Grand Adventure

I’m not much into New Year’s Resolutions, for all the reasons those of us aren’t. I simply don’t do well keeping them, and that can tend to have a negative effect.

Those of us in the military have a real incentive to stay physically fit. In a literal sense, our jobs are on the line. Twice a year I trudge out and take a physical fitness test. Back when I was younger, and serving in line (combat) units it wasn’t a major issue because daily we exercised with our troops. The higher up you go in the structure, the less you are in direct supervision of troops and the more diverse your responsibilities are making a fitness routine more challenging. Make no mistake, some of my colleagues thrive on implementing an invididual fitness plan…and some of most in-shape 40+ people I know are in better shape now than I was in High School.

Shelley and I started doing step aerobics around the first of the year together. Pretty cool for us to do that, a first in our marriage. The sad part is having all the 55+ women in the class make me look like a exercise doofus and someone who would really benefit as a contestant on The Biggest Loser. Really…some of those ladies have the muscle tone of 25 year olds.

Shelley was gone the last two weeks and I purposed to start back up my personal exercise regimen. I have a fitness test in April and there isn’t much time left to get back to a base enough level to where passing the test won’t put me six feet under. (this isn’t a big exaggeration…my blood pressure isn’t what it should be and medication isn’t lowering much yet). With that test, and plenty of alone time on my hands as catalysts I started back up. For me, running seems to be a best bang-for-buck activity.

We’ve been taking McKinley for walks in the evening most nights, and interspersing chunks of jogging stretches. While Shell was out, I extended those legs of jogging longer and longer, and doubled up some days time on the treadmill at home. Concurrently, I must improve on my core fitness as the Army fitness test involves a 2 mile run (for time obviously), 2 minutes of doing pushups (min standard of XX pushups based on age and gender) and 2 mins of situps (same as pushups). You do the pushups first, then the situps, then the run. Up to 10 min breaks in between events. I’m pretty confident I could pass both the pushup and situp events if I had to do them tomorrow. But the run is problematic (note: I used to achieve max points on the run portion when younger…it is a ego killer to know how far I’ve slipped and old my knees have gotten).

The key thing is to not try to make up for months + of slothfullness all in a week or so. That’s a sure recipe for losing your motivation. Since I’ve started back up, I’ve lost 2 lbs and gotten much more tone. Increased the mileage of what I’m running at a chunk to 3 miles (about every other day to give my knees a rest) and do the minimum amount of pushups and situps required for my age back-to-back with no break in time. That’s a good sign. Here’s a recipe for overall success that’s playing out for me well.

1) Again, don’t try to overcompensate with how much exercise you are doing for months of inactivity. Do something each day, or every other day. You should have a good, relaxed feeling afterwards for the first week and not hurting or aching all over.

2) Look at other aspects of your lifestyle that will improve your feeling of well being. At some point I will modify my sleep cycle to go to bed earlier, but mostly because I will be kicking in a “daily double” mode of evening/night treadmill stuff with early morning standard Army fitness mode.

Some things besides getting good sleep: a) hydrate more. I will admit to being a mid-week beer drinker. Come home, eat dinner then have a couple of beers to “cut the edge” off of the day. The problem is that sometimes that morphed into more than a couple of beers. Instead, I now have a large 64oz cup of diluted koolaid, sometimes two of those. Yep…makes you want to pee a lot. But I am feeling much better. My experience with hands on medical care in combat units is that many of us are partially hydrated nearly all the time. So…drink more clear fluids (koolaid is way cheaper than gatorade or that kind of stuff). b) Change your mental script about what your motivations are, who you are, and why you are doing this “new” exercise stuff. No, I’m not saying to look into a mirror each morning and say outloud to yourself “You are a MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, and an ADONIS!” And don’t take off your clothes and use your body image to create a self-loathing motivator. Be matter of fact that you are over 40, that you are going to improve your health overall and build on that. c) Improve your diet choices. Don’t go overboard here early. You are exercising now like you haven’t in months (maybe years) and the body will need time to adjust a bit. Pay more attention to what you are eating, how much, and when. I think you will naturally either forgo bad food choices, or at least consciously dive into that Stouffer’s French Bread pizza slice. Start taking a daily All-in-One vitamin to help the body slowly get back to getting the nutrients you’ve been lacking.

3) Do as many of these things you can with a buddy, your wife, etc. Here again, for me especially, don’t go overboard or you’ll lose that other person who can help motivate you when both the spirit and flesh are weak. I’m very proud of Shelley, because she never was into jogging/running. When we were a younger couple I tried to convince her to work out with me but the couple of times she actually did I’m sure I was too intense for her. Now she does a bunch on her own, we do some things together and she’s really getting fit. She finished her first 5K run last month (I was on a business trip) and it was a huge motivator for her to continue. We will run in one this Saturday together for the first time in 22 years of marriage. Very cool.

4) Don’t get discouraged if you don’t improve fast enough for your tastes. You want to change your habits and lifestyle and that takes time. Physiologically, you will likely lose some weight early on to a certain point then gain a little back as you are putting back on muscle in place of fat. You will plateau at times in how far/fast you can run, or how many reps you can do or how heavy you can lift. That is a natural thing. Just keep plugging away and you’ll move on from that log jam.

5) Rest your body. A 7 day regimen can be more harmful than helpful. Every other day is fine but if you are on Day 3 with no planned activity start gearing up your mental dialogue to do something exercise-wise. I also think rituals help us get in that mode mentally, so I have a set of workout clothes that I suit up in. Do that, and just go for a walk for 20 mins. That purposeful activity will get you over the hump mentally and you’ll be back to your regular routine the next day or even that night.

I believe the above strategies are going to be very successful for me and anybody else like me. And I hope to sustain them.