Saturday 11 January 2014

Incidental Exercise

Friday
In my effort to increase my fitness, I’ve been walking.  So far, I’ve been aiming for 30 minutes of walking everyday.  Well, that is, on the days that aren’t hot, humid, rainy, or I’m stuck at mum’s!  I missed all walks since Sunday actually, for all of those reasons.  The heat broke on Monday and we had the most terrific storm.  It rained pretty solidly for a few hours, but it wasn’t a heavy downpour – you know, torrential – it was just rain.  The best part was all the lightning and electrical activity.  That lasted well into the evening, so, I missed my opportunity on Monday.  Tue – Thurs saw me stuck at mum’s.  She’s broken her arm and I have to do a lot of things for her, which is a whole big list of chores and tasks.

So… that left today (Friday)!  And, to make up for it, I walked twice.  Isn’t that great?!  Okay, I’m cheating.  I technically did walk twice, but my total distance is equivalent to one walk. J  I needed to go to the supermarket because my fridge was empty.  Very empty.  So off I set with my backpack and reusable green bags.  Turns out my local suburban shopping centre – one which has an Aldi’s, Coles (another supermarket), a couple of ‘Bargain Bin’ shops, a homewares shop, some banks, a medical centre, chemist, newsagents, jewellers, etc – is only 1.7km (1 mi) from my house.  Took me around 18 min to walk one way at 11’05 min/km (I have NO idea how to convert that into some sort of imperial equivalent, sorry!).  I thought that was pretty good to be honest.  Then of course, I walked back.  Same distance, but with 3 bags of shopping.  Thank goodness I brought my backpack! I still ended up with two bags I carried, but they were things like bread or a pack of clothes pegs.  I weighed it when I got home:  on the return journey, I was carrying an extra 16.3kg of weight (36 lb)!!  Whoa!  That brought my total weight to around the 121kg mark (267.6lb). 

It was a bit slower going – 11’40 min/km – but not impossible.  It was uncomfortable to realise that if I wasn’t careful, I could be carrying that extra weight on my body everyday, but I would just learn to accept it and function with it.  So I cheered myself up by thinking that at some point in the future, this extra weight I’m carrying will be the weight I’ve lost. 

I also decided to lift the bags in my hands as I was walking – kind of pseudo dumbbells.  I would have said the bags were around 1.5-2kg (3.3-4.4lb).  Because of their awkward shape and dangly factor I couldn’t do proper curls, but I did sort of dumbbell rows? with them.  Google tells me they're called 'Upright Dummbell Row'.  Or actually, I think I was doing something that was in between a dummbell row and an upright curl.  I was pulling my arms back like so... 

http://fitjunky.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/woman_dumbbell_XSmall.jpg
But not by leaning forward.  Just standing upright.  

So, I don’t know if I actually was doing anything effective enough to exercise my arms, but I felt the muscles of my arms working together as I moved.  I dunno, I’m liking thinking it was doing something! :D

So, it looks like I have a way of getting in some ‘incidental exercise’ into my day/week.  If I ever have to do a big shop then I’ll take the car, but if I only need to pick up a few things for the next few days’ worth of cooking, then I’m going to work on it being on foot!  Might stop me from over spending too, if there’s a limit to how much I can carry back.

Oh!  But if I ever do get carried away, or get too lazy to walk on the way back, I can always catch a bus to my house, there are tonnes of busses that pass along the road to my stop. : D


2 comments:

  1. Any movement is good movement in my book! Ohh a bargain place? I want pictures! LOL

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  2. Lol, I'm glad you agree re: the movement thing! If nothing else, moving my arms around distracted me from realising they were heavy and the handles were hurting my hands.

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