Obesity brings with it a plethora of excuses of why you do not have to get up and force yourself to exercise. Everyone buys into it, your friends, your family, even you. If you are chair bound today, hope is not gone. Bodies have amazing recuperative powers. If you start a nutritionally sound diet and a short exercise routine, you will be amazed at how fast you, yes, I said you, can reclaim your life.
Nothing happens overnight, you have to build your muscles, your stamina, and your determination for success. If you are chair bound, do as my client who I like to call Miracle Jan did. She had just purchased a wheel chair and was ready to give up her mobility for good when we met. She hadn’t walked beyond the circular path from her living room to her kitchen and through the dining room back to her chair in years. So, that is how she started. One trip around her downstairs with the use of a cane and back to her chair to recover. She did this 10 times a day. It was exhausting. The next week she was doing two laps, and within the first month had built to half an hour a day of walking. Five short months later she walked a 10K with her granddaughter.
Was it as easy as all that? No of course not, she had to push herself each and every day. I remember her first attempt at going back up the stairs in her house. One step at a time, holding onto the banister and stopping every step to catch her breath. It had been a long time since she had seen the inside of her own bedroom. But she forced herself up those stairs, and eventually set the rule that she would only use the upstairs bathroom. The hospital bed in her living room was put away, and she returned to, as she liked to say, “her wedding bed.”
When I first started my weight loss journey, I could only do a ten minute walk around my property. I did that six times a day. Before the first month was over, the walking bug had hit me and I tried my first full hour. 6 laps all together. By the end of my second month I was hiking up a mountain and riding a bicycle up and down my street while still over 200 pounds (I’m only 5’1″).
So many obese men and women tell me that they cannot exercise, that it is beyond their physical capabilities, but I know it is not. If you can walk from your chair to the bathroom, then you can start a routine to get back on your feet for good. Okay, yes, you will have to lose weight to enjoy the full benefits, but you must know that you can no longer use your obesity as an excuse not to exercise.
There are plenty of chair exercise DVDs on the market, get some and start stretching those muscles, then get yourself up off the chair and walk. Walking is the number one, most important thing you can do to regain your health. Sure it may tire you out, sure your ankles may hurt a little, but the benefits are well worth it.
For those of you aren’t completely chair bound, but seem to spend most of your time in one, I bet you can find every excuse out there not to start a walking routine. I say, think again. If your knees or your hips hurt then take short walks, adding an extra minute each day or week. Once your body gets used to it, you will be shocked how fast it will start to crave the daily exercise. You may not want to take the walk, but your body will insist.
Movement is key to life. Like a stagnant pond in the desert, our bodies fill with toxins if we don’t move. Refuse to let that happen regardless of how lost a cause you believe you are. Right now, get up from your chair and take a walk. Set a timer when you get back and do it again in half an hour. Challenge yourself each day to go one step, one lamp post further, and see how fast your body responds.
Don’t just say you hate being obese and that you want to change. Get up off that chair and do it. Now!