Wednesday, April 8, 2009

A nice day for a walk . . .

Did you know that today is the American Heart Association's National Start! Walking Day?
The idea is for people to take 30 minutes today to walk, starting them on the path to better heart health - and better health over all.  As a person with diabetes, I'm at greater risk for heart disease so this program really caught my attention.

Last week, I blogged about my lack of exercise and my plan to do something about it.  I'm starting slow, with just 20 minutes a day.  It may not sound like much, but my feeling is that at least it's something.  I've walked every day except Sunday (when I got really lazy).  So that's about 2 hours and 40 minutes and 6 miles more than I had been doing.

I realize that part of why my exercise regimes fail is that I push myself too hard too fast.  Instead of celebrating the fact that I'm exercising at all, I berate myself for not exercising longer or pushing harder.  It's not surprising that I burn out fast.  This time, I'm learning to take it slow and steady.  Just 20 minutes a day until the end of April.  By then, it should be part of my routine and I can start increasing my time and adding some weights.

But today, for National Start! Walking Day, I'll push through and do 30 minutes.  Will you join me?

3 comments:

  1. Way to go Karen!

    I too fall into the trap of pushing myself too hard too fast. It is easy to do. Congratulations on taking a step back to look at all that you've been able to do so far. 8 miles is nothing to sneeze at! :-)

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  2. So much for my math skills - it's actually SIX miles that I've walked, not 8. I've corrected it on the post.

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  3. I know what you mean Karen! I berate myself about not exercising enough, and then when I do exercise I berate myself about how it wasn't long enough, or hard enough. We need to just focus on the positive - that we ARE exercising! Good job on trying to just do something and stick with it!! Thats a great plan.

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