Guiltfree and Long Lived

My muse inspired this. I'm sorry it's a bit long.
Here is a link to a post and comments on a different blog regarding the same topic, but differently: http://runningnina.onsugar.com/When-Working-Out-Doesnt-Work-Out-8914572.

Sometimes, workouts don't happen. And by sometimes, I mean quite a lot. Periods of "fail workouts" or just plain don't make it to the gym days come and go in waves for me- some weeks I hit the pavement every day, other weeks I can't seem to make it out of the door once, needless to say pick up a weight or roll out my mat.

These weeks when I don't workout suck. They make me feel like a total failure and a total fatty and this stress contributes to not getting out again. Until finally I push myself through a full two miles or whatever and get my mojo back. And sometimes I eat(i mean drink) so much I might not as well have run 7 miles at all!

This leads to exercise guilt. Guilt over not being badass enough (we are familiar with this), guilt over being normal.
I have a hard time, as we know, NOT being badass, NOT being the girl who gets out the door for hours a day. What does this do? Stresses me out. Stress makes me anxious. And anxiety increases blood pressure, thus contributing to the degeneration of my well-being. Basically, worrying about not being healthy enough reduces my overall health.

This is often linked to the distinctive thought pattern that "if only I ran more, I would look like Dara Torres". And that's supposed to make my life better? HOW?! HOW does looking like an Olympic Athlete improve ANYTHING in my life? Answer: it doesn't. My life will not get easier with ripped muscles. While losing a few pounds will improve my life a little bit, spending all of my free time lugging giant weights around so I can have visible splits in my calf muscles actually WASTES my time and certainly will not improve any of my relationships.



But today I am resolving to change my concept of WHY I workout. The more I read, the more modern exercise science (yes, I know, which is terribly young) claims that exercise has a different purpose than losing weight. What I find interesting is that it wasn't until the past few decades that we even realized that moving a particular amount/more would contribute to smaller bodies, or even cared. Previously, weight loss was all about food. Exercise was about work.

And apparently, that is still the case. Weight loss is still mostly about food. Truth be told that it is a lot easier to cut out soda and candy from your diet, thus cutting a few hundred calories a day, than to go to the gym for an hour. While both work, changing your food is a lot easier than changing your other habits. Apart from that, new studies show that exercise, while a great contributor to overall health, often increases appetite, becoming also a great contributor to weight gain.

How funny!

But aerobic exercise, stretching, and weight bearing moving are clearly still great for a host of other things besides weight loss.

Here is a short list of things exercise improves: stamina in bed, mobility, comfort in heat, energy levels, overall happiness due to increased hormones, the length of your life, diet (apparently, the more you work out the better you want to eat - science!), intelligence (from a newly figured out protein named Noggin), memory, time management.

Here is a short list of things exercise prevents: bone loss, heart disease, depression, anxiety, broken bones, sleep loss, obesity, diabetes, pain from aging, pain from normal movement, muscle and ligament tears from day to day activities.

So, I decided that I am going to remind myself that I workout so I can enjoy and remember my grandkids' graduations, and so I can play with Sam & Hannah on the weekends, and take Lucy for walks in the summer heat, and raise the mainsail, and carry groceries, and hike Mt. Washington and Macchu Piccu.

And maybe also so I can have that martini at happy hour.