preventive medicine

We're having some great fall weather here, but I'm stuck inside. My new doctor has sentenced me to no exercise because my thyroid is producing insanely high amounts of hormone, which tends to speed up the body's systems. So, hiking in the fall foliage, or even walking around our neighborhood, is apparently a bad idea because my heart rate could skyrocket. I'm taking unhealthy-person medication to lower it (just in case) which is making me feel a little weird and really cold. Of course I'm glad the problem was detected, but the whiner in me says 'why now, right in the middle of my favorite time of year?!' At least I didn't register for the 5K I was thinking of running.

Anyway, all this has made me a believer in preventive medicine. I have never, ever gone to a general physician for a check up as an adult. Or the dentist either. But this thyroid problem, coupled with some very expensive gum surgery due to brushing my teeth too hard (who knew you could brush your gums away?) has changed my mind about that. If only I had needed a cavity filled, a dentist could have pointed out that my zealous brushing was going to cost me thousands of dollars down the road...yeah, I think the check-up idea is a much better deal.

The flowery side of pumping iron

I think I should start lifting weights more seriously- I know if I'm ever going to be a faster runner, I need some cross-training. When I was in the best shape of my life, I lifted weights 3x a week at the YMCA, and ran or did cardio on the in-between days. I'd see the same men every morning doing their routine, but I only ever saw 2 or 3 women in the weight room, period. For some reason, it's like all men just know how to lift weights- I'm fairly confident that my dad or brother could show me a thing or two, even though I can't remember actually ever being aware that they lifted weights. Now that I think about it, the reason I started lifting weights in the first place was because my husband bought me a book on weight lifting after I told him I wanted to lose some weight. I remember in college seeing weight machines for the first time and being so intimidated by them - I'd do my cardio stuff and hope that someone would hop onto one so I could see how to use it.

It's really a shame that women seem unaware of the benefits of lifting weights. Some women think they will get bigger by lifting, so they avoid it. Attention: unless you become a body-builder, you will just get leaner, not bigger. Also, lifting is the only way to change your metabolism (oh wait, I recommend breast-feeding for that also!).

Everyone knows that lean tissue burns more calories a day than fat, so adding lean tissue to your body is like doing a slow workout 24 hours a day. Despite popular belief, doing cardio does not increase muscle! Somewhere between 30 and 40, we all start losing muscle every year, so lifting weights becomes especially important then. And it's not just about staying thin, much of the slowness of movement/ declining balance that 'hits' with old age is due to all that muscle loss over time...so if you want to get around when you're old like you did when you were young, you know what to do.

I'm fairly confident that this is accurate information, but if you know it's not, please let me know!

I have a need to run.

This week has reminded me that I feel crappy unless I get exercise almost every day- I had some oral surgery on Monday, and I’ve been stuck to the couch ever since. I was pretty happy watching TV and taking multiple naps a day, but by yesterday I felt terrible. Sometime around 2:00 I was in the middle of deciding the world is a miserable place, but then I remembered “Wait. Of course I feel awful. I haven’t gotten a drop of exercise all week.”

So I forced myself to take a walk with little blondie, a very slow walk, and this morning I went for a long run.

Especially now, living in a new place where I don’t have friends or activities to go to yet, running provides some much-needed structure to my day. More than just doing something good for my body, pushing myself hard is an accomplishment that makes me feel like I’ve done something that day. (Besides the unending job of keeping little blondie happy and healthy, which I think is pretty important)

Today I finally conquered the hill we live on,

at least as far as our apartment. It’s pretty easy to run on my own, but the problem is: little blondie has a down-right menacing tendency to gain 50 pounds each and every time I pop him into the jogging stroller. I think I’m switching him to skim milk sometime soon. I’ve been kind of embarrassed that I can’t make it up the hill, because it’s really not all that steep, or even long-and I have a pretty decent light-weight jogging stroller, so it should be no problem. I haven’t attempted the hill in the past week or so, but today I was reading a blog about some rock-climbing folks, and it was full of photos taken off the top of those crazy huge mountain ranges you find in Alaska, and I thought ‘curse word! what sort of elevation gain does my street have? It’s a pimple-sized hill!’ So I strapped little blondie into said stroller, and yes, he ballooned out as soon as I started up the driveway (it’s a hill, too) but I shouted ‘not today, little man!’ or at least I wanted to.

I’d never tried running down and up the hill first off, but I managed to today. This didn’t seem to really count since I’d just had coffee and I wasn’t worn out yet from the 25 other little hills that comprise my usual route (there isn’t actually anywhere flat to run around here), so I tired myself out by running the route. I arrived back at the bottom of the hill feeling done with running. I almost whimped out, but I told myself if I mentally wouldn’t let myself stop, I physically wouldn’t stop. All there is to it. To my disbelief-I’ve told myself this many, many times before with no magical result- it worked! Part of the sidewalk up the hill is behind a hedge, so if you had driven by, you probably would have thought I was walking by my speed, but no, world-that was me running all the way up the hill. Now I have this idea to buy one of those cheap plastic watches so I can start beating my time. Eventually I’ll be sprinting up that hill, just booking.