One thing all my aspirations and dreams for the future have in common is the assumption that I will be physically and mentally capable of living them. Sometimes we take for granted that the body and mind we have today are the ones we will wake up with tomorrow. Through disease, accident, or neglect, the strength and agility we enjoy today can deteriorate to the point where it is, at the least, very difficult to recover. Though we cannot prevent every disease or accident from happening, we can do our best to eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly to stave off some ailments.
I have been lax in my workouts so far in 2010. If I exercise twice, I am having a good week. I have no doubt that this is contributing to my inability to fight off the stress at work, affecting my relationships, and generally taking a toll on my health. I want to get back into the regular routine I had last year, in which I worked out for at least an hour, four to five times a week. I felt great then and I want to feel great now.
I want to be able to live and enjoy my new endings.
Normally, I prefer to exercise alone but was thinking yesterday that it would be more fun to be doing this with a group of friends for support and encouragement. Perhaps I was influenced by the fervor of the Olympics, but I do believe if exercise needs to be anything, it needs to be fun. So I have decided to offer a contest! The rules are easy:
- For the month of March, contestants agree to try to exercise at least three times per week, for at least 20 minutes per session. Exercising four times a day, five minutes each, does not count. Neither does exercising forty minutes at one session count as exercising twice. We are all on the honor system here.
- Exercise can be anything that inspires you and elevates your heart rate, whether that is a team sport, a class at the gym, walking the dog, playing tag with the kids, whatever. You do what you love.
- Note: If you can drink beer or eat nachos while doing it, it is NOT exercise.
- Every Monday in March, we will meet back here to compare notes and contestants will leave a comment as to whether or not they reached the exercise goal.
- Following the last Monday in March, I will put the names of all the contestants in a spreadsheet and let the Random Number Generator tell me which line contains the winner's name. For every week a contestant commented that they were successful in exercising at least three times for twenty minutes, they get their name entered once. So, if they were successful each week in March, their name would be entered four times.
- Further incentive: If a contestant comments and says they exercised more than the three times that week, their name will go in the spreadsheet once more for every time over the three that they exercised that week. So, for example, if a contestant worked out five times in a week, their name would go in the list three times: once for completing the original goal of three times, then again for the fourth and again for the fifth workout that week. Sweet deal, right?
- The winner will receive their choice of either a $50 gift card to Amazon (for workout gear, perhaps?) or iTunes (never underestimate the importance of workout music). If the winner is outside the US and I am not able to go to their local site and order the gift card easily, I will transfer $50 to their PayPal account.
- Everyone else wins the knowledge that they did something great for themselves in March and hopefully gains a routine that they can carry forward into the months to come.
Everyone is welcome to participate, whether they have not exercised in decades or workout religiously. I will post each Monday on my progress and look forward to hearing from all of you. The goal is that we will all support each other through the month.
Sound good? Okay, maybe the exercise part does not sound so great yet but $50 is good, right? Trust me, twenty minutes of exercise is not a very long time. We can all do this. More importantly, we need to do this. Who is with me?
Still not convinced? Read below.
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I have spent years volunteering in long-term care facilities in the area. It was crushing to me to learn that a good number of the residents were not seniors, as you might expect, but people not much older than I. One man I friended had been afflicted with countless diseases and ailments that left him weak and unable to stand most of the time. He always complimented me on the way I walked (he said I had good posture) and told me over and over again to never take it for granted. If he could have been offered one last wish, I think it would have been to spend one more day in the summer sun, tending to his garden. He was 48 and would never have that opportunity again.
One woman I met was celebrating her birthday just two months before me; we were born the same year. Due to her obesity, she had not been able to walk for well over a decade. Her knees, her ankles, her feet, could not support her body. She was suffering from diabetes and a weak heart. She had never been taught how to read or write so her brain was not getting the stimulation it needed either, so her mental faculties were declining as well. She was 43 at the time I met her and she was basically just waiting to die.
Let's heed the advice of my friend and not take our health for granted. Let's get moving!
contest, 