I may regret asking for advice about this

[liv]

I want to do more exercise, but I'm not sure how I should go about it. Please, please read what I'm actually asking about before jumping in with advice.

There are several problems in the way of getting started with exercise. None of them is insurmountable, but I am hoping to find a form of exercise which at least minimizes them. Because the first problem is lack of motivation, which I don't think anyone can solve for me, but it ought to be possible to reduce the activation energy hump somewhat.

Problem 1: I'm asthmatic, I've been asthmatic most of my life. I don't in any way believe that people who have asthma can't do any exercise; I know plenty of asthmatic athletes and people with much worse asthma than me who keep in good shape. But the thing is that the kind of exercise everybody recommends you to do involves 20 minutes of continuous raised heartrate, and I simply don't know how to do vigorous, heartrate increasing exercise without getting out of breath. If I keep moving when out of breath, it triggers an asthma attack, it just does. There's got to be some way out of this catch-22, because otherwise nobody who has breathing problems would ever do exercise, but I'm utterly ignorant of what it might be. It's partly unfitness; the fact that I get out of breath just walking fast isn't asthma, it's me not doing as much exercise as I should. But I really have no idea how to start building up that fitness. It seems to me that even if I were fitter, the threshold for increasing my heartrate would just be higher, and I'd eventually reach it and then I'd have to stop due to not being able to breathe.

It may be psychological, this reaction. I spent so many years of my childhood associating not being able to breathe with panic, that it's hard to break that association. Maybe what I should do is convince myself (how?!) I'm not about to asphyxiate if I have to work hard to get oxygen to my muscles, and therefore be able to keep going. But to me a sustained rapid heartrate for 20 minutes sounds as unattainable as swimming the Channel or climbing Everest, I can't get my head round the advice that absolutely everybody should be able to do this easily. Another option is to use my medication more; say I start running and get out of breath, instead of stopping I could just take my reliever, and keep going? That sounds kinda scary to me, but perhaps it is in fact safe.

Does anyone have any actual knowledge of how this is supposed to work? I generally like people just bouncing ideas at me, but please don't in this case, I'm essentially asking for medical advice. If your answer is going to be, if you need medical advice, you should ask a professional, well, whom? I've tried asking GPs and practice nurses and all I get is the party line about how "everybody" can do 20 minutes three times a week, which doesn't help me with actual technique. I'm considering going to a more specialist asthma clinic, but I sort of feel a fraud, since my asthma is basically well managed as long as I stay fairly sedentary.

Problem 2: I have absolutely no interest in losing weight. Based on past experience as well as my knowledge of metabolism I think it's unlikely that I will lose much anyway, probably a few kilos and then plateau. And if I lose a few kilos, well, I'll be at the high end of overweight instead of the low end of obese, and everybody will still think I'm evil and disgusting and not capable of getting fit anyway. A lot of the possible sources of advice, and indeed institutions where I might try to do more exercise, are going to push weight loss quackery on me. Indeed, a lot of people seem to understand the question "how can I do more exercise" as a euphemistic way of asking for diet tips, or even worse, asking for reassurance that I'm pretty or suggestions for how to improve my dress in order to disguise the fact that I'm fat. This is not about weight and it's definitely not about appearance, and people trying to make me thinner and prettier and girlier, whether that's well-meaning friends or commercial businesses, is one of the big things that put me off getting started with exercise.

So, where can I get advice and support about exercise, and ideally find a formal programme, without it turning into a body-hatred fest? I don't actually mind if I do lose weight, though it'd be a nuisance for my wardrobe. But I don't want to think about it, and I don't want to be congratulated for it, and I don't want it to be a goal in any way. I guess my point is that if you believe that people who do the "right" amount of exercise automatically get the right body, then ok, that will happen.

Problem 3: I'm uncoordinated, and I also have a mental block about doing things I can't excel at. I'm not keen to do something where other people rely on me to be consistently competent, because I won't be. I can learn physical skills, but I need three times more practice than anyone else and I'll never really shine at them. I think at my age I can't really just turn up and do stuff badly for my own sake, even if psychologically I found that acceptable, because I actually will annoy people.

Problem 4: I need something I will realistically keep up with. This is the biggest sticking point, in some ways. Yes, I know, I am lazy, that's a big part of my problem here. I also do have a limited amount of free time. The point is that I need to do something that I'm going to enjoy, and which requires a fairly low barrier of preparation and hassle, because otherwise I'm going to just carry on what I have been doing for the last few years, and find sitting at the computer just so much more appealing than doing unpleasant and painful things that it will never happen. Stuff that can happen indoors is probably a bonus, because this is the worst possible time of year for starting anything that requires you to be outdoors. Plus, breathing air that's not much colder than about 20 °C makes triggering asthma attacks a lot less likely.

Does anyone have any suggestions that take into account problems 1 to 3? I'm probably asking in a really defensive way, but I'm rather afraid I'm just going to get lectures about how pathetic I am for not being more active. Or anecdotes about how totally easy it is to lose "loads" of weight if you're already thin to start off with and you perform the exactly correct magical rituals and hate yourself enough. Though hopefully not too many of the latter because most of the people who'll read this are people I have some connection to, not just random diet evangelists.

Possible ideas I've come up with myself:

• Hillwalking. I know I enjoy this, and it gets me out into the fresh air, and generally makes me feel really good about myself. I live right in the middle of some really beautiful countryside and I would like to take more advantage of it. I've already done a little bit of it this year (many thanks to syllopsium for encouragement and company!) The problem with this is that it's stamina and muscle-building exercise rather than cardiovascular exercise, and it needs a whole day at a time (so at best I'm going to do it a few times a month, not several times a week). And yeah, not the best thing to start on at the beginning of winter!
  
  
• More gentle walking. This is something I do already, and it tends to be mentioned prominently in patronizing leaflets about how easy it is for "everybody" to do adequate exercise. I already walk about a mile several days a week, and often longer (but gentle) walks at the weekends. The trouble is that I don't think it's really exercise unless you walk fast enough to increase your heartrate, and that cycles straight back to the asthma issue.
  
  
• Kayaking / canoeing. I really, really enjoy kayaking, and I'm actually surprisingly competent at it, and I seem to be capable of doing it fast enough to actually be valid exercise. The problem is that it's a huge hassle to organize because you have to find a club and travel to an appropriate body of water. Again, I can't really see it happening more than once a week, so it's not going to fulfil the regular requirement. And it's really not going to happen in winter!
  
  
• Swimming. I enjoy swimming, and it made me feel a lot better about myself during my PhD when I went swimming a couple of times a week. The thing is I don't think I actually have the technique to swim fast enough to raise my heartrate, so it ends up being stamina exercise rather than CV again. Perhaps I need to take some lessons! Also the problem with swimming is that getting to the pool, and bringing a costume and towel and having to wash and get changed and deal with my hair and come out into the cold air when I'm damp and tired forms enough of a barrier that I might not get started. I think if I got into the habit I probably would keep it up, though.
  
  
• Dancing. I enjoy dancing, and it's sociable, which would give me a good motivation to do it regularly rather than whenever I can make time (ie hardly ever). My generally lack of coordination is a bit of a problem with this, though. I think ceilidh-style would probably be ideal, because you don't have to join in every single dance and it doesn't matter if you're not the most skilled. But other sorts of country dancing clubs are a possibility, as long as they don't mind me being really incompetent.
  
  
• Pilates. I tried some in Sweden, because work provided classes and I could go along with colleagues, and there isn't such a big obsession with weight-loss or making your tummy flat as there seems to be over here. (Tried yoga too, and I hated it, so I'm definitely convinced that pilates is better for me. Also I find traditional "aerobics" unutterably boring, there's no way I'd keep up an exercise programme based on that kind of jumping about on the spot.)I particularly liked the version that has a big inflatable ball, because it's more of a game and it's a lot harder to cheat at the exercises. (I don't mean I would cheat deliberately, just that if you're supposed to do a difficult and painful stretch and hold a pose, it's very natural to modify it into something that's easier to hold, and the ball stops you from doing that.) There would be a huge advantage in having a regular class that would get me into a routine of attending, and again, it's indoors. The trouble is that again, I think it's probably more muscle toning exercise than cardiovascular, and also it's sometimes full of new age mumbo-jumbo (when it isn't being sold directly as a way to lose weight). The other thing is that some of it involves controlled breathing and I sometimes find it triggers panic / asthma if people tell me how to breathe. Plus I'm a bit scared of being incompetent and looking like a fool in front of the class. Maybe an alternative would be to get a DVD and do it at home, which would have the advantage of being easy and non-embarrassing, though I don't know whether I'd stick to it, or whether I'd actually learn enough from a DVD to do it correctly and get the benefit, without a teacher to show me.
  
  
• On the theme of exercise that I could do on my own, without having to make complicated arrangements or drag myself out of the house into the dark, unwelcoming night, I was thinking about gaming consoles that have a physical element. There's the WiiFit, but it's so centred around weight loss and self hatred that I'm not sure I could stand it. Or possibly some variation of Dance Dance Revolution, which I think I'd quite enjoy as long as I didn't have to do it in front of anyone else. The internet seems to think it's possible to rig up a version of it for PC, but perhaps it's worth getting a console for that purpose. (Which systems are in fact geared up for it? Last time I owned a console it was an early 90s era Gameboy, so I really have no idea what's on the market these days.) I generally like computer games, so it's plausible that that would provide enough motivation for me to do regular exercise.

So, any ideas? Please be a bit kind to me, I know I suck for having reached the age of 32 without figuring this out for myself, and for not having got over all the baggage I have from school PE classes, and for being generally too lazy to do what I know is good for me, but. Feeling guilty about not having started yet is not at all going to improve my chances of starting now, that much I'm sure of.

Comments

[vatine]

Hm. Well, you seem to have figured out (roughly) what I can contribute on your own.

If you're not incredibly horrified by the thought of weight-lifting (or using more modern machines) as a way to build muscles, that's possibly a route you may consider. More muscle mass means higher energy consumption at a given activity level. But, it doesn't do anything for "fitness" on its own (even if a hearty warm-up provides some aerobic exercise).

As far as games go, I've tried Just Dance for Wii and found it moderately enjoyable, in both a "coordinate" and "exercise" way. I understand that there is gaming controllers that are (essentially) an exercise bike, where the pedaling controls the throttle of the in-game vehicle (yes, the CyberBike for Wii and GameBike for PS3 and XBox360). DDR-alikes are certainly available on the PlayStation (and I guess, by extension, PS2 and PS3), no idea how that market segment is served by the XBox lineage.

[wildeabandon]

Weight-lifting? Again, it's a muscle toning thing, but if you actually lift challenging, heavy, weights, it certainly will raise your heart beat, but because it does it for a short while, repeatedly, it might not leave you out of breath in the same way.

http://www.stumptuous.com/ has lots of advice aimed at women, and is better than most exercise sites about not talking much about weight loss.

[kake]

And if you decide to give this a go, there's lifting_heavy_things for advice and encouragement.

[foxfirefey]

XBox just came out with the Kinect and Dance Central, which doesn't even require any controllers to work.

[mathcathy]

I'm quite interested in the idea of going out into the Peaks and joining in some orienteering days. It would probably have to be next summer now and isn't in any way going to fit the "regular" criteria, but we could look into doing that together because I reckon it can be taken at a pace that suits.

Or, and you would have to join the gym to make this work, a kind of buddying to get to the gym would do me well because I have completely lost the habit and I miss it. They have a giant pool, there are weight lifting classes, pilate classes and going together might just make it sociable enough to be both bearable and sustainable. And I can give you lifts, which would mitigate in someway against all the stuff you have to take if you go swimming/gyming.

[oursin]

Being lazy, I think it matters less what you do than how it fits in with your schedule and way of life without imposing huge amounts of inconvenience and stress. I therefore go to a gym which is pretty much on my way home from work - if I had to make a special expedition somewhere else I probably wouldn't go, or not with any regularity. I do weights and some cardio work, and the thing with cardio is that you can work up gently, rather than immediately start getting the heart hammering at maximum rate. And I do yoga because there is a lunchtime class at my workplace.

Another important thing for me is giving myself permission to be pretty crap at physical activities and telling myself I don't have to be good at it, the important thing is its being good for me. I am not going to press impressive amounts of weights for amazing numbers of reps or run a marathon or hold the Tree posture for more than 10 seconds without wavering. But that doesn't make the project not worth undertaking.

Skipping is said to be very good exercise.

[liv]

Wouldn't have thought of weightlifting, because I assumed it was muscle-building only. I suspect I might find it boring, but it's definitely worth a thought.

Thanks for the advice on movement based games and consoles generally. I have this feeling that getting myself the treat of a new toy might make exercise seem like a reward instead of a punishment. I'm quite tempted by Playstation; my very vague feeling is that the Wii has only about 3 actual games, and the XBox is way too serious for someone like me who's more interested in Tetris than photo-realistic FPS type things. But it's good to have a starting point to investigate.

[liv]

Hmm, it may be that doing repeated intense but short bursts exercise might be a way round the breathing panic thing. Thanks for that suggestion. As I said in another comment I wouldn't have thought of weightlifting, because what I want to do is improve my general fitness rather than build muscle, but it sounds as if it may be worth investigating.

[liv]

I must admit it feels very futuristic to have such a thing as a controller that reads your body movements available off-the-shelf! Yay shiny toys...

[aphenine]

I have massive problems with being unfit. I'm too unfit for normal exercise and I had immense problems figuring out ways to get fit that didn't end up with me collapsing and being unable to catch my breath (I don't have asthma, I'm just that unfit) or that didn't involve me pulling something in a bad way. So I can sympathise.

I like the Wii Fit because, although it is a weight loss tool, it's main purpose deals with body balance, and training that up helped me increase my deep muscles (and incidentally improved my coordination). There's something inherently satisfying about standing properly and feeling that doing that alone is burning calories and taking strain off your back and knees. Also, I've recently found the free step function (you step on and off the board while watching some other channel on TV) pretty awesome for burning serious calories while doing something I would have done anyway. You can also compete against yourself in the exercises.

I also like Qi Gong, which is a moving meditation warm-up for Tai Chi. It's really easy to learn, can be done indoors and works by relaxing the body and mind while simultaneously getting the body ready for exercise through stretching and movements. It focuses heavily on the mind/body connection and on resetting it properly so that you're moving correctly and in harmony. Highly recommended for tense, stressed and uncoordinated people. It's also non-competitive and I learnt it from a DVD in my living room.

I've also done some Pilates and found that easy enough to do at home using instructional DVDs, although it's not my kind of thing.

[azurelunatic]

(I am another large woman who had responses suspiciously like asthma when vigorously exercising as a child, and my response to self-hatred stuff is hiding and then defriending the people encouraging it.) There's gentle walking interspersed with jogging for a few steps every now and then, to sneak in something more vigorous without causing a problem. The bit you mention, It seems to me that even if I were fitter, the threshold for increasing my heartrate would just be higher, and I'd eventually reach it and then I'd have to stop due to not being able to breathe -- it would be helpful if I could recall exactly where I read it, but I seem to recall reading something questioning the "sustained for 20 minutes" wisdom. If the "sustained" part being necessary to get cardiovascular exercise is in fact bullshit, then you might in fact be able to see cardiovascular improvement from twenty one-minute bursts throughout the day, or throughout a walk, or something like that. And increasing general fitness would of course cut down on the non-asthma-related breathlessness.

Possibly more useful than a nebulous goal of fitness might be a concrete "I want to be able to dance a whole set without feeling as if I am going to fall over", or "I want to be able to dance the whole evening without feeling as if I had been run over by a bus the next day" and work your way up to that.

The hot new exercise-is-a-side-effect-of-the-real-fun game is Dance Central for the Kinect: http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/32376.html
http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/34593.html
http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/39428.html
The game system sounds expensive, but the game sounds fun, and not plagued with the same self-hate problems as the WiiFit; apparently one has to deliberately turn on workout mode.

There's what Dad calls "aerobic housecleaning" -- his favorite tends to be aerobic snow-shoveling.

I am totally not a doctor of any sort, but keeping going straight on through when you can't breathe really sounds like a bad idea. If you get symptoms that you know before the full-on stuff hits, would it be workable to back down until your system has calmed down (but not fully stop, say going back down to a gentle walk rather than stopping), and then once you've become comfortable again, dial up the intensity of whatever you're doing to just below the ZOMGFREAKOUT level? That sounds as if it's likely to increase cardiovascular endurance (as well as physical) and one hopes that it might also train away some of the panic as well.

YMMV, of course, and I hope some of this is actively helpful and none of it increases freakout.

(In the middle of typing this up, I got up and danced around my living room singing "Bad Romance", because the spirit moved me to; apparently talking about this stuff makes me more likely to actually do it.)

[azurelunatic]

My apartment complex has TVs in their workout room, for good reason. Though those are probably a bad idea with large large free weights.

[liv]

Oh, hello, I didn't know you had an account here. I would really love to go out into the Peaks with you, that would be super awesome. I don't really care if it's occasionally during the decent weather season, it's something I want to do for its own sake, not just cos it's good for me. I had dismissed orienteering as too competitive, but perhaps having an element of that would make it seem more like a game and less like a chore. I'm certainly happy to join you if you find something that isn't all iron man running up and down hills! Thanks so much for suggesting it.

Buddying could really help too. If I had a commitment to you I'd be a lot less likely to keep cancelling because I'd be too tired / busy. I'm not in principle against joining a gym, because, well, obviously the point of gyms is to provide exactly the sort of thing I want, namely instruction and equipment to help people do exercise! The main thing that's put me off has always been the advertising which says "join this gym, it will make you thin and beautiful!" Swimming I could certainly do, and I think what you're suggesting would definitely get me "over the hump". Other gym stuff I don't know, it's sort of filed in the boring and repetitive category in my head, but I'm certainly willing to try it and see if there's anything I find fun enough to carry on with. In fact, maybe you'd infect me with your virtuous ways and get me out to the gym really early in the morning before work!

[sea_bright]

Regarding the asthma, do you take your reliever inhaler before exercising? This is something I don't ever remember having recommended to me when I was growing up (or indeed since), but at some point in the last twenty years or so it does seem to have slipped into the official advice about reliever inhaler use. If you don't do this already, would it be worth trying to see if it increases the length of time you can exercise for without getting breathless?

On a more general note, I get the impression that an awful lot of people (including, apparently, members of medical professions) fail to appreciate how much variety there is in what triggers asthma attacks. There are people (me, for example) who have asthma which isn't triggered by being out of breath, and unfortunately this seems to lead to some people engaging in very poor reasoning along the lines of 'Well, X has asthma and can do Y, so anyone with asthma ought to be able to do that', when that blatantly isn't the case. I realize that just observing that this is the case doesn't help change it, though!

I may just be very ill-informed here, but I was under the impression that pretty much any sustained exercise would raise one's heart rate to some extent - I don't know how high it has to go for it to count as cardiovascular exercise, though. One thing that occurred to me is that it might be worth trying exercising while wearing a heart rate monitor (you can get them for about £20, or some gyms have them available for members to borrow). That way you could keep the exercise at the minimum intensity necessary for cardiovascular benefit, which might reduce the risk of getting out of breath.

On the subject of gyms, I don't know if the fact that they don't figure in your list above means you've ruled them out as impractical, but something I found during the brief period some years ago when I was a member of a gym is that there's a huge difference between the impact of the various cardiovascular machines they have. I found that I couldn't do more than about five minutes of sustained exercise on a stationary bike or rowing machine, but I could quite happily keep going for half an hour on a cross-trainer, while apparently (according to the read-outs on the machines, anyway) maintaining a similar level of exertion. So if you do try a gym at any point, it's worth experimenting until you find what works best for you.

Regarding game consoles, I haven't tried one in person, but the new Kinect thingy for XBox 360 appears to be an impressive piece of kit. I know that programs that include exercise are available (someone I know was involved in developing one), though I've no idea how it does on the weight loss/self hatred front.

[liv]

Thank you for such a sympathetic comment! You understand exactly what I'm asking for, which is something that I can fit into my life with minimal hassle, otherwise it won't happen at all. I do appreciate that you're not guilt tripping me for wanting this. Skipping sounds like a really good idea, cos I could do that at home and build up as gradually as I like... Thanks for the suggestion!

Giving myself permission to be crap is something I struggle with, definitely. Academically I'm an over-achiever (surprise, surprise), and even though I know intellectually that it's worth doing things that are good and fun even if you can't be the best, I have a hard time actually believing that.

[mathcathy]

I set this up around the time when LJ started with the facebook and twitter links, but haven't used it much, as you see.

Early in the morning before work might really suit me. I am a member at Total Fitness which isn't far from you and it opens at 6:30, which was a perfect time to arrive and get in a workout with time for a shower before work. I've had phases of doing that fairly regularly.

However, none of the classes are that early ... so it would be weights, swimming or cardio in a relaxed fashion at that time of day.

I'm up for it if you are. We could wrangle out a couple of days a week for a start and see where we go from there, if you like?

[liv]

Thanks, this is very helpful, particularly because you're not already starting from so far ahead of where I am that I can't even imagine following your example. I liked the balance aspect of Pilates, definitely, so if that's included in the WiiFit exercises, I may like them more than I think I'm going to at the moment. I've heard that you can turn off the worst of the abusive stuff by telling it that you're ten feet tall so it congratulates you on your thinness.

[liv]

Thank you, much appreciated. I'm sure that short bursts of vigorous exercise would be better than none at all, definitely. So yeah, bits of running during my normal walking routine could well help. And I like the idea of dialling back but continuing to move as a way of deconditioning myself from "breathless = asthma attack = panic".

I agree that concrete goals would be useful, and I was thinking that "beat my score at a physical game" would make a sensible goal. I am totally in love with the idea of Kinect as a piece of shiny tech, but I'm not sure I'm a serious enough gamer for the whole XBox concept.

[lethargic_man]

Possibly you no longer need this advice, with all the advice you've already got, but.

You say:

the thing is that the kind of exercise everybody recommends you to do involves 20 minutes of continuous raised heartrate, and I simply don't know how to do vigorous, heartrate increasing exercise without getting out of breath. If I keep moving when out of breath, it triggers an asthma attack, it just does. There's got to be some way out of this catch-22, because otherwise nobody who has breathing problems would ever do exercise, but I'm utterly ignorant of what it might be.

But then you also say:

I know plenty of asthmatic athletes and people with much worse asthma than me who keep in good shape.

So, maybe this is too obvious and you've already done it, but have you tried asking these asthmatic athletes how they do it?

[azurelunatic]

Especially because I believe panic attacks are one of the things that have the potential to trigger asthma attacks...

[liv]

Thank you for this. I have never heard of taking a reliever before exercise; this is possibly connected to the fact that I haven't really done anything about asthma management since I was given the good drugs at age 12. With Salbutamol and Beclametasone, I barely notice I have asthma most of the time, so seeking medical advice is a really low priority. But in fact there has been a lot of research in the last 20 years, so it might well be a good idea to update myself. Good point that asthma takes lots of different forms, of course. I put that bit about asthmatic athletes in partly because I didn't want to come across as making excuses for my pathetic laziness.

It may well be that I'm over-ambitious about how much I need to raise my heartrate, and actually simply walking at normal pace is good for me. I don't know how to find out how much increased heartrate is desirable because every time I try to look this kind of thing up I get derailed by stupid weight loss advice. That's why I turned to my d-roll instead of just asking Uncle Google.

I'm not terribly keen on the idea of gyms, because they seem to be hassly (as in you have to go to a specific place and pay money and stuff), and often focused on weight loss, and quite likely to promote boring and repetitive exercise. However, the whole point of a gym is to help me with exactly the kind of thing I need help with, and now that mathcathy has offered to buddy me, I think I might be able to get over the activation energy and actually turn up at one. If I do start going to the gym I shall definitely try out lots of different things until I find something I like. Very good point about how tiring different things are. I know I am way better at, say, rowing than I am at running, and I don't think that's because rowing is inherently less effort.

[liv]

That's a pretty good idea. I think the main reason I haven't done it is because the people I know who have asthma but don't let it stop them are incredibly strong and fit and I don't feel I can even aspire to being like them. If someone has mild asthma and does moderate, not superhumanly impressive amounts of exercise, I quite likely don't know about it. So I'm partly hoping that some such people will come forward in response to this post!

[lethargic_man]

I think the main reason I haven't done it is because the people I know who have asthma but don't let it stop them are incredibly strong and fit and I don't feel I can even aspire to being like them.

Well, maybe they are now, but possibly they started out like you. You don't know until you ask.

[dpfesh]

I'm a fat grrl (and fine with it), i get varying levels of 'excerise induced asthma'.. and i'd much rather nap than work out, pfft. That being said:

I used to go to the local gym with hubs (he like..works out on purpose, daily. Weirdo) and we'd start off doing some ~sitting~ dumbbell exercises. Arm curls..uh..arm raises.. i dunno what all the names were, but the internets should have decent Dumbbell work outs.

Once my arms hated me, then i would treadmill-for-as-long-as-my-legs could handle it. Usually 20 min at a brisk-ish walk was my limit.

Then did some of the fancy machines (mostly back to dealing with arms).

I was able to bench about 120lbs at one point (go me!) and didn't lose much girth/weight, but i felt healthier and happier :D I would like to find time & money to get back to it. (I dunno, i prefer the nice gym environ..there's Air Conditioning or Heating..i'm not all distracted by other things in the house, etc..)

Dance Dance Revolution ZOMG - i *love* that game. Haven't played in forever since our Official Dance Pad (like the metal dance floor) broke. Funny, hubs is the one that broke it, lil tiny him just stompling like crazy.. But it's a great way to get points and get moving. ours was for PS2, you can get the official dance pads fairly decently priced on the internets (ebay even) - i'd much more recommend the official hard floors than the shitty foam pads. They slide around far too much. - I have noticed from other folks' wiifits that they are pretty..weight/size centric. Normally i don't care, but it even started grating on my nerves.

Good luck! If you go for some walks, enjoy the pretty outsides :D No feeling guilty! School is dumb and full of meanies. And you're allowed to take as long as you do to learn about anything. Have some fun with it.

[oursin]

There is a certain degree of tension with my competitive tendencies... but I try to put that in proportion.