Exercise and Me

Where do I begin with trying to get myself to exercise. I lie in bed at night and regularly wish that I was more motivated to exercise. I've done this for probably 20 years.

Image courtesy of bicyclecanberra.blogspot.com

When I was child, up until I got my first car, I rode my pushbike everywhere. It started in primary school just riding to and from school. It was one footpath with no roads to cross and only took maybe five minutes. I didn't go up and down mountains just for fun, I didn't go out seeking BMX tracks or anything like that, at least not very often. I had a BMX and then a mountain bike and I stuck to the bike paths wherever I could. Growing up in Canberra there were plenty of decent bike paths that could get you almost anywhere. Some weren't the most direct route but they were safe, usually well maintained and not really busy. They weren't just painted on the side of the road either, they were their own entity.

From around the age of 12 I'd look at a map, a paper street directory usually from the phone book (sounds so funny saying that now). I'd plot out a route to a friends house and then hop on the bike. My limit was somewhere around an hours ride as none of my close friends lived any further away than that. If I could find a bike path that went near where I was going, that was all I needed. All through high school and college I rode my pushbike everywhere but I always had a little bit of a pot belly, not much, just a little.I used to push myself and see how fast I could ride to a friends house or just around the lake and back home.

When I was 17 or 18 I had a gym membership for 6 months. I used to go to the gym around twice a week with a friend of mine, I never saw any results so I gave up going. Shortly after this I started working the graveyard shift in a supermarket three to four nights a week. I'd start at 10pm and work through to 7am, mainly packing shelves but also serving customers. This was quite physical and we'd work hard each night to get things done. Working the graveyard shifts meant that my diet wasn't very good as I was drinking two or three energy drinks a night, eating chips and chocolate bars instead of proper food and then I'd go home and eat a fairly large meal and hop straight into bed.

After several years of doing the supermarket graveyard shifts I moved to working in hospitality. I was managing a small pub, working six days a week, ten to twelve hours each day. Then I'd usually have a couple of drinks after work before going home and doing it all again. On the one day of the week that the pub was closed, I'd still often go down there and do some cleaning. I remember this one time where I fell asleep on the floor behind the jukebox that I was trying to fix, I was just that exhausted. Dinner was usually something from the deep fryer at the pub or pizza from across the street. Fun times.

Now with wife and kids I have a regular office job. A few years ago I started trying to go the the pool for a swim on the way to work twice a week, it was great the first few times, however it turns out that I was just lucky and had started doing this during school holidays. When school went back, the pool became super busy in the morning and there were often three to four people trying to share the one lane swimming laps. As it was busy the change rooms were also a mess and all the benches would be wet and you'd sometimes have to wait to have a shower. Not the end of the world but not pleasant either. I stopped going at this time.

For my 40th birthday my wife bought me a Fitbit. I don't think she was trying to say anything but now I have this device on my wrist that tracks my every movement. It lets me see how well I've been sleeping and just how much sitting around doing nothing I do. For the first week or so I tried tracking what I was eating on the Fitbit app but that was starting to feel like a chore. I was also just trying to record how much water I was drinking and trying to drink more water. Usually I'd be lucky to drink 600ml of water each day.

As time has gone on and I've been thinking more and more about losing weight I started looking at getting an elliptical trainer or a home gym. My wife and I hired an elliptical trainer prior to getting married. I really quite enjoyed it, but after a while we both stopped using it. To buy a decent elliptical or even hire one again is possible, however we don't have room for it in the house so it would have to go in the garage and it's not a nice garage and there isn't a heap of room. I can see it getting in the way and ending up not being used as it would be too cold in Winter and too hot in Summer.

I was riding my motorcycle home from work last week and saw a couple just out for a walk and thought to myself, why don't I just do that, why don't I just get out and go for a walk each afternoon. It's free and if I quit walking (like I seem to do with everything else) then at least it hasn't cost me anything. So that's it, I'm now a walker, although I haven't started yet. Sometimes I swear I procrastinate about procrastinating.

Since I have a Fitbit, I now have a way of tracking what I'm doing. The Fitbit is set up with a default target of 10,000 steps each day. A little bit of research shows that 10,000 steps is a good target, it is meant to be enough that you'll do 7,000 - 8,000 steps in the course of a normal day and the extra 2,000 is from additional exercise. I'm no expert and I may have misread or misinterpreted what I read but that's what I'm aiming for, 10,000 steps each and everyday. Starting today! Maybe after lunch if the kids want to come with me or if they don't, I'll have to wait until my wife gets home from work. To start with I'm not going to push myself or carry weights or anything, just walk normally.

Bomber.