Just before New Year's I read this blog post about exercising every day. The best point made was that if you make it a daily requirement, then you are less likely to say "I don't feel like it today, and I only need to go to the gym 3 times this week..." So, I decided I was going to exercise each day. Now, my requirements aren't terribly stringent. Walking counts, and I'm only looking for 20 minutes. I've lost a lot of muscle tone over the past year or two, and figured that ramping up gently was more important than sweating up a storm.
At this point, things are going well. I have a gym membership and a pool membership, access to a treadmill and a small amount of free weights. I have done at least 20 minutes of exercise each day (the minimum appears to be the walk to the train station, which is takes between 20 and 25 minutes). I'm slowly getting back into swimming, trying to get back into running and trying new things like the rowing machine at the gym.
The worst thing about exercise is that it takes time away from my knitting. Depending on the exercise I do and when, I spend a lot of time not wanting to knit or anything afterwards. This is fine if I exercise first thing in the morning on a weekend, because there is still a lot of time to be useful in and less useful when I started yesterday as mostly being useless and moving to a complete worn out slugfest after returning from swimming.
The second worst thing is that sometimes the muscle soreness or other things make it hard to sleep. Today, for example, I've been up since 2 a.m. Completely unnecessary, and only now am I finally getting tired enough or calm enough or something to fall back to sleep (right around the time I'm supposed to start getting ready for work).
Even with these problems, the benefits are still there. I feel better over all, have less stomach issues, feel happier (barring this morning's wake up time), and have slightly better temperature regulation. I just need to combine the better exercise habits with better eating habits and then I'll be able to actually lose some of the weight I've put back on in the past couple of years.
