What do you do when the activities you enjoy the most involve sitting in a chair? I’ve talked about this before on my blog, about how hard I find it to keep up an exercise routine. I’ve attempted various types that never lasted. My longest success was probably yoga and even that was interrupted by a five-year gap in the middle and has now been shelved again for the last five years or so.
My current “exercise routine” involves going to Groove class once a week (twice if my schedule permits), which is a lot of fun, but is not going to prepare me for any marathons; plus the occasional Zumba class and regular walking. That’s pretty much it. And how much walking I do depends a lot on whether I need to get anywhere or not. I have a really hard time going for a walk just for the sake of it. I’d much prefer to stay home and knit, write, read or garden ( the latter providing a very moderate amount of exercise). I feel like a bowl of jelly at the moment and I’m edging dangerously close to my all-time high (non-pregnant) weight. I don’t like feeling like that, but I despair of ever finding the discipline to add a really good all-round routine to my life.
Gretchen Roubin’s Four Tendencies Quiz tells me I’m an Obliger, which means I respond well to outer expectations, but not to inner expectations. In other words, if someone asks me to do something and I agree to it, then I’m very likely to do it. If I tell myself I’m going to do something; if nobody else in the world cares, and it’s only going to benefit me, there’s more than a fifty-fifty chance I won’t do it. She would say that what I need is an exercise buddy, but I don’t want one because if I have an exercise buddy, then I’ll have to exercise, and frankly, I don’t much like exercising. I don’t mind walking, and I love dancing, maybe a bit of gentle yoga, but the rest, not so much.
So, here’s my dilemma: I know that I need to exercise for my health, but I really would rather do all those other things I mentioned above. I’m happiest when I’m doing those things. I wish it were “okay” to embrace the things I like doing, but society and health experts pressure me to not be such a sedentarian and so I feel guilty (thus the name that popped into my head “The Guilty Knitter” for my Youtube channel) for my choices. I’m not even sure why I’m writing about this, because there’s no answer to it. If I don’t want to exercise, I won’t be able to keep it up regularly. So far, I’ve been able to avoid completely succumbing to inertia, by turning up at Groove and/or Zumba, and choosing BMW (bike/metro/walk) over driving much of the time. That’s not so terrible, I guess, but it would be nice if my arms were stronger.
Last week, Dave and I took a really long (for me) walk over to Mount Royal park and partway back before hopping on a bus home. It was great and I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t too hot, there were only a moderate number of people on the mountain, and we had a lovely picnic in the middle. While we were walking, and particularly while we were sitting on a park bench for a breather, I noticed quite a few people running on the paths that cross the park. I gazed at them in wonder and mystification. Why can’t I be one of those people who love to run, or work out, or swim or what not, or who need no more motivation than, “it’s good for me”.
It would be great if it were something my body demanded of me, but unfortunately, my body only gives me very gentle nudges, sometimes coinciding with the nudges my Fitbit gives me, usually when I’ve been sitting far too long. I have noticed that the more I exercise, the more my body demands it, but right now, I’m not getting those signals too clearly. I assume my body will deteriorate faster than those runners I saw on the mountain and I’ll end up on the sofa, ordering groceries over the internet and eating beans from a can, but as long as I can reach my knitting, I guess it won’t be all bad.
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