Ditch the workout?

This is the seventh consecutive Saturday I have gone to the Y to work out, but today I didn’t start with the elliptical machine. When I made up my mind on my birthday (seven weeks ago) to work out regularly, I had missed the deadline to sign up for the current session of classes at the Y. I wanted to be sure that this time (sessions start Monday) I found a class to join.

I’ve always found it works better to have someone else to exercise with. Besides having someone to talk to (before and after exercise if not during), I have a much stronger motivation to show up because I know someone else is expecting me. When I was younger I ran regularly with a few other people, but I kept getting shin splints and having to take a break from running while my legs got better. I decided running was not the ideal exercise.

I like walking, and for a long time have wished for someone to walk with regularly. (My husband does not like walking for exercise; he much prefers racquetball, which I tried to learn but did not really care for.) For a while there was a group of women, from the church I was attending, who would walk together at the park (in warm weather) or at the mall (in cold weather). But too often no one would show up besides me.

I walk every day with my dog, but she is a far from ideal companion. She is totally unresponsive to my attempts at conversation, and she is constantly wanting to stop and sniff at something. Plus she poops in people’s yards, requiring me to stop and collect her poop into a bag to take home. Walking with a bag of poop is not my preferred way to get exercise.

The Y offers a variety of classes, but most of them are during times that do not fit in my schedule. After looking through all the possibilities (which were not very many once I ruled out anything before 6 PM), I decided Zumba looked like the best one to try. I had no idea what Zumba was, but the fact that the Saturday morning class was for the whole family seemed promising.

Workout for body and brain

I started thinking about learning while exercising as an idea for a blog post, mostly due to lack of any other ideas. I’ve been reading some very interesting magazine articles while doing the elliptical machine at the Y (and sometimes on the exercise bike or treadmill, depending which is available).

At home I listen to books on tape while riding the exercise bike because my Schwinn Airdyne uses both arms and legs. But  the exercise equipment at the Y does not use the arms (though I find it helpful to hold the side bars of the treadmill to maintain a consistent position), so I read magazines.

Most of what is available on the magazine racks does not interest me (sports, hunting, specialized magazines on photography and computers, fashion, etc.), but I generally manage to find an old copy of Discover, Smithsonian, or National Geographic. Occasionally I read TIME or even Popular Mechanics.

I have read about dogsled teams patrolling the coast of Greenland, the big business of growing flowers for export from Colombia, dark matter, Charles Dickens, and selecting foods based on one’s dosha (it looks like I’m a Kapha). Sometimes I’m so interested in what I’m reading that I keep going past the time I had programmed into the exercise machine’s “dashboard.”

Start Somewhere

I helped set a world record today. I was one of over 291,000 Iowans who walked a kilometer today as part of the Start Somewhere Walk. I didn’t know the organizers of the walk were aiming to beat the previous world record of 231,635 people who all walked at the same time in Canada four years ago. And I wouldn’t have much cared if I had known. What I wanted to do was enjoy the walk, and possibly find someone to walk with regularly during lunchtime.

At a company where I worked in the 1990′s, a co-worker and I walked every day, rain or shine (or snow, unless it was also icy). We walked a mile and a half, from one end of the business park to the other and back, at a brisk rate that most of our co-workers considered too challenging for them to join us. Unfortunately, since moving away from that area in 1998, I haven’t managed to find another regular walking companion.

(Well, technically I do have a regular walking companion, but she breaks up the rhythm of the walk too often by stopping to sniff something, or straining at the leash to lunge after a passing bicycle or motorcycle.)

The Start Somewhere Walk was part of the Healthiest State Initiative, which has the goal of making Iowa the healthiest state in the nation in five years. I certainly would like to be healthier, and for my family to be healthier, but I have to admit that the goal of making Iowa the healthiest state does not particularly motivate me. Sure, I’d like my friends and neighbors to be healthier too, and I suppose a healthier state means lower state costs for poor health and more money for other things. But that would be accomplished just by making Iowans healthier in absolute terms; it doesn’t require improving our ranking relative to the 49 other states.

Still, there’s something to be said for focusing on a goal that is both measurable (since the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index will continue to publish our ranking among the states) and that has sufficient local support. Based on today’s turnout, I’d say the local support is there. There were at least thirty walks scheduled locally, with a goal of 10,000 participants. That included the town’s 6000 students in public schools, all of whom were participating as part of PE classes (though not all at noon).

Which means my son Al also helped set a world record!

Books I Didn’t Expect to Like

It’s handy how libraries have those stickers that tell you which books are sci-fi, westerns, mystery, romance, etc. I avoid the westerns and the romance novels, and I used to avoid the mysteries. But don’t ask me why I steadfastly avoided them – it’s a mystery to me now.

 

What’s strange is that I can’t remember anymore why I thought I wouldn’t like mysteries. Did I think they’d be scary? Boring? Silly? Poorly written?

What changed my mind wasn’t any particular book or books, as far as I can remember, but the fact that I needed a steady supply on books on tape to listen to while I rode my exercise bike. By excluding mysteries, I limited myself to a much smaller number of books. There are a lot of mysteries on tape (these days, on CD), and once I discovered how much I enjoyed them, it gave me a huge number of new books to listen to and enjoy.

Mysteries actually turned out to be the best books to listen to while riding the exercise bike, because, more than other books, they pushed me to get myself out of bed to get further in the book and get to the bottom of the mystery. Some of my favorites have been the Mrs. Pollifax books by Dorothy Gilman and the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters. These are so good that I read all the books in print that I couldn’t find on tape at the library. They’re also the only mysteries I’m inclined to reread, as they’re interesting for more than just finding out what happens.

I’ve listened to several of Mary Higgins Clark’s mysteries, though I lost interest in her books after a while. I enjoyed several books by Patricia Cornwell, and everything I listened to by Tony Hillerman. Other authors I have enjoyed (and would listen to more of their books if the library had them) are David Baldacci, Kathy Reichs, Phillip Margolin, and P.D. James. (One I haven’t enjoyed enough to listen to more than one title by is Sue Grafton.)

Right now I’m listening to one (purchased from the library when they removed it from their holdings) by Elizabeth Peters. I enjoy it, but I have to admit that it’s not gripping enough to get me eagerly out of bed in the morning to find out what comes next. Fortunately the next one in line (similarly purchased from the library) is by David Baldacci. As I remember, his books are real page-turners – or in this case, would that be pedal-turners?

The surprising effects of exercise

I’m still waiting for my bathroom scale to register any effects from my efforts at healthier eating and more regular exercise. I know to be patient, though, and focus on the long-term benefits of healthy eating and exercise.

A few months ago, however, some women exercising in a 12th floor gym in Seoul, Korea, apparently had some much more immediate effects – not on their bodies, but on the building. The TechnoMart shipping mall began swaying, and hundreds of people were evacuated due to a suspected earthquake.

No quake had been registered in the area, however, so suspicion fell on the 4D theater. (Being someone behind the times in terms of pop culture, I had no idea what a 4D theater was. The article said that the government feared an “inter-dimensional fringe event,” and I began to wonder if the whole article was a joke. I learned, however, that it refers to physical effects in the theater, such as moving seats, rain, wind, and strobe lights.)

The culprit, however, turned out to be 17 middle-aged women doing boxing and taekwondo exercises while listening to American music turned up very loud. The situation was re-created (though with different people doing the exercises), and a Doppler vibrometer on the 38th floor verified the tremors being created by the people exercising on the 12th floor.

I guess it’s a good thing my exercise hasn’t had that kind of dramatic effect.

Games: Dance on Broadway

I’ve been thinking for a while about getting a Wii dance game, to have some variety of games that give me a chance to get somewhat active even if I don’t want to really tire myself out. But every one of them has some negatives mentioned in reviews, and most of them cost more than I wanted to spend when I wasn’t sure I would really like it. I considered renting one from Family Video, until I found out how much that cost.

I finally picked Dance on Broadway, partly because it only cost $20, and because I’m actually familiar with some of the songs:

“Aquarius” (Hair)

“My Favorite Things” (The Sound of Music)

“Little Shop of Horrors Theme” (Little Shop of Horrors)

“Fame” (Fame)

Al and I tried it out tonight, and found it somewhat challenging to follow the moves, but still enjoyable. (Neither of us is particularly coordinated – we tried Dance Dance Revolution when we bought it for Zach on the PS2, and while he quickly excelled at it, we couldn’t even get through the tutorial.) With each attempt we improved, but I doubt we’ll reach the point that it’s too easy for us anytime soon.

One thing I don’t like is that the perspective doesn’t stay the same throughout a song. I’m trying to follow the motions of one of the dancers (so far we have stuck to easy songs that had all dancers doing the same motions), and then the “camera” zooms out so that the dancer is further away and not at the same angle. But I suppose in time I’ll become familiar with the different moves (there are only so many different kinds of moves, and a little icon near the bottom of the screen shows what move is coming next), and that won’t be a problem.

I can’t say it was much of a workout, but then we did pick only songs with the lowest level of both difficulty and effort required. By the time I feel ready to try “My Favorite Things” I would guess I’ll be getting a little more of a workout. (Instead, I switched to Wii Sports and played four matches of tennis, of which I only managed to win one.)

But who knows? Perhaps in time I’ll actually start to feel just a little bit graceful.

Wii exercise

When the Wii first came out, I had no idea what it was but I took a dislike to it because I didn’t like its name. The first time I saw it in print, I thought someone had left out the F of WiFi. And once I found out it really was spelled that way, I wondered how in the world you were supposed to pronounce a double i. Wee-ie, as in radii? Or with a short i sound held out longer? What kind of company makes a product with a name like that?

I first saw a Wii in use at my brother-in-law’s when we went there two years ago for Christmas. There room where the Wii was set up was where pretty much all the kids hung out – and a few of the adults. Even if I had been interested in learning to play, I’m not sure when I would ever have had a chance. The kids played bowling, tennis, golf, baseball, and boxing. I’m not much good at any of those in real life, and it seemed silly to play a game that simulated them, even if it was easier than the real sport.

Then someone brought a Wii into work to have a tournament played during lunchtime. The first one was Mario Kart, and I got a headache just watching someone take the car around all those turns at high speed. A later tournament was just bowling, but somehow I missed the sign-ups. I heard that Wii bowling was much easier than real bowling, and wasn’t sure it was such a great thing to be able to score lots of strikes in that case.

I finally got in on the action when they had Mario Olympics. Archery was surprisingly difficult (and didn’t seem to have that much in common with the action of real archery), but through repeated practice I got better at it. (Then I found out archery wasn’t even included in the tournament!) I turned out to be better than average at swimming, however (mostly a matter of timing the breathing right). I even got a bronze medal (well, at any rate, a nice bronze-colored ornament which now hangs from my computer monitor), and I might have done better if I hadn’t missed the final “breath” (pressing the B button at just the right time) as I approached the finish line.

When the next tournament was Mario World Cup Soccer, I tried a practice round and promptly took my name off the sign-up sheet. Way too complicated, especially as – unlike Mario Olympics – you see the whole field rather than from your player’s point of view. I think most of the time I was running in the wrong direction, because the ball changed hands – er, feet, that is – so fast.

Chatting with another non-participant, however, made me think about getting a Wii with my profit-sharing bonus money (assuming we got one this year, which we did). She exercises regularly using Wii Fit, and I had also read how families playing the Wii together got a decent amount of exercise doing it, even if not as much as with real sports.

So when WalMart had a Black Friday sale on the Wii, I got one. It was my first time going in shortly after midnight, and the store really wasn’t as crowded and crazy as I had thought it might be. (Of course, we’re not exactly near a major population center, either.) I got my 25th anniversary Mario Brothers edition Wii, bundled with both the Mario Brothers game and Wii Sports. And with the $50 gift card that was part of the deal (just for that day), I got Active Life: Explorer, which I had determined from reading product reviews would be the most fun of the active products – and therefore likely to keep us playing and getting the most exercise.

So far, my younger son is convinced that Active Life Explorer is “one of the greatest active things there is.” So far, he and I are only about 4% of the way through the Treasure Adventure in the Forest Land, so we’ve only played a handful of the games available. (You can also play the games just by themselves, without the “adventure” scenario.) Some of them are all about running, which means running in place on the mat (which came bundled with the game) as fast as you can. After two games of that, each of which last probably less than a minute, I’m breathing hard.

Other games, such as stomping on crocodiles (kind of like Whack-a-Mole but using your feet) or catching jewels, require less stamina but more coordination and quick reaction times. Those aren’t exactly my strong points, but I managed to succeed in both – even if it did take a few tries on the jewel catching. (We bought a PS2 and a dance mat a few years ago for our older son, who took to it fantastically well, but my younger son and I simply couldn’t get the timing down. This game is a bit more our speed.)

I’ve also tried bowling, tennis, and golf in Wii Sports. Bowling is indeed much easier using a Wii than a real bowling ball. My first game, I scored 118, which is probably close to my typical score at bowling if I’m doing well. My third game this morning, I scored 192, which is at least twenty points higher than my absolute best score even in a bowling alley, when I was in a league and practicing regularly.

I tried golf out of curiosity, but I simply can’t get the hang of the swing. I eventually finished a three-hole game – 17 strokes over par. On one hole, I hit the ball out of bounds twice (though frankly the out-of-bounds grass looked just like the rough to me). On another, I hit the ball from one sand trap to another. But at least I didn’t lose any in the water…

Tennis is the game I’m enjoying most, so far. I took a tennis class once, in ninth grade, and I don’t remember much of it except that I sometimes lost without even serving the ball successfully, and that I never could decide, when the ball came more or less to the middle of the court, whether to hit it backhand or forehand. I definitely still have the same problem with the Wii. (Fortunately, though, it seems to take care of the serves for you.)

I’m not sure how many games I played before finally winning one. The game adjusts your opponents’ ability level based on your scores, so it is somewhat less than satisfying to see that I can finally win when the opponents are as poor players as I am. But this morning I finally managed to win in Best out of 3 mode (on about my third or fourth try), so I guess I’m improving. And I can keep returning the ball long enough that I feel like I’m actually getting a little bit of exercise. (Of course, playing tennis after Active Life Explorer means that I’ve already got my heart rate up a bit.)

Most satisfying, I discovered that when I am done playing, I have no appetite for the chocolate I bought for the Christmas stockings, and instead feel much more like getting some fresh fruit. And I hope that as I exercise more, I will start getting in shape enough to go get some other exercise, not in front of the Wii.

The goalposts have moved

There was a time when I actually got the recommended 150 minutes of exercise weekly. I rode my exercise bike 24 minutes on weekday mornings, and Saturday mornings I walked 90 minutes while delivering newspapers. The newspaper job went away when I moved away, and the exercise habit went away when I had an hour commute and simply couldn’t get myself out of bed early enough to exercise first.

Yesterday morning the batteries on my Schwinn Airdyne died (which doesn’t affect the bike’s operation, only the display showing minutes and miles), so I don’t know how long I rode yesterday or this morning. But I know it’s far short of 24 minutes – perhaps half that much. If I keep up the biking daily (or at least weekdays), I hope to get back up to 20 minutes before long. Thirty minutes would be a stretch – not so much on my stamina as on my ability to stop hitting the snooze button and get up earlier.

But apparently even 30 minutes isn’t enough anymore, at least not unless I’m OK with slowly gaining weight – which I’m not. The currently recommended 150 minutes a week is to prevent disease and enjoy other health benefits. Any amount of exercise is better than none, so if I reach 150 minutes a week I’ll be healthier than I am now. But 150 minutes isn’t enough to prevent weight gain in middle-aged women, according to a new study.

An article in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal summarizes the study’s findings, which support the Institute of Medicine’s 2002 suggestion that 420 minutes of exercise weekly were needed to prevent weight gain. And since my body-mass index is over 25, even 60 minutes a day probably isn’t sufficient to maintain my current weight (let alone lose some weight I gained over the fall and winter).

The article does indicate the 30 minutes of intense exercise would be sufficient, and it gives cycling as an example of such intense exercise. But I’m fairly certain that my speed on the Airdyne would only be classified as moderate. In the summer I’m sweating by the time I’m done – but in the summer in the humid Mississippi River valley it doesn’t take much to start sweating. At 6:30 in the morning my body doesn’t even want to be out of bed, let alone cycle fast enough to qualify as intense exercise.

What I need is more walking – and preferably a walking partner, of the two-legged, not-interested-in-sniffing-every-mailbox-and-hydrant variety.

When does eternal life start?

Eternal life
When I was a teenager, in the church where I came to faith in Jesus Christ, they liked to emphasize the present tense of the verbs in 1 John 5:14: He that hath the Son hath life (they only used the King James Version). As I remember, this focus was about having the assurance of salvation and eternal security – the present possession of the gift of eternal life meant that one could say with confidence, “If I were to die tonight I know I would go to heaven.”

Eternal life itself seemed to be viewed primarily in the future, however. It was rather like a minor knowing that a large fortune has been set aside for him in a trust fund, available to him only when he becomes an adult. He knows it is there, and is guaranteed that he will be able to live comfortably on it then, but its benefit to him right now is limited to having that confident hope for the future.

Not that hope isn’t a wonderful thing to have. (It’s on my H list for three days from now.) But in other churches I learned later to see 1 John 5:12 in a new way. Eternal life is a current possession, something I have and can enjoy right now. It starts when I become a Christian, and simply never ends. Physical death entails some kind of change in its nature – a change all for the good from my perspective. But physical death isn’t the beginning of eternal life, only the end of mortality.

So what makes eternal life here and now different from life here and now without it? Words that come to mind are joyful obedience, answered prayer, Spirit-empowered (to serve, not to control). Only problem is, those are more descriptions of what I know abundant life in Christ is supposed to be like than a report of my own experience.

Certainly my life today is more in line with this than before my conversion at age 14. But then, thirty plus years of living might have something to do with that. Not that people always mature as they age, but there is no way I can say how my life today might compare with what it might have been if I had continued as a somewhat religious agnostic.

WOMAN Activity Tracker: Update

Nothing big to report, just plodding along doing my 10,000+ steps a day, five or more days a week. I finished the first virtual “trip” from Texas to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and started a new one in the Northeast. Here I’ll actually “visit” places I know, from Boston to Hartford (where I grew up) to New Brunswick (where my husband went to seminary) to Lancaster (where his grandmother used to live, and the whole family would gather for holidays).

I had thought that by now I would be walking lots with the new puppy, but the extent of our walking is usually up and down the sidewalk from the house to the driveway. And once she figured out that I was going to turn around each time and return to the house, she stopped following me even that far – especially as I don’t let her pounce on and bite my shoes and pants. I have tried the leash, but her only interest is in chewing on it. (My husband had more success, perhaps due to his larger size.) I bought a DVD on loose-leash training, but as the DVD player is in the basement and Kyra isn’t allowed down there yet, I haven’t had time to watch it.

My weight continues to drop, but very slowly now. I hope by November, when it will have been a year since I changed my eating habits, to have lost a total of forty pounds. Which leaves me about two months for the last three or four pounds.