mek.highcroft.com

The scale said "oooof!"

Without much of a thought, I stepped on the scale the other day. I think I heard it complain, much like in Garfield cartoons.

I'm not really very overweight. I'm 6'5" and weigh about 250lbs. The doctor says I could stand to lose some weight, and I agree, but I'm still well within the "OK" range. The main issue for me is the motivation to start and keep up with a fitness program. As I've said before, I'm not keen on joining a health club, mainly because they always seem to be overrun with 1)people like me who desperately need to get in shape, and 2) people who are in such great shape that their photos are showing up spontaneously on the cover of magazines like I'm Clearly In Better Shape Than You, and Hans and Franz Degrade the Cubicle Vegetable.

I've been attending a Ju Jitsu class nearby. I've been jogging a few times, but so far, nothing has been habit-forming, and the hoped-for fitness continues to be fitness-less. Perhaps something more drastic is necessary, but I'm not in a position to hire a personal trainer.

I don't generally run or workout to music, although I'm coming to the conclusion that it may help. When I jogged with my dad (up through High School, when I even competed in cross-country meets), we chatted, pushed each other to go further and faster, it made jogging fun. Although dad graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, we never ran to cadences or anything, but consistent pacing kept up by working out and running together makes a huge difference.

I recently came across a series of cadence cds on Amazon.com. I've seen these before, but I'm actually thinking of buying a couple of them this time around. If I can make a habit of doing some structured exercise each day (not including shoveling snow, or mowing the lawn or whatever), it should only take me a couple months to start seeing results. I've always expected, wrongfully, that the results would start to show after only a couple weeks. I've got to remember that all good things take time and effort to achieve.

Maybe I need to have a chat with the scale, asking it to be more positive in it's commentary. Or maybe I should just get on with exercising and stop obsessing about the number on the scale.

Posted by MEK at February 20, 2003 11:40 AM