Just because I am a doctor, and encourage patients every day to exercise, doesn’t mean that I don’t have my own issues with getting sufficient exercise. Long hours, tiring days, family obligations, illness: they are all stumbling blocks, no matter what your occupation.
I have been recording my exercise weekly, mostly to keep myself accountable for reaching my goal (sometimes this works, sometimes I miss). If anyone reads this, I hope they will take this as encouragement to keep going, acknowledgement that it isn’t always easy.
As a reminder, my goal is to make sure that I get my 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise (or 75 minutes of high intensity exercise, which probably won’t happen).
I had wanted to work on strength training, but that fell by the wayside after several attempts to do this on my own. Last week I made an appointment to work with a trainer; that appointment will be coming up next week.
This was my first week back after taking a vacation at home (my staycation). It was not a smooth transition.
- Saturday: Ran errands and visited a friend. Too busy on my second-to-last day of vacation to exercise.
- Sunday: Evening walk with my husband, last night before going back to work. 44 minutes walking.
- Monday: I might not have slept so well before going back to work. It was a long day, but I walked part-way home. Also walked a lot in the hospital. 31 minutes.
- Tuesday: Still not sleeping well, and the day was long. No exercise.
- Wednesday: Walked back and forth in the hospital complex and also walked part-way home. 39 minutes walking.
- Thursday: Walked part-way home. 23 minutes walking. I only needed to walk 13 more minutes to hit my target, but we had company over; no time to walk more.
- Friday: I was on-call and did not have time free to be away from the phone and computer. No exercise today.
Total: 137 minutes walking. Verdict: close, but no cigar. I’ll try harder next week. Also, I’ll start working with a personal trainer next, so I think I’ll be getting some strength training in very soon!