Five minutes to a trimmer waistline – we’ve all heard these sorts of promises from one fitness program or another.
Eight minutes to a firmer butt and 10 minutes to get completely ripped.
I was thinking about these promises the other day as I was faced with such a commercial on the TV as I had just finished deleting a DVR’d program I had just watched.
Toned bodies filled the screen – exercising their way to that perfect body – the perfect body that each one of them already had.
I imagined myself in some of those positions trying to do some of those exercises shown on TV and found myself chuckling a bit at the idea because if I were to do some of those moves at the weight that I currently am, I’d need a crew of EMS workers to peel me off the ground shortly thereafter. It wouldn’t be pretty and certainly would involve a certain amount of embarrassment at having to call for help afterward.
There is a lesson that these programs offer though and it should not be missed.
Five minutes, eight minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever the length of one’s exercise program, the secret sauce is not necessarily in the specific sort of exercise that one performs, it is more to be found in the fact that one is exercising; but it’s not just that though, there’s more. The real secret sauce is in consistency.
A burst of exercise for five minutes here and there is great, but if it’s not consistently a part of one’s lifestyle, lasting benefits remain largely untapped.
Developing a new habit can be complicated though at times. Life marches on with a speed sometimes that seems unrelenting and habits already established are so easy to fall back on when life gets complicated or busy.
But new habits can become old habits over the course of time. And that’s the mindset with which I am approaching the battle with my own weight.
One by one, replacing old habits with new habits with the aim of making the new habits old habits, I find myself changing various aspects of my life.
I track the creation of new habits on a calendar that has so many markings on it that it looks like it has been flooded with a hurricane of writing; but as messy as that calendar is, it is useful. I can see where I have been successful establishing a new habit and where I haven’t been. I can see what derailed me by the other markings that I place on the calendar showing what I have accomplished each day, so long as I remember to write everything down.
It helps me to see where opportunities may remain untapped. It helps me to shuffle things around. And while the process is imperfect, it marches on, so long as I keep at it.
Some months are better than others. Some are great, and others may be sheer disasters – take February for instance. Sub-zero temperatures and respiratory ailments haven’t been great for my routine. It’s a learning experience though. I learn about myself, and how I respond to change. I learn about where I face resistance, I learn about where the easy spots are.
And it’s in those easy spots where I try to apply as much of that secret sauce as possible, the magic of consistent actions that hopefully will eventually melt away my waistline until it leaves behind a much trimmer version. It doesn’t have to be “ripped” and it doesn’t have to look like a 6-pack. It doesn’t have to be compared to “steel” to be a real improvement. I don’t have to spend a penny to take advantage of the benefit of consistent action. Certainly I can if I am looking for inspiration for a new exercise routine, but even then, whatever it is that I would look to for inspiration would be within the realm of possibility – no programs that require an emergency lift assist call over the scanner because it may take a whole crew of EMS to get me out of a bridge position if I should ever figure out how to get my body into one in the first place.
If you want to follow my weight-loss journey, read about it occasionally in my column “Healthy steps” or you can watch my weight-loss journey unfold and show your support by liking the www.facebook.com/GretchenGetFit on Facebook or following me on Twitter @GretchenGetFit. Contact the writer at gbalshuweit@thedailyreview.com.
Healthy steps is written by Gretchen Balshuweit, news editor and now health and wellness page columnist for The Daily Review in Towanda, Pa. as she pursues her own journey to health and wellness in hopes of losing a total of 200-250 pounds of excess weight.
