My Exercise Philosophy and Regimen (it's not painful, promise)
	I did NOT come to exercise without a little kicking and screaming. I didn’t even start exercising until I’d lost about 110 pounds and weighed 185 or so. I used the excuse that I couldn’t fit it into my schedule, but the truth was, I didn’t like the out-of-breath feeling I got just a few minutes into exercise. I had gotten on my stationary bike a few times and couldn’t exercise more than five minutes without feeling physically exhausted and emotionally drained. Intellectually, I knew that if I just started slowly – five minutes at a time – it would get better, but I wasn’t willing to do the work until April 2006. There was no “aha” moment. It was just that nagging voice in the back of my head that said it was really, truly, seriously time to add exercise to my weight-loss journey. It was spring and so I started a walking program. (Below is a column I wrote in August 2006 in which I confess how it all began.) These days, exercise is just another staple activity in my life. I exercise in the same way I eat and sleep and go to the bathroom and take out my dogs and wash dishes and write. But make no mistake: I don’t jump out of bed every morning and say, “Gosh, can’t WAIT to exercise!” Most days it’s rote until I get 8-10 minutes into the cardio part and get past that starting-out fatigue and break a sweat that I actually like and sometimes love the motion and heavy breathing and challenging my body to do more, more, just a little bit more. Some days, though, it’s all I can do to get through a workout. Thank god for iPods and television to distract me. The best part about exercise when I started is that my weight-loss went into high gear. I started posting 2+-pound losses almost every week for the first six weeks. Even after that, my losses were usually in the 1- to 2-pound range. Because of exercise, I have a flat stomach (even though I have some loose skin), strong arms, toned legs, and a buttload of energy every day.   My Routine   I exercise five to six days a week. I mix things up quite often so I’m only going to bore you with the generalities and not specifics.   Cardio: 35-55 minutes, depending on what strength training I plan to do. If I’m going to work on my legs, I do a lighter workout for less time. I always warm up for at least five minutes. At the gym I’ll often start with 15 minutes on the treadmill, increasing my speed and incline to a maximum of 3.8 mph at a 9 incline or 4.8 mph at a 4 incline. Then I’ll get on the arc trainer or elliptical for 20-30 minutes and do interval training of alternating fast and slow, high and low resistance. When I work out at home, I warm up either using a tape such as Walk Away the Pounds and then get on the elliptical for 30-45 minutes or I just hop on the elliptical and work out for 45-55 minutes. Strength training: 30 minutes – alternating arms and legs every workout. Because I have arthritis in my shoulders, I need to choose exercises that do not require any over-the-head movement. I work my biceps, triceps and lats first, doing three sets of 15 reps of whatever exercise I’ve chosen. I also do two exercises that target my rotator cuff muscles. My right rotator cuff has a major tear and my left one has a small tear. I have decided to rehab my shoulders rather than have surgery at this time. I may need surgery at some point, but right now, the strength training has helped immensely. For my legs, I’ve recently added three “arthritis friendly” exercises to my regimen. I need both of my knees replaced and I have arthritis in both of my feet, so like my arms, I need to be careful how I work these joints. Abs/Core: 15 minutes. I have two routines that I use to target my abs. Each routine includes four separate exercises that I do in three sets.   My advice is always to listen to your body. My routine is my routine. What works for you? What's best about exercise is getting to know your body and what it needs, not what some fitness guru or your friends or me tell you it needs. Read fitness magazines, check out exercise books, then make your own choices. Learn everything you can about target areas and cardio fitness. Experiment. Do what your body loves to do. Mix it up once in awhile. There’s no need to get bored. I promise that in time exercise will become a part of your life. Notice I didn’t promise that you’ll love it all the time. But if you exercise regularly, you’ll love how it makes you feel and especially how it makes you look.

The Zen of exercise (published Aug. 2006)
	I’m a control freak. And what I can’t control I tend to ignore. Just ask anyone who’s known me more than 5 minutes. This is particularly true of pain and how I treat my body. Ignorance, turns out, is not bliss. When I was 14, I was a cheerleader. During practice one day I fell and twisted my right knee. Being the good control freak I was, I ignored it and kept cheering, game after game after game until I could barely move. My parents took me to the doctor who told me I had to I stay off of it or I’d need surgery. I ignored his advice and 6 months later I was sporting a full leg cast in the middle of a Minnesota summer. Since then I developed degenerative arthritis and a host of other problems in that knee and have been told by surgeons from Minnesota to Pennsylvania that it would need to be replaced one day. I took pain killers that in turn gave me an ulcer and so I acquiesced to the pain, a polite way of saying I ignored it. Some of you might recall that I wrote last January that I was laid up for a few days with a bum knee. I was referring to my left knee, or as I call it, my “good” knee. No big deal, I thought. I hadn’t injured it really, just a simple twist when I was taking down Christmas ornaments, nothing like the cheerleading incident. It was only when I got ticked that the swelling hadn’t gone down in a few days like I expected it to that I went to see my doctor who ordered x-rays and an MRI as well as a follow up with an orthopedic surgeon. It’s funny how sure we become of things, how absolutely convinced we make ourselves that the reality we want is the reality that is. I sat there in that cold, sterile room fully expecting the doctor to tell me that, at worst, I’d torn my meniscus and he’d fix me up in no time. He entered the room, introduced himself, and proceeded to tell me that, based on my MRI, I needed a complete knee replacement. Blink, blink. He also said he’d never seen a knee so messed up that hadn’t suffered a major injury. I told him there were several times over the years when I’d feel it pop or it would swell for a day or two, but it didn’t bother me for long and so I nursed it along. I’m a hard-headed Norwegian from a long line of hard-headed Norwegians who suck up pain like a badge of courage. A diplomatic man, my doctor didn’t call me stubborn, but in essence he said I could have saved my good knee years ago if I hadn’t chosen to be a control freak. I’m 42 years old and finally learning that pain is the body’s way of saying something is wrong and there is nothing noble in ignoring it. Jarred into this new reality, I decided it was time to start thinking with my knees and follow the doctor’s advice. Along from conservative medicines to stave off replacement surgery hopefully for a few years, my doctor prescribed walking for exercise. Blink, blink again. Clearly an aerobic step class or something macho like running were out of the question, but walking? That’s kind of a wimpy, old person exercise isn’t it? It’s not that I didn’t exercise in my past. I just hadn’t done it in awhile due to my Socratic approach to exercise:  No pain, no gain means exercise is painful. While I tend to ignore pain, I don’t willingly invite it into my life. Ergo, exercise is bad. My friend, Nancy, had been talking about getting in shape and how she wanted to approach it through the buddy system. No better motivator than being responsible to someone other than yourself. So when I moved back to Clarion in April we coordinated our schedules and started walking at the university track. Because of the dips and divots and uneven concrete, walking around town wasn’t an option for me. I started slow, walking four laps (one mile) at a reasonable pace. I expected my knees to ache from this kind of use, but surprisingly they felt juiced up and more flexible, exactly how the doctor told me they’d feel. I started to (gasp) enjoy walking and now three months later, I’m walking 3 miles (12 laps) in 43 minutes, an average of 4.2 miles per hour and 303 calories burned. Keeping track of these statistics (my husband bought me a timer watch) helps feed the control freak I still am. Nancy and I walk and talk together for the first lap, then we part ways to walk at our own paces. I slap on my MP3 player and get in the “zone” that my exercise-freak husband talks about. I have an eclectic play list which includes “Lawyers, Guns and Money” by Warren Zevon, “The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks” by the Eagles, a plethora of tunes by Coldplay, U2, the Smithereens and Gwen Stefani, and my all-time motivating favorite, “William Tell Overture” performed by The Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band. I can keep up with its 5-mile-an-hour pace until I think of how I must look trotting around that track like a Tennessee Walker and I start laughing. Giddy up. Long around lap five I need water and a bit of a slow down. While cleaning the grounds, the CUP maintenance staff has nabbed two of my bottles of water, but have been nothing but kind when Nancy or I catch them trying to take another. Lap six the sweat starts rolling down my neck and into my eyes. By lap eight, the spiritualness of the experience takes over and I’ve stopped being bored or rationalizing whether 30 minutes or 40 minutes is good enough. It’s also when  I finally remember that, of course, my knees will tell me when to stop. Lap 12 is a “Zen” lap, a chance to collect my thoughts, enjoy the body buzz, and just breathe. I admit and confess my ignorance. Walking is not wimpy nor an exercise exclusively for the elderly. And believe me, I am humbled by the people, especially those folks 80 and older, who walk that track or on the sidewalks of town. They walk circles around me. There are additional benefits to walking beyond being good for my knees. Because of the decay and swelling of the tissue around my knees, they are knobby and funny looking, but I don’t care. I wear shorts with pride, showing off my knees like war wounds, reminders of where I’ve been. Also, in seven to 10 years I’ll be staring menopause in the face. Grasping that bull by the horns while it’s still a calf and getting in shape now will clearly help that little change in my life. Call me a Pollyanna, but our bodies truly are temples not to be ignored. That 14-year-old girl was a fool. The woman I became was a fool for thinking stoicism was the way to deal with pain. That woman is fighting back, even though replacement surgery is inevitable at some point. I’m still a control freak in way too many aspects of my life, but in the mornings at that track, my knee and I are students of enlightenment.