E is For Exercise

I know, it’s a dirty word.  It’s not really my favorite one either.  I love being active, but I hate exercise.  (I’ll tell you a secret… being active is exercise… shhh!)

Over the past few months, a good friend of mine lost quite a few inches around his middle just by walking every day.  He got a pedometer and set a goal for 10,000 steps a day.  He had such great success with it that I decided to try it.

On Monday, I did just fine.  I had a few appointments, and since I had time to kill, so I went and walked around the mall, avoiding all the people trying to sell me stuff.  By Tuesday, I realized that in order to walk 10,000 steps a day, I had to stop in the middle of my day in order to go walking.  I’m way too busy for that!

Yesterday was my first day back to work for the week, and I decided that instead of setting an arbitrary goal, I was just going to try to be more active.  Instead of sitting around half the morning until it was time to go to work, I got up right after I finished my coffee and blogging and went out into my beautiful yard.  Midway through the workday, I had some time so my partner and I went walking for a bit.  Lo and behold, I hit 12,000 steps for the day.

What’s the moral of this story?  I don’t know that there’s a moral, per se.  What I do know is that the more active I am, the easier it is to be active.  If I get up off my duff first thing in the morning and do stuff, I have more time, more energy, and am more active.  If I sit around half the morning, very little gets done.

(We’re just not going to call what I do “exercise.”)

Here’s a picture from my back door.  Pretty, isn’t it?  Though you can’t hear it, birds are singing, but it’s otherwise pretty quiet.