For me, exercise has always been something that I did but never really wanted
to do--with the sole exception of cycling. I love cycling. I rediscovered it
once, and I think I'm becoming well-positioned to rediscover it again. Outside
of cycling, exercise was mostly military PT. I just never loved it. I probably
never even liked it, although there was a time I did it so often I became
used to it.
So, thanks to Apple, I have these little achievements (pictured at top) to
help motivate me to succeed. At left is the achievement for hitting the
exercise goal each day for the week; to its right, the achievement for hitting
the stand goal each day for a week (that is, standing and walking about in an
hour for 12 hours in the day); to its right, the achievement for hitting the
calories burned/move goal each day of the week (this one moves up each week; my
streak is currently at 46 days); and finally, at far right, is the achievement
for hitting all three of the aforementioned goals each day for a week.
These achievements correlate to rings that appear in the Activity app — a
set of three circles that appear concentrically. At the start of the day, they
just appear as three aligned dots; as progress is made, the dots "stretch" in a
clockwise fashion. Each segment of a circle represents your progress through
each day. Expanding each segment to form a circle is the goal (called "closing
the ring"); the rings are essentially circular progress indicators.
You can see from the image above that I've closed the exercise ring for today
(the green one) already; I'm over halfway to my move goal (the red one), and
I'm just shy of halfway to my stand goal (the blue one).
I'm using these rings and achievements to motivate me to continue to better myself.
As you've seen in previous posts, I started with the move goal, and I've done
well with it — so I became a little brave.
Over the past two weeks I've paid particular attention to closing all three rings
each day. I find that the activity (green) ring is the hardest to close,
because it requires elevated heart rates; and so my strategy has been to take
multiple, fast-paced walks throughout the day to satisfy the requirement. The
strategy has had some unusually beneficial side effects:
- There's nothing like sweat and exhaustion to keep me
away from a second cup of coffee: I tend to try to "hit for distance" earlier
in the day, leaving me less to have to do later on. So I'll take a longer
walk at a faster pace at this time of day — after which, a hot cuppa does
not appeal. In fact, I'm actually allowing coffee avoidance to get me out
for the morning walks. I've been making myself go walk instead of going for
that 2nd cup. My love of my coffee hates it, but the rest of my body
appreciates it.
- The distance I walk while mowing my front yard is
½ mile. My BPM gets high enough to count as exercise. But the map looks
like a complete scribble.
- I have a much greater appreciation for the
subtle inclines and declines around my neighborhood. Mostly I can detect them
based on which lower leg muscles are hurting at the time. Also: I should
stretch.
I've settled into a sort of a routine: a 1¼-mile route in the
morning, then a shorter, ½-mile route in the afternoon and evening.
Every day. Laurel walks with me when she can, which, thankfully, is most of
the time. I really love that this is something we do together.
I don't yet know if all of this has made me healthier, but I believe it
has made me better: I feel that I'm really doing something good and
positive for myself. And I know but I have to be patient, I have to stick with
this to see more obvious results.
I feel like I have a program. Something to
follow that requires effort and dedication. For that alone, I am grateful.
When I was working on solely diet-based weight loss, I just was not ready to
commit to exercise. Perhaps I blamed it a little too much on my hectic work
schedule... I just felt I didn't have room to commit to ANYTHING, because I was
working ALL the time. Late nights; days without proper lunch breaks. There
was no way in Hell I was going to commit to exercising 30 minutes per day
when I couldn't even depend on having time for lunch. Looking back, knowing
what the commitment is like, I still say I wasn't positioned to execute. But
life is better now; things have slowed enough that I made the commitment,
and I'm glad I have.
Today I'll have earned that collection of badges pictured
at top a second time. The change to allow me to do it was instrumental, and
over the past couple of weeks I've had to fight a little to keep on track.
Now that I'm doing, and achieving, I'll fight like Hell to keep building.
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