Day 36   Walk, Don’t Run----Like a Hamster!!!!

This journey of exercise has been in a word---interesting. I will just say that I have been very confused all my life and have literally been spinning my wheels, (no pun intended) and wasting my money. I literally feel like one of those hamsters who spent hours on the wheel. My motto has been “calories in, calories out”, or “eat less, move more”, and I have written about the fallacy of this for me, in previous blogs. So what did this “calories out” and “move more” actually mean to me if this was my motto? It meant I need to run more, twist more, cycle more, your know--- “sweat and sweat and sweat”. So why was I sweating and not losing inches, and not getting healthy? Here is the story of how I got off the hamster wheel and stopped the fight or flight. I wish I was confident enough to say, “If you will do what I say, you will be successful”. But I think it is an individual journey that you have to take and find your way. I have found my way, quit beating myself up, and am saving money. It was as if I thought I could buy myself a body that I would love.

My earliest memory of purchasing a new body was through by videos. Then I moved to joining gyms, and then buying equipment. I’ve bought wheels, ab chairs, stretch bands, a treadmill, ab chair a stationary bicycle, a bicycle, an elliptical, a Wii Fit and an Abdoer. They all had their place, but none brought real results. Surely one of them would have been the “secret”.  The only thing they consistently did was drain my bank account. Yes, some of them brought temporary results, but nothing long range, until I adjusted my eating habits with a lifestyle change. Maybe you can relate to a few of my failures. When I was teaching school, some of the teachers decided to have a little weight loss contest. So for six months, on Monday morning, we would put $1 in the kitty and weigh. At the end of six months, the person who had lost the largest percentage of weight would win the kitty. Great idea! Great motivation! We did this several times and I actually won the kitty one time. On Sunday night I would hit the elliptical and move for a long time. The next morning I would weigh and would have lost none and sometimes gained weight. This baffled me. I found out that during extreme exercise your muscles swell and in the process create extra muscle which weighs more than fat. Then after the contests I usually gained my weight back and more. Sometimes I would use exercise to fulfill my addiction. I would want a donut so I would find out how many calories a donut contained and how many elliptical minutes it would take to burn off that amount of calories and there I would go. This was futile--- so much for calories in, calories out.  Hamster on a treadmill!!!

 Then I decided to take up running. My goal was to win a 5K. So I began to train every day. I would get to school early in the morning and run in the halls before the students and teachers arrived. I thought surely this was the road to getting the Cindy Crawford body. All it brought on was knee problems. After I had done this for several months, I found that the worst thing you can do to your body is run on concrete or pavement. That is exactly the materials from which roads and our floors at school were made. I did manage to win 1^st and 2^nd place in the two 5k’s I entered---in my age bracket of course. In the process my knees were getting worse. This all stopped after Larry had a conversation with a teacher at his school whose dad was an orthopedic surgeon. Larry was telling him one day about me winning the 5ks. He looked at Larry and said, “Tell your wife to quit running”. Larry asked why and he said, “My dad makes a living off runners, and the story will not end well, especially at her age. Her body is not made for all that pounding. She will have aches and pains to show for her ribbons---for many years to come”.  I knew it was the truth, so I quit. And it has taken me years to get over the sporadic pain that I felt in that knee. And no--- no Cindy Crawford body yet.

Then came the health journey and I began to find out some interesting facts about exercise. It was in my study of food, fight or flight, and relaxation that I began to have results. I am excited beyond words. Yes, God designed a way for you to have the body you want. Now I know, want is a relative term. I want a body like Cindy Crawford, but it will never happen because I do not have her same body structure. It seems that everyone has their issues. I have told you that mine is no waist, a flat butt and my shoulders are kin to a skinny linebacker. I hear other women talk, and they make the comment about having little boobs, big butt, triangle butt, fat arms, and the list goes on. Look around at your parents and you might see some resemblance. But you know, most everyone’s body is beautiful and very attractive when there is not a lot of fat hanging off the bones. So I really have no excuse to complain, if I let my body be the design that God made, and he did not design us to all look like Cindy Crawford. I once read an interview from her in a magazine. Someone asked her about her body and she said this, “I cannot take credit for something I did not design. I was born with great ‘shapely’ genes. I really have no particular trouble spots. It was given to me by God.” That said it all to me. Just be happy with how God made you----just  do not add additional poundage. This following was the story of my life---pre-health days.

We talked earlier, on Day 34, about the sympathetic (fight or flight) and the parasympathetic (rest) states. I know you are familiar with the society we live in, but I want to describe it in the way that it spoke to me, because it described my lifestyle.  Most people wake up stressed out from not having a good night’s sleep; they drink their morning coffee or energy drink, go to a stressful job, eat unhealthy processed and sugary foods that keep them going and then come home or go to the gym to work out. When you do this, you go from one sympathetic state to another, without balancing themselves out with a relaxation state. It is always amazing to me how I used the excuse, “I don’t have time to relax”. Plus, I’m not by nature a “relaxer”. I am a mover. So it was easier to jump on a treadmill, than to sit down in a chair. But I hated every minute of it and I was not getting the results that I thought should have come from the exercise. So I did not stay with the program---any of them. I was in sympathetic overdrive. And this was not even considering emotionally what was happening---driving in traffic on the interstate coming home, checking e-mail or facebook, watching the havoc on the news, or the emotions that come from paying bills and running a household. My stress hormones were so out of whack, and as I said earlier, I headed for the comfort foods. So what was I trained that I should do to relieve the stress and burn off the excess calories-----exercise and try to get that “high” that exercise is supposed to bring!! No, according to experts, I was just keeping myself in a sympathetic state. Now it may have increased cardiovascular function, strength and metabolism, but this does not mean you are healthy. We all know that increased metabolism means burning more calories (remember the calories in, calories out myth?), but high intensity workouts that increases metabolism can actually backfire by messing up your metabolism. Your body can regulate a downward spiral to adjust your metabolism to a lower rate, so you won’t use up all your energy. Ever been to the place that you were exercising frequently and long periods of time with little results? Your body is regulating itself. That is one reason you should vary your exercises. If you do the same ones over and over, your body will adjust and you won’t get the results you want. That is why walking is such a great way to exercise, because every step is different. You take small steps, large steps, you dodge rocks, you go uphill and downhill, you go slow and then go fast. So it is a lot more than calories in calories out. And really it is about balancing your life and your hormones.

I found the secret to balancing my hormones. I have mentioned in previous blogs about stress hormones and the importance of learning to deep breathe at least once every hour. It would seem that breathing would be simple, but this takes practice, because while you are breathing, you should concentrate on your breaths---not what you need from the grocery store or what chores you should be doing.  It is “stilling” the mind and that is very difficult to do, but so important. It is a vital role in eliminating stress. In order not to take extra time out of my life to practice deep breathing and stress reduction, I do it while driving or riding in a car. All of this gets me out of the parasympathetic state and balances my hormones.  Then when it is exercise time at home, I do non-stressful exercises.  I mentioned these in Day 2, about cleaning out your lymph system as early in the morning as you can. We bounce on a rebounder for about 10 minutes. Then we do a twisting exercise for about ten minutes. It is amazing what this simple exercise did for our bodies. This is movement that is relaxing and we can do it in the comfort of our home and accomplish other things---listen to music, or watch TV. Or we might take a 30 minute walk or ride our bikes. Now the very best way to do these simple exercises is to do it intermittently. Bounce fast for a minute and then bounce slow for 30 seconds, walk fast for 3 minutes, and then walk slowly for one minute. Ride the bike fast for a ways and ride slow or coast down a hill. Twist fast through one song and slow through another song. This balances the sympathetic and parasympathetic hormonal secretions. With this simple exercise and eating healthy, I have lost 6 inches in my waist. Not that I really care, I just measured for a couple of reasons. First of all, my waist measurement is all I care about. I have found that when my waist shrinks, everything else shrinks. Second of all, I wanted to let you know that it is working. This is actually the first time I have measured my waist in a year. I just knew I was buying smaller clothes and fitting into my tight ones. My focus is off measuring for success. If this is your motivation, then go for it. But my measurements would fluctuate almost like my weight and I would get discouraged and quit. It was better to concentrate on health and feeling good. And this six inch loss was with doing no crunches, no running, hardly ever breaking a sweat (which may not be a good thing—more later). But what all this really means to me is that I am doing it as natural as I can and I’m not really working at it. I am learning to relax and rest, and yes, reap many benefits.

Two things got my attention on this exercise “thing”. Over and over I was reading blogs from exercise “specialist” and they were changing their tune on the value of harsh exercise programs. One that I was impressed by was a doctor who began in exercise physiology and later became a doctor. She started out running a gym, where she saw regular clients every day. She was also working out with them when they came in for appointments. This gave her a broad perspective of what was going on in her life and the life of her clients, because she began to know them as individuals. She said overall, she or her clients were not progressing in a way that she would call “progress”. She had visions of her clients coming out of the program fit and healthy, setting them on the road to a lifestyle of health and fitness. This is not at all what was happening. She saw stressed out, aging clients who needed a workout buddy and she needed way to make a living. They wanted a quick fix, and she wanted a quick buck. Their hormones and eating was out of balance and she was of little help. That is when she began her journey of learning how to teach people to take care of themselves in a healthy manner. This is what she had to say about conventional exercise. “It creates stress and raises stress hormones; and it creates oxidative stress which is worse”. Oxidative stress inhibits the body from detoxifying and repairing damage to the cells. It also breaks down muscles. Ever known of anyone who exercised regularly and yet had a heart attack on on a treadmill?  This is caused by oxidative stress. So her motto became----“if you want to age----over workout”. It is bad for your body, your skin and your overall health. Another doctor said it this way, “exercise is a state of physiology not a state of health.” We do need to balance our inflammation (through eating) and our stamina at the same time. But that is only part of the picture, the part that gets all the press. We are missing the human need for relaxation and rest. And there is an answer for the best exercise possible that includes both!!! Coming Soon!!!!

Just to keep us in the reference of doing things God’s way, I will paraphrase what Paul said in I Timothy 4: 8. Bodily exercise profits little, but godliness is profitable. Godliness to me is eating and doing things God’s way. That is where we profit in all things. That is where true health comes from. Philippians 4:5 says “let your moderation be known to all men”. So I took the pressure off me to exercise. I thought moderation in exercise was worth nothing. And I am tired of feeling guilty for what I have let happen to my body so I am moving forward (no pun intended). So grab you a partner, take a walk, and relieve your stress.  But that is not the end of my exercise journey. I now have a new exercise. And boy did it take a while to start this journey! I had to have a “come to Jesus moment” with myself.  So how did I learn to rest and relax at the same time??----next blog.