Skip to main content

Staying the Path


Sooner or later, every exercise plan stumbles upon obstacles, such as work demands, travel, weather, or injury. Following are the ones I encountered over the past five years. I will address each in turn in later posts, along with my response to each challenge.
  1. Finding the time to exercise.
  2. Schedule disruptions such as illness, travel or extended work commitments.
  3. Monotony: Boredom from doing the same routines and running over the same trails.
  4. Being a single-parent: I have shared custody of my daughter, which imposes the added challenge of integrating my exercise with my parenting.  
  5. Weather: a significant factor for exercising outdoors.
  6. Trail conditions: ice, rain, mud, potholes, construction closures, etc., can interfere with our planned activities.
  7. Injuries.
  8. Specific adaptations because of lifestyle. For example, I live in a townhouse, so end up doing stairs twice as often as usual, while my work involves sitting in front of the computer for long hours. These habits, as well as posture and sleeping positions, lead to skeleto-muscular adaptations that need to be included in designing my health plan.
  9. Dietary limitations: As a lifelong vegetarian, I had to learn how to prepare healthy meals that provide adequate nutrition for my workouts.  
  10. Allergies: Severe ones that interfere with breathing can bring exercise to a standstill.  Recently, I have discovered that in addition to environmental allergies, I also have food allergies, which, given my vegetarian dietary choice, make preparing nutritious meals more challenging.
Success in staying on an exercise plan hinges on its flexibility and requires problem-solving.  Each difficulty in sticking to the plan has to be identified, then the plan re-worked such that the issue ceases to be an obstacle.  For example, in response to the challenge of being a single-parent, I invested in a jogging stroller, which allowed me to integrate my walks and runs into my time with my child.

Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 20, 2018 at 10:25 PM

    Staying the path can be challenging, as I've experienced first hand. Looking forward to reading your future posts to see how you tackled the various obstacles you listed.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Layer Cake

My mother's recipe, and a favorite of my daughter. Needs no baking. The idea is to arrange layers of tea biscuits (known as petit beurre , which can be found in Middle Eastern grocery stores, among others), with alternate layers of custard and chocolate pudding in between. Instead of custard, which is hard to find nowadays, I substitute any kind of pudding I like. Layer cake with chocolate, tapioca, and custard. Shown below is my latest with layers of Kozy Shack chocolate and tapioca puddings, and a powder pudding mix that I combine with milk over heat, like custard. I skipped the eggs on the last one, to give it more of a custard consistency that hardens when cooled. Depending on the shape of your baking tray, you may need to cut out parts of some of the biscuits. I used a 9"x9" tray. I also recommend putting the chocolate pudding at the bottom since it's thicker and will hold the consistency better. Once the layers are arranged, cover the tray with foi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Eating Healthy: CSA What?

In Getting Enough Nutrition , I wrote about my increased interest in eating healthy. Fortunately, a year later, I heard from a friend about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Essentially, rather than getting their groceries from the supermarket, they contract with the local farm to deliver their produce. Pasta sauce from CSA farm vegetables The basil is also from the CSA farm It turns out this nice farm I pass along my way to work - a green oasis amid a growing suburban sprawl - has its own CSA program. For about $30 a week, I share in the produce of the farm, receiving a decent quantity of 10-12 different vegetables a week, all organic, in-season, and fresh from the earth. There are no guarantees as to what we get. We pay for our share at the beginning of the year, and receive whatever the earth gives, which bounty varies from year to year and depends on the weather. Thus we share the risks and rewards with the farmer, and the adventure of finding out what's in store...
Post a Comment
Read more