Lao Tzu said that over 2500 years ago, and it is still true today. Good advice I am going to heed as I begin my own thousand mile journey in two weeks.
That's right, on May 1st I am going to begin walking, my only goal to complete 1000 miles, hopefully in a year or so. The way I look at it, and calculate it, I can lose at least 40 pounds just by the simple act of walking for an hour every day.
Of course I won't be able to do that at first, but this month I have been walking an hour once or twice a week to get back into it. Soon enough I will be up to an hour a day. Eventually I will want to jog a bit, then a bit more, then maybe even, dare I say the word...run!
This all came about because of my Nano, Nike+, the Houston Marathon and Lao. The Nano with Nike+ really is good motivation. You can join other challenges online, compete with friends, or just against yourself. Now they even have training programs like "walk to run", 5K, 10K, all the way up to marathon. It really is pretty neat. Not cheap though, but still less expensive than what you will pay for a gym membership you don't use! I think Nike has come out with a version that is less expensive, I don't think it plays music though.
Anyway, the thing can tell you how many calories you burned on that walk, and I started to notice that I was burning around 500+ for 3 miles. it occurred to me that if I just did that I could counter the 500 calories I over-eat everyday, and eventually my weight would go back to normal. Yeah, it's a long term project, but what the hell, I'm not doing anything anyway. Get moving, worry about the food part later, that is my new motto. It was probably my old motto too, I just forgot.
I had to change the site around a bit to accommodate my new widgets from my Nike+ but now you can see what I am doing, when, my pace.
I have tried this kind of thing before, like in "October Rules", and it did work for a while, but eventually crap happens and that motivation just fades away. This won't fade away until I reach 1000 miles. It will be glaring at me right up front every week.
What I am really looking for is to begin building a habit of exercise, before I try and change my dietary habits. Exercise alone, if I do it enough, could very well eliminate by weight struggle, probably in your case too. I have found it much to difficult to try and do both at the same time, so once again, I will attempt to separate the activity in my life from the food choices in my life...they really are two very different things...why do we lump them together?
Join me if you want, and we can take this journey together. You don't have to buy an iPod, I can figure your calories per mile, but you will have to e-mail me your age, weight and height. I can keep track of all our miles with post updates or something.
Hey, it could happen. Why not? We'll get started and figure out the rest as we go...and go, and go and go and go!
Thanks, I'll need it!
Posted by: FatBlogger | April 18, 2008 at 10:01
I love to walk because it isn't so hard on the joints--but is also some great thinking time. Good luck on the 1,000!!
Posted by: Margaret | April 17, 2008 at 22:52