The Back Log
I am taking the day off from exercises but I did run on the treadmill for twenty minutes, plus five as a warm-up and five minutes for a cool-down.
Last night, I got on the scale and I was 110 pounds. That’s up from my usual range of 93 to 97 pounds. I’ve noticed other changes: I can’t put my wedding ring back on, and a pair of pants that once required a belt to stay up actually fit in the waist now. Needless to say, the extra weight worries me.
For folks who don’t know me or do not know me well, I’m just over 5 feet tall. Some of that extra weight is muscle from karate exercises, but that would accounts for, say, two to five pounds, realistically. The rest is due to to the fact that I no longer work out at the dojo for three to five hours a week. On Saturdays, I would sometimes take two classes and I regularly attended an hour and a half class on Tuesday and Friday evenings.
My morning and evening push-ups, sit-ups and squats, while better than nothing, is no substitute for a ninety minute class. I do not walk four flights of stairs before and after work, because I work from home. Though I take walks during the day, those are not exactly strenuous. Additionally, F and B bake a lot of bread, pies and cookies, and D and I drink wine or make mixed drinks just about every day.
So, given I am:
- 1. eating more sweets,
- 2. drinking more alcohol, and
- 3. exercising less
I guarantee some of that weight is just, well, excess weight! I don’t look particularly fat, granted, but that’s how it starts: a little more here and a little more there. Over time, it adds up.
The black belt test requires cardio fitness, and mine is in August, if we are able to do it. Might as well start now, before I get too out of shape.
The treadmill is in F’s room, but we all use it. Richard walked daily when F was in school. I put on a podcast and got on the treadmill with bare feet. Jogging on the treadmill is not something I enjoy.
I’d tried to talk D into going with me to look for a place to run outdoors. We do not live far from Griffith Park. It rained all this week and now it’s beautiful outside! On a Saturday! My idea was to drive to the zoo area and see if we could walk or jog along one of the horse trails. D thought everyone else in Los Angeles would have the same idea.
He’d previously emailed me an article about how people exercising outdoors could potentially spread the virus faster. Apparently it is also critical to be more reclusive for the next two weeks. Folks are being advised to limit our already limited contact. So I borrowed a pair of loose, old shorts from D, put on a podcast and got on the treadmill.
I admit, during that first five minutes of walking in bare feet, I considered getting off the treadmill to put on shoes. “But no,” I thought, “I’ve finally started and it’s important to push through.” My mind wants to get out of exercising, I told myself, rationalizing procrastination. I’ve started–I need to stick with this. So I did. At the end of my jog, the balls of my feet burned.
My daughter came into the room to tease me about running in front of the window. “I want the neighborhood to see my newly-muscled back. Why not?” I told her. “There might not be a lot of muscle back there by some people’s standards but it’s much more than I had!”
That’s the great thing about being fifty, I told her: you become shameless. “You know what?” I said. “I wish I’d lost my shame earlier!” She laughed.
She’d talked to me about the weight thing earlier. “A few extra pounds will not hurt you!” she said. “You do not need to diet.” I agree.
For context, one of F’s friends was hospitalized for an eating disorder shortly before the pandemic started. This poor girl–a beautiful kid and an overachiever–top kid in her middle school last year, was downright skeletal when she came to our home in January for F’s birthday party. She was quite ill by the time she was hospitalized in late February.
So I told F, “No diet. Just exercise more and eat less sweets. That’s all–just don’t let the weight gain get out of hand. And maybe I should drink less.”
So I was proud of myself for getting on the treadmill and jogging and walking a full thirty minutes, but boy, I blistered the balls of my feet. I showed F. We laughed. “You wear shoes if you go the treadmill, okay?” I told F.
Full disclosure: we both like running around in bare feet. I already had calluses on my heels from wearing Keenes as my normal shoes, even to jury duty. (Once, in the elevator in the court house, a dude in a suit, probably a lawyer, said to me, “Those sure look comfortable.” I responded, “Yeah, they help me get to court on time when I’m parked a good thirty minute walk away.”)
I popped the blisters on my feet with a safety pin dipped in rubbing alcohol, squeezed out the puss, then took a shower. Afterwards, I put salve and bandages on my feet. I wear two pairs of socks for extra padding, and sandals if I need to walk.
Goal for tomorrow: get on the treadmill with sneakers!
