Fitness is a journey..most important thing is to START!

A friend texted me today a bit frustrated with her fitness journey. And I know of at least a couple of other folks feeling the same. So hopefully this post will help someone...

The main point is that fitness is a journey. I think everyone who embarks on a program to lose fat / gain muscle / tone up / lower blood pressure / lower LDL / raise HDL / run faster and jump higher ...whatever it might be ...eventually discovers that there's no magic wand. What's required is a conscious decision to adjust one's lifestyle, and this can include any or all of diet, exercise, sleep habits, drug use (caffeine, alcohol, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, sugar, etc), occupation, and literally anything else that we do while alive. And I bet that ANYone who has realized some progress or met some goal ...wants more!

SO ...although I'd been quite healthy in years past (used to weight lift 2.5 hrs/day, 6 days/wk; ran an organized 10k each month, over the years did martial arts, played soccer, etc, etc) ...when we moved to Florida in 2004, I got out of shape. After a pretty bad report from an annual physical, and the doc telling me my triglycerides were about the worst he'd ever seen, I knew I had to get organized.

I started by walking a mile on the treadmill each day. At first even that was enough to feel like a workout. I should have kept track of what I did over what span of time, but I slowly increased the distance up to 3 miles.

Then I did Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred for a few months. At first, that was a killer! But as with any program, it eventually was no problem to do even the 3rd level (hardest program).

Next came various Beachbody workout programs. I did P90X - I think 6 times through the 90-day program - a year and a half. And after that did a couple of times through Insanity, I've done Asylum, P90X2, Body Beast, and repeated some of the earlier programs again. Sometime during the past year, I discovered the Daily HIIT website (HIIT = High Intensity Interval Training), and have been incorporating some of their workouts (all are free).

But now I've set a goal to complete a 10 mile organized run in Oct 2013. I am again humbled. 30 years ago I would run a 10k (6.2 miles) in under 45 minutes. I could run 6.5 minute miles for shorter runs. Now, however, as I get back into running, I find that the best I can do is about 9.5 min/mile, and a 5k (3 miles) is about my limit. So I'm following a training schedule of weight lifting 2 days/week, running 3 days/week, plyometrics (jump training) 1 day/week, and 1 rest day every week. Oh, and 4 years ago we switched to a vegan diet (all plant-based foods).

The good news: at my annual physical the past few years, the doc has been very happy - not only at my improvement (pretty good numbers all the way around) - but also to have a patient who, as she put it, "gets it", and addresses health concerns via lifestyle choices rather than medications.

The other good news: even though I'm frustrated that my current "run" is what I really consider a "jog" speed, and my max distance is not yet where I want it to be, I am definitely improving.

The bottom line: Take a step. Literally take a freakin' step (and maybe put a few thousand more after that to walk a mile). And just keep making incremental improvements - carefully - and your fitness journey is underway :)