*"Physical Activity/Exercise Support Thread"*

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After a few months now ( since March this year, following a couple of months in the Autumn last year which petered out as Winter arrived ) of what was an increasingly regular exercise routine I am suddenly finding it harder and harder to maintain it, and I think that I may need the support of some sort of publicly-visible regular reporting/accounting process for this fairly new ( for me ) fitness drive, which includes:

1 ) Cardio/Aerobics

2 ) "Core"/Bodyweight workouts

3 ) Callanetics/Yoga/Stretching

4 ) Weightlifting

( all of these using a variety of short free online videos ), as well as

5 ) simply walking outdoors

... theoretically for between 35-50 minutes a day 5-6 days a week depending on my state of health ( as I'm rather prone to joint and muscle aches/pains and weaknesses ).

I've been reading and posting on this forum for several months now and I have got the impression that although this forum is pretty quiet, and most of the people posting and reading here may not be interested in the sort of "mixed"/all round exercise for fitness which I'm talking about, ( preferring specific sports, body-building, or very specialist types of workout for example ), I think that a few people have mentioned wanting to exercise regularly etc, so this thread is meant as a sort of "blog", public "journal" or diary/record keeping for anyone who thinks that this might be helpful to them.

( NB. I know that this approach was very effective when I gave up gluten in October 2008, something which lasted until February last year/2011 when I simply felt like flinging caution to the winds, ... already paying for that "abandon" by the end of the summer though, so that I cut it out again last October/November ).

So ... please feel free to post here about what exercise you did, ( or didn't do :lol ) today/yesterday/this week and for how long, any goals you have, the things which are motivating you, etc, plus photos or videos of exercise routines etc.

I'll start. After a hiatus of 8-9 days of absolutely no physical activity at all, other than walking for a couple of minutes while shopping etc, because of aches and pains, and hot humid weather and an increasingly "heavy" feeling ( as well as actual weight-gain ) probably caused by 6 weeks of experimenting with "eating breakfast", ( something I hadn't done for about 29 years! :lol and don't plan to continue with either ), I suddenly felt up for it.

I did 35 minutes of warm-up, weights, core and callanetics, as follows:

Warm-up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7ghNKOH ... re=related
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7ghNKOH9To&feature=related[/YouTube]
Weights:
http://www.thinqfitness.com/video/GMM/P ... ms_Workout ( I am still only lifting 9kg of bar, and 2 x 2kg dumbbells, and I do my press-ups against a door! ... I started at level minus-50 I think! :lol But I am definitely getting stronger. )

http://www.thinqfitness.com/video/GMH/K ... kout_Video

Callanetics/Stretching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH8EJ42F ... ure=relmfu
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH8EJ42Fw2U&feature=relmfu[/YouTube] ( Fast forward to the one minute mark to skip the intro )

I look forward to hearing about other people's exercise routines and progress and sharing our bad days and our reasons for doing exercise, etc.

GOALS:

1 ) I am aiming at reducing the addictive hold which language or the virtual reality/pseudo-world of words has on me/my life by improving my proprioceptive capacities ( currently pretty poor after most of a lifetime of food opioids from gluten and casein and unusually permeable intestines allowing them to reach the brain etc plus 12+ years of physical inactivity at school, etc while body went through huge changes etc ) with physical movement so that my brain gets more data/stimuli from the "mere" processes and sensations of my body and will be less prone to obsessively twiddling/Formula-1-racing around its mental pathways out of "boredom". :lol

2 ) I hope to repair my body's blood-sugar homeostatic-system's functioning, ( perhaps stall/reverse what may be insulin resistance? ), partly or fully restore a healthy sugar/carbo-metabolism generally, improve my circulation, and thus stave off what has been since last Autumn been looking increasingly worryingly like incipient heart disease/failure ( many if not most of the symptoms ).

3 ) Feel light and strong and have more energy for everything, including more physical activity.

How about YOU?
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I plan to run 5kms today and do yoga for 1 hour. I hope I can stick to my goal.

Me? I started a bodyweight routine at the park, doing pull-ups, dips, and inverted rows for upper body, reverse crunches and semi back levers (I keep my knees in my chest, can't handle the torque of extending my legs yet) for abdominals, and pistols for lower body.

Next month, back in my country, I'll do stronglifts 5x5 at the free (and quite good) university gym. It consists of compound, free-weight exercises three times a week.

My short-term goals are developing more healthy habits and more self-discipline, reason why my current routine is so unstructured, right now I want to focus on actually hauling myself every morning to that park directly from bed, and ehen I get that part down I'll focus on the routines itself. I'll probably alternate between pull-ups and inverted rows, and I might take days off from dips to let my muscles heal. Stronglifts is logistically easy, and if I have developed consistent working-out habits by the time I get started I'll be fine from then on.

Mid, long term I want to gain more weight, around 16 pounds, which should mostly be lean weight. Also, I want to be stronger than I am right now. Stronglifts will give me that, as long as I complement it with a good diet. These days I've been eating as much as I can, today I managed to eat three full dishes, half of it being meat, chicken or fish, from a self-service all-you-can-eat buffet. I'm also drinking more milk than I usually do. My metabolism is agains me in this one though, last time I exercised consistently I was drinking a gallon of milk a day, and the scale didn't seem to go up much.

I am reading the book Prevent And Reverse Heart Disease by Dr Caldwell Esselstyn and and have been busy trying the recipes. I have given up oils, nuts and avocados along with dairy and meat. There are a lot of recipes in the back. I already made a blueberry pie with Grape Nuts crust and it was sooooo good. Much better than anything I have ever bought and eaten. The blueberries were not sweet like they are in other pies. I like the tart taste better than the bland, sweet one.

Besides that, I have been swimming for a couple hours in the evening about four days a week and it's very beneficial to my muscles and joints, It's a great way to exercise in the heat. Ideally, I want to swim in the evening every day of the week but some days I don't go because it's just too crowded.

I made a discovery that if I record my favorite TV shows, I can stay on my treadmill until the show is finished (it used to be I got bored before I'd gotten a good workout). Now I made another discovery, Kindle is also available for free on any laptop computer (although you still have to pay for the Kindle version of the book itself). So I set up my laptop on my treadmill, set the font to large because I'm running and can't read small print, and the time goes by even faster. I'm trying to extend this now to an upper body workout with 15 lb. dumbbells and it seems to work just as well.

Heh, I understand what you say about the treadmill. At my university they have all a small tv with cable connection, I remember I used to run in the treadmill just to watch Friends

There's probably a good reason for that.

Long term, most people don't stick to exercise unless it's something they truly enjoy. They might do it for a few months or a year or two, but when they go thourgh a bad period, the exercise will be one of the first things that they stop doing if they don't enjoy it.

I don't know about you, but I would rather work with myself than against myself - psychologically speaking. It gives a much better chance of long term success that way. Those who are like me probably don't post about it because we engage in it regularly because we enjoy it, we don't need that external motivation.

Some of us here do have different things we enjoy that do give us a good amount of balance all around.

While I think it's great you're getting into fitness, I would encourage you to try new things along the way so that hopefully you find something you really enjoy too. Sticking to a program is fine in the beginning but at some point you need to start enjoying what you're doing or you will stop doing it.

The confusing thing is that when I actually do it I actually enjoy it, but in exactly the same way as I practically never draw or paint, except in short bouts over a few days or a month or so, despite loving it when I do, I don't seem to be able to keep it up for longer. ... It's as if it has to be something that I have to do, at least for a while until dig a deep habit of it anyway, in order for me to maintain something.

Once again I have not exercised at all in the last 5 days.

It's true that I'm not so keen on the bodyweight stuff, especially since the eating-breakfast-experiment caused me to put on a shocking amount of weight in the mere 6 weeks that I tried it, but also because I've never liked floor, or on-all-fours type of, exercise ( unless is relatively "still" ). But I do like the cardio, the weights, and some of the stretching/callanetics stuff. ... My favourite exercises used to be, ( now 20 years ago ) swimming ... but the only public pool here is an outdoor one only open in the summer holidays and always horribly full of holiday makers as well as locals, ... and walking, but my knees don't seem to handle the impact anymore, even when wearing good trainers, so I can only walk about once every two days, and then the weather interferes too.

I can remember loving it when I was hitching round France with a friend in my late twenties, penniless, jobless, tentless, sleeping under the stars in woods, behind bus-stops, under bridges, in fields, sand-dunes, etc, and walking, walking, walking, always outdoors, for five whole weeks before turning round and coming home. Finding food in bins and on hedges ( blackberries ), when not asking in bakeries etc. I loved the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which automatically involved relaxed constant movement in direct daylight/sunlight etc.

My life now doesn't need me to move much at all. My muscles have been atrophying for over 6 years now, and they weren't much to write home about before. I used to be able to do voluntary work on organic farms, in exchange for free room and board. Now I'd barely last an hour of weeding or fruit-picking.

I keep trying, and failing, to think of a "job"/important valued serious necessary/useful activity which involves sustained physical effort and which I could join/contribute to/participate in at my current level of fitness ... I am so unfit, and there seem to be so few "jobs"/useful activities which involve sustained physical movement/activity which don't require an already quite high-fitness level and/or aren't pretty unpleasant/high-pressure sorts of work.

I live in a village ( about 3,000 inhabitants ), and don't drive, and don't seem to be able to find or create the sort of useful goal/purpose which would inspire me to regular physical exercise. ...

Why has physical activity/exercise become so utterly pointless/useless/redundant for so many except as a sort of "pill" to take for one's health?
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Running and walking seems chore like but swimming is fun. I like swimming most.

[sarcasm]
Dude, nice words of encouragement![/sarcasm]
I've been working out for around 7 years and you have even discouraged me. Why not give the guy some motivation instead?

I believe what he said is true, though. Even in your case, you did boxing, you do 5K races, you do bodybuilding to a point, etc, you have specific things you at least do on a semi regular basis to make your exercise time more "training" and less "exercise" for the sake of exercise. That's what he's getting at, it's hard just to "exercise."

To AM: If you read what I wrote, you would notice I said it is great he's getting into it, I just encouraged him to find something he likes while doing so, to increase the odds of his long term success. I never said it had to be one or the other.

To 1000: It's she actually.

I managed to do some exercise again today, 35 minutes, but only because my son ( 12 years old ) took some responsibility for making it happen, which was tough for me to begin with because he chose the Core/bodyweight "sequence". :lol However after a seriously grumpy and clumpy and grudging start I began to warm up and get into it, by simply concentrating on the standing-up exercises and standing-versions of the floor ones. It occurred to me though that perhaps another of the reasons why I like the Core/bodyweight workout least of all is that none of them have music, the presenters are all very "average" ( if fit ) looking joe's in uninspiring settings just getting on with it, whereas the Callanetics, Cardio/Aerobics and Weightlifting videos all involve music and cool presenters! :lol

Here are the videos we used this morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaR72bpj ... re=related
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaR72bpjSa4&feature=related[/YouTube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfEFc7hN ... re=related
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfEFc7hN4Dk&feature=related[/YouTube]

This one always makes us laugh, because we've also watched part of a video he made about surviving an apocalypse which we kept imagining was him trying and failing to deal with zombies like in ARMA 2's DayZ mod. :lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG2N0WKm ... re=related
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG2N0WKmquE&feature=related[/YouTube]
We did have two others in the same set of Core workouts, but I actually dumped them from my bookmarks today because we never want to do them however excellent they are; they're just soooo serious/earnest and difficult.

I would love to find some activity that inherently involved sustained extensive movement/physical effort as part of it, something which I wanted very much to do ... but simply can't think of anything. ...

I think that I'll probably feel more spontaneously/naturally lively/energetic again though, more up for exercise, once I've lost some of the extra kilos I put on since February and especially over the 6-8 weeks that I was eating breakfast, ( I gained over 9 kilos, from a reasonably healthy weight for me of 57kg in February to around 66kg in June, and which def isn't all or even mostly new muscle-mass :lol ), which really "slows"/weighs me down, and the abnormal eating pattern ( more fat and protein and sugar ) also aggravated the breathlessness/congested chest symptoms of what I think may be the early stages of congestive heart disease/failure ( I'm in my late 40's ) ... which I'm hoping I can not only halt but also reverse.

I do sometimes think that I'd have to make myself homeless again in order to provoke the sort of naturally flowing daily physical movement which I so often long for, that and the being outdoors all day ... :lol
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Ok, so I managed to do some exercise again today, and I think the trick may be to do it first thing on getting up, which we had done for perhaps 2 months, and which was working, before I decided to try the supposedly oh-so healthy breakfast experiment which insisted on breakfast within an hour of getting up such that we had to eat first and wait at least an hour after that before exercising ... the perfect recipe for not getting round to it, ( autist/AS inertia issues, because already into other stuff by then ) and/or for feeling uncomfortably/discouragingly "heavy" whenever did succeed in doing it!

It was my turn to choose this morning, and this is what I picked, which I think has some pretty good "core" in it too, but all of them standing-up, yay! :lol : 30+ minutes of mixed Callanetics-style stretching and bodyweight working-out. Felt good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3ZDwFiL ... ure=relmfu
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3ZDwFiLmTY&feature=relmfu[/YouTube]
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Kjas is a dude!

But I can see what happens there, and actually can vouch for it. I remember I exercised regularly from Feb. 2010 to March 2011, where I had a huge meltdown and lost my will to keep going. Only very recently I started exercising again.

The thing about it is, sometimes you truly enjoy it, and love going to the gym, but if depression kicks in easier activities like watching tv or fooling around in the internet will take over. If such an episode hits, we'll be around~ Otherwise, if you like doing exercise and following your program, go for it!

Great, well done for starting again.


Thanks!

We started to do some exercise on Saturday morning, the Cardio cluster of short workouts, but after 20 minutes warm-up etc we discovered to our huge disappointment and frustration that one of our very favourite YouTube videos, "AWESOME Cardio", :lol 20 minutes of a Les Mills "Body Combat" Trainer's Workshop/"concert", had been been removed for copyright reasons, which sort of stopped us in our tracks. I've managed to find another upload of it, but without the brilliantly inspiring voice-over ( by Rach(a)el Cohen ), instead it's dubbed in greek! :lol Still, the music is the same, mega bouncy motivating/uplifting etc so it may perhaps still work for me.

On Monday/yesterday we did some weight-lifting, the usual ThinQFitness routines, etc for about 30 minutes, but then discovered that our usual cool-down/stretch video, a 14 minute segment of callanetics taken from a longer/50 minute presentation that I absolutely love, had also, along with almost every other copy/upload from that session, been taken off YouTube for copyright reasons.

I have only been able to find one remaining 10 minute segment from it anywhere on YouTube, which I'm not going to post here in case it attracts attention! I've posted in the comments to that video asking if anyone knows where I can buy/get hold of a copy/DVD of the whole workout before it completely disappears from the net. It's in russian so I haven't been able to google it, not understanding russian, nor having a russian keyboard to type the title/names in. ... But today I found the You Tube a/c home page of the woman actually doing the exercises in the video, who was actually one of the first people to upload the video, in one segment and in four separate chunks, ( from some sort of Exercise-TV channel? ), so I may ask her directly if she knows where I can get it. ... It seems pretty cruel to me though for a company to take a video down from YouTube if the video/DVD isn't actually on sale somewhere, or if they're not providing a service somewhere which involves that film clip.

Today we did 35 minutes of FigureRobics from Japan ( or Korea? ) which was great. I love the way they manage to do serious core/abs/bodyweight exercises while standing up the whole time, none of this ( for me at least ) inertia-inducing floor-work stuff which so many Core workouts seem to involve. :lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLvGxLrp ... re=related

I get the impression that the production studio must be ok about these being on YouTube because there are more and more of them, and we in the West probably couldn't get hold of the TV/DVD copies anyway. Here's hoping/crossed fingers.
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLvGxLrpsbM&feature=related[/YouTube]
I've also found another callanetics video, again in Russian, :lol which though less beautiful than the first one is still pretty good ( plus music by Era/Enigma? ) . Hope it stays up too, or that if it doesn't at least they let people know where to get the original video/DVD.
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