The Decisions of Increase

When you start to add more physical activity to your life, you soon realize it is a process of decisions. The first one is easy. "I want to sit on my ass less than I do now." Okay, cool. Past that, you have to start deciding how you will accomplish this and how you keep accomplishing it. That's where the more complex decisions begin.

Anytime you begin to exercise, it is always advised that you speak to your doctor.  You know what? This is awesome advice!  Well, it's awesome advice assuming you have a doctor, or a doctor who will take you seriously, or a doctor who knows anything about being very obese and how to add physical activity into that. Most people do not HAVE that doctor, so we have to make these decisions on our own.

As a side note: Given the number of obese people in this country, why DON'T we have more doctors who understand how to treat heavy people? Why DON'T we have the equipment to handle them and a staff who makes them feel comfortable when they come in?  Look, I'm not saying the medical establishment should claim that being overweight is fine and dandy with them. What I am saying is that they should just accept the reality of the situation.  Not having the equipment and knowledge of how to deal with fat patients because you think being overweight is dangerous is like refusing to learn anything about cancer because you think it kills people. Yeah, it does. Fine. Let's find the best ways to get people past it, yeah?

Anyway, chances are, when you start working out, you are the one who is going to have to be making the big choices about when to increase your activity levels. This isn't something you can avoid.  If you keep up with your activities, very soon your body will master them and need more in the way of challenges. Don't be afraid of this. Adding activity is a good thing. It means the exercise is working.

When you add something, make sure it is within your current abilities to master. Don't go from walking one lap around the track to thinking you can now do five miles. Add another lap.  If that proves to be too much, add half. Small increases are still increases. They're still a step forward.

Adding increased activity has a slight trap to it. As you know, many of us are subject to self-sabotage. One of the ways we do this is by adding more than we can handle and getting frustrated when it doesn't work. Worse, we add something we can handle, but only under better circumstances.  We take on too much and fatigue ourselves or end up getting hurt.

This doesn't always have to be about injuring ourselves though.  Sometimes we try to add something that just flat out won't work for us. For instance, I love swimming and could completely benefit from using this as exercise. If I had a pool of my own or access to someone else's pool, this would be a great option for me.  Sadly, I don't have a pool and really no one else I'm close to does either. I could go to a public pool to swim . . . but the thought of that makes me almost ill.

SO . . . if I decided I was going to increase my activity level with swimming (and told myself I would go brave the public pool), I would be setting myself up for failure.  Everyday, I would dread that time I was supposed to go swim and then feel a rush of relief when I didn't go.  Once that left my system, I would feel horrible about the whole situation and still not go the pool the next day.  This would serve to do nothing except make me feel like hell.

The main question, the most important question, you should always ask yourself when you are making decisions about physical activity is this, "Does it work for me?" Will it burn calories for me? Will it work for my body type? Do I have the time? Do I have the money? Will I actually do it? Can I talk myself into making it a habit? If you answer "no" to any of these, the activity probably isn't for you. But that's okay.  You will find one that does work.  Just keep looking.

If I can do this, anyone can.