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. In September, I made arrangements to work with a trainer, as my last ditch attempt to incorporate this into my fitness regimen. We don’t have an appointment this week, but I have weekly (or nearly weekly) sessions scheduled after this. Assuming work doesn’t get in the way.
- Saturday: Explored a different neighborhood, looking at storefronts and visiting a farmer’s market: 39 minutes. Late afternoon walk on my usual neighborhood route (not the full route): 26 minutes.
- Sunday: Stuck indoors today. No exercise.
- Monday: I didn’t do a long walk today, but had to go to quite a few buildings around the hospital complex. My Fitbit tells me I got 32 minutes of walking in.
- Tuesday: No exercise today.
- Wednesday: Predinner walk: 38 minutes. Just 15 more minutes of walking this week to make my target.
- Thursday: Walked part-way home, 26 minutes. I’ve made my goal for the week, plus some.
- Friday: Walked part-way home, 28 minutes. Then we went out for the evening, and got in another 36 minutes going here and there.
Total: 225 minutes walking. Verdict: total victory on the walking goal! (Still working on the weight training goal.)