What About Exercise?

I marked my monumental return to exercising three months ago with my now famous (ha ha) Tales from the Treadmill post. Oddly enough, though I kept at it, I didn’t really post any more about exercising after that.

So it’s time for an update! Looking back, I can now divide the exercising into three distinct phases:

1. Going to the gym regularly.
2. Vacation.
3. Not going to the gym at all.

Phase 1
The first couple weeks were great. I’d typically do a thirty minute session with a five minute cooldown and burn about 320 calories in the process. I walk fairly slowly, compared to all the Olympic sprinters surrounding me. They’d fly along at 6, 8, even 10 MPH. If I hit 3.5, it was a real feat. (And you know what’s really odd about that? 3.5 MPH was my marathon pace. I actually walked 26.2 miles in about seven and a half hours. Now I can barely do thirty minutes on a treadmill at the same speed. How lame is that?)

Phase 2
Ah vacation … where I did nothing but gain weight and raise my blood sugars. The only good thing to come out of this was a renewed desire to lose weight and exercise. I resumed treadmilling on July 30 with another 35 minute session, but only burned 268 calories. “That’s okay,” I told myself. “You’re just getting back into the swing of things.”

Then on August 7, I did something I’d never done before. When the machine popped the question, “How many minutes do you want to endure this time, punk?” I paused for a moment, thought about it, and then entered 55. That, plus the cool down, made an hour. “Yes,” I told myself. “It’s about time I actually exercised.”

I don’t know about you, but the worst point on the treadmill falls between 5 and 15 minutes. That’s when I already feel like I’ve done enough walking yet haven’t even come close to my goal. But today I had the tunes cranked (finding songs where my legs could match the beat) and the minutes just flew by. It couldn’t have gone any better had I slept through it. (Which I wish I could do sometimes.)

The amazing part, however, was the calorie counter. It just kept going up and up and up: I passed 300, then 400, then 500. When the cool-down period hit, I realized I could probably make 600. So I sped up, increased the incline, and bam hit 601 just as the hour was up.

Every time after that was better than the last. This culminated with a near 670-calorie burn on August 23. I was ready to rule the treadmilling world when I was blindsided by school.

Phase 3
Activity-filled school nights coupled with long work days left little time for exercise. And the little time I did have, I squandered on Cheez-It eating. So it was amazing that I managed to make it back to the treadmill just this past Saturday. I “only” burned 524 calories, but it was enough to hopefully cover the juicy cheeseburger I ate later that evening. At any rate, I felt pretty good. Let’s hope I can get back there more than once every three weeks.

Onederland Update

Well, I apparently managed to get back to that mysterious 213.0 value I hit eight days ago. Things are still slower than I’d like, but at least I’m moving forward. And no mysterious three-pounds-overnight weight gains. I’ll take what I can get.