Oy! My weight is up! After so many weeks of family visits and Easter holidays, I have regained all the weight I lost over the winter (about 8 lbs). It’s not a huge deal; I’m not really overweight by any standard. But I feel more like the Pillsbury Dough-boy than the lean, mean, fightin’ machine I like to pretend I am. And I’m not thrilled I’ve got to work off those pounds AGAIN!
But I will do it. I am still working my way back to a regular exercise schedule, but I’ve been getting out for a run on a regular basis and that seems to be helping. I’ve discovered that it’s very important to warm up before I run. I overdid it last Monday and spent the rest of the week limping around. That sucked because it put some serious limits on what kind of activity I could do, and of course not being able to workout makes it even harder to lost that extra weight. However, I found that I could still hop on the elliptical machine. In fact, I also discovered that if I do 15-20 minutes first on my elliptical machine, I can then still go for a 20 minute jog/walk and get in plenty of cardio that way.
I’ve also discovered this past week that my iPod Nano has a pedometer on it, and I’ve been using it to track my progress. I’ve set a daily goal of 5000 steps for elliptical/running. That’s about 40 minutes of working out for me (yes, I run very slowly). And of course I’ve been using my iPod for its original intended purpose – playing podcasts and music while I exercise. I was able to finish off Phil Rossi’s horror novel, Harvey, last week, and now I’m cruising along to a mix of Pink, ABBA, Owl City and others while I sweat. I like it. A lot.
What I like even more is that sometime this week I will be getting a wristband for my iPod Nano. This has absolutely nothing to do with exercise, because the pedometer doesn’t seem to work very well when I where the iPod on my wrist. I know, I tried wearing it clipped to my wrist watch and it didn’t record a single step! But, I will now have a watch that I don’t have to worry about buying batteries for every couple of months. Aaaaaaaaaaand, I’ve discovered how to load images onto my iPod so I now have a mini-portfolio of my artwork that I’ll be able to wear on my wrist. How cool is that?!
Again, none of that has anything to do with exercise, but it just gives me one more reason to love my Nano.
One more thought, I’ve gone back to eating more vegetable-based meals. I tend to drop weight when I go partially vegetarian. Between that and getting back into running last week, I have managed to drop a little weight. According to the scale yesterday, my weight was down 1.5 lbs. I’m hoping to continue the trend now that all the spring holidays and family visits are out of the way. We’ll see what I weigh again in a couple of weeks.
But for now… time to get ready to exercise!
