The Groups: What I Learned: Pt. 2

Aerobic exercise saves your life; strength training makes it worth living.

Yes, exercise is important as an ‘activity’ but for other reasons as well: it will strengthen your body, elevate your mood and increase your sense of well-being, relieve stress and resist regaining the weight you’ve lost. You need to adopt a regimen that includes both aerobic/cardiovascular and resistance (strength) exercise.

Let’s start with the aerobic.

First, pick something you enjoy doing (or think you might enjoy) so you will be motivated to make doing it a habit for life. Let me emphasize that: the changes we are urged to make are not short-term remedies – not just something to do for a while and then revert to our prior inactive behavior pattern. There’s walking, jogging, biking, elliptical, swimming, Zumba, just to name a few. I recommend you begin modestly to establish a “duration” baseline during which you can comfortably do the routine. Then, whatever you do, make doing it a habit.

I Nordic-walk – that’s ‘power walking’ with hiking poles. You can check out the benefits of Nordic-walking here. I love it. My body loves it. In fact, Suzanne (my lovely wife) says that she can tell if I’ve gone more than a day or two without walking by the change in my mood. (Unfortunately, I am currently suffering some withdrawal symptoms: since breaking my left big toe July 10^th – I dropped a 20 lb. cutting board on it while unloading stuff from my car at home after shooting the initial episode of the Health Cooking …with Howard video series at the LexMedia studios – I have been without my favorite regular aerobic exercise, mostly inactive and, frankly, going a bit nuts without it. I can ride a bike with a Teva sandal on my left foot and I’ve done 8 miles at about a 10 mph pace several times but it’s not the same.)

I live near the Minuteman Bike Trail which is a delightful ~12 mile course that follows the route of an old commuter railroad bed from Alewife Station in Cambridge MA, through Arlington, Lexington and terminating at Railroad Ave. in Bedford. It’s mostly level, mostly wooded, mostly quiet, no auto fumes, lovely flora and fauna all year round (I even saw a coyote). It can also be quite social; I usually encounter several regulars doing their thing (walking like me, biking, jogging, inline skating or just out with their kids and/or dogs) whom I greet either by name, a nod or a wave.

For more about walking, see the tab “Walking with Howard…” above as well as a prior post of the same title.