Exercising Old-School

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About two weeks ago, I went for an annual physical. I had ballooned in the last year. For six years, I had held steady at just under 300lb, but when I went in I weighed in at 360lb. Needless to say, this was a bit of a shock. Yet, in the last two weeks, I dropped 20lb. I'm rather proud of myself. It's the first time I've actively lost weight in over half a decade.

I approached this in a two-pronged attack. The first was through food. Rather than stuffing my face with whatever could be microwaved quickly, I cooked. And I cooked so that I would have few leftovers. I've learned I'm pretty good at cooking, and have noticed that if eaten slowly, and without the temptation of a second serving, I can be just as satisfied with a small bowl of goulash as I might with a big one or three.

The second was through exercise, and that's the point of this thread. Now, my sister, she's a gym rat, and her boyfriend is a powerlifter, and both of them have been trying to drag me to the gym. The problem is, I don't like gyms. If I exercise, I prefer it to be out of doors. There's something about gyms that has always put me off, I just don't know what it is.

So what I did instead, keeping with my special interest du jour, the 19th Century British Empire, was to devour everything I could find on the exercises of that time. In case you didn't know, physical fitness was almost a religion in those days (It wouldn't do to send flabby little nerds off to subjugate deepest Africa). Rudyard Kipling, for example, one of my great heroes, was a four and a half minute mile, supposedly. So, says I, what can I learn here?

When my sister goes to the gym, she'll spend two hours of exercise there, and the rest of the day, she sits. This didn't seem pretty productive to me, and a lot of the sources that I've studied actually proposed instead to do a little bit a lot; A set of 60 jumping jacks or 25 squats every hour, for example. It seemed stamina training and walking had a greater emphasis than anything else, but strength training was definitely supported. A young man was recommended to do curls or pushups getting out of bed, and to run a mile every evening before bed. In between, there were exercises scattered throughout the day.

Now, this philosophy of physical fitness all the time seems far more positive to me than "a half hour of continuous exercise three times a week" as my doctor suggested. This is the kind of training that puts us at peak physical fitness, and it was spread throughout the western world, not just in Britain. What happened? Why have the expectations placed on a man (or woman) been reduced so drastically, and despite the obesity epidemic, nobody seems to be proposing a return to such a regimen?

Ah, well, it works for me.

I have a feeling that the current medical guidelines for exercise are a last gasp to get the modern population off their butts. I mean twenty minutes, three times a week...seriously? Of course, I'm a slacker myself and smoked for close to twenty years so no seven minute miles for me anytime soon. It sounds like you've got a firm strategy, so keep it up and congrats.

Within 20 minutes a person can easily run approximately two-miles on a treadmill.

You sound like me... I'm still a smoker, and I curse that whenever I have to jog ten feet. The slacker is the hardest part to work with, but I'm just trying to maintain a rigid schedule, and discipline comes with it.

As for the rest, sadly I think you're right. We have turned into a bunch of lazy bums, haven't we? Of course, twenty minutes three times a week is about as effective as convincing a fat guy that three double cheeseburgers every meal is better than five. Technically correct, but heart disease is still a-coming.

My pace is slower than that, and I often run more than 3 miles on the treadmill.

I'm definitely in agreement with the OP on this. I went through a period when I was younger when through necessity I had to walk a total of 10 miles per day to 2 non-sedentary jobs, and was working out at home (calisthenics and dumbbells) in between. I actually got pretty buff, and felt great, physically at least!

This is actually one of the best ways to work out, i've found. I've got an app on my phone, noom weight loss, that's really great with this kind of stuff.