitness video.
So much physical stuff assumes a starting point I can't reach.
Yesterday I swam in the sea, with a small group of people who do this regularly. I hadn't done it before, and it was a bit of a shock to the system, because of how cold the water is, but I'm glad I went. I hadn't been swimming for over a year, because of gyms being shut, and I had really missed it. I can feel the good effects in my shoulders, which had got really tight and sore - it has helped loosen them.
I went through a phase of walking on a treadmill in front of the TV. I didn't enjoy the walking at all, but the TV gave me something to do, and little incremental goals to match my stubbornness against ("I'll force myself to do 4mph until the adverts, then can back off to 3.5 mph"). It fell by the wayside because of competing demands on my time from various domestic tasks, but if that hadn't happened, I think I could have kept it up. The walking on the treadmill was no fun at all, but the TV provided enough of a distraction that I could force myself to get on with it.
(Actually, the thing that's done the best about controlling my weight in lockdown is wearing a belt. I've lost a few pounds since I started wearing a belt cinched one hole tighter than I'd normally have it, because I don't want to eat such large dinners.)
Lot of metabolic benefit for little time spent on loathed activity. YouTube mark wildman for quick good technique videos.
Today I throttled back to just a couple of hours pottering in the garden (I specialise in sedentary weeding).
But I'm an idle so-and-so.
* Actually that's a big fat lie: I'd have taken the bus both ways ... blush:
I'm up to over 95kg...again...arrghh. I got this down last time using one of those 'couch to 5k' procedures - no tech gizmos, just following the instructions using a watch with a second hand. They start really slow - jog 30 secs, walk for 2 mins etc - and, to my utter amazement, I was jogging for 30 mins straight by the end of it, about 3 months later.
But if you're heavy like me, watch it - more recently I've buggered a tendon in my ankle, I think by running on it while too heavy (plus maybe a motorbike accident). Now it's just walking and cycling for me. If I ever go back to work, that's how I need to get there and back, about 6 miles a day. It's the only way I can bring myself to do it, when I have to get somewhere anyway. Luckily public transport is shite for work
Meant to include a little evidence: https://youtu.be/iEc7QFc5vIQ
And a little technique: https://youtu.be/EIyOdqTf3r8
How to program if you want progressive improvement of any weight training rather than HIIT; https://youtu.be/USIGc3yQD7g
Swimming, though, I can do that because the water stops it being harsh and juddery on my body. The feeling of the water is soothing and actually helps reduce any sensory overload I may have had prior to swimming. Plus I am horizontal, which reduces heart rate. I always feel great after swimming.
Another good thing is trampolining. I have a mini trampoline in my living room. That doesn't jiggle me in the same way as running - it feels cushiony, not harsh, to bounce on it, and it helps you along by pushing you up. I find it weird though doing exercise on the spot rather than moving forward. I have to think of songs to sing, so there is a sense of progression, and then I get out of breath, because it's hard to sing and bounce. So I never bounce for very long at a time.
I have kettlebells, for that very reason. I had a guy at the gym show me how to do it properly, but I've also found (for myself) that it pulls on my joints and is quite easy to get the technique slightly wrong, I think because I'm too bendy (I have EDS) and then it can hurt my neck and shoulders or my back. Which is annoying, because it seems a very convenient kind of exercising.