Exercise, to me, used to mean jogging. Panting, red-faced, with my knees and feet hurting from the jarring impact of too many pounds.
So, I had given up exercise completely.
Until that fateful day when I found myself bent over with a slipped disk and unable to reach up to the cupboard over my sink to get a glass out from it.
With short, shuffling steps (couldn´t pick my feet off the floor because this so d...hurt) I went to the umbrella stand and took out my trekking poles. The collapsible kind that mountaineers use, and that, for me, had allowed me to stay mobile at all in spite of my being morbidly obese. I knew I had to do something for my back muscles, and also get rid of those 100-plus extra pounds I had acquired over the years. Jogging, for obvious reasons, wasn´t it. I was, at the time, glad if I managed to just walk.
On the next day, I took my trekking poles out for a walk in the park. I had to sit down every 100 meters, gasping for air, but I did, on that day, walk about a kilometer.
And the next day, again. And the next.
There´s a name for that. Nordic walking. I did actually, from an earlier attempt at recondensing myself, have a pair of Nordic walking poles, too, which came out as soon as I didn´t need to lean on the poles with my full weight any more.
The biggest benefit for me was that you get a good workout for your upper body, too, and the legs are spared from those jarring impacts of too many pounds crashing down on your knees and ankles with full force of gravity. And you get to burn more calories, too, because you use not only your leg muscles. (The book I linked to seems to be only available in German, sorry).
So this is what I am going to resume as soon as the weather will allow it. Perhaps I´ll be able to get off this plateau then.
Julia
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