Fitness Tuesday Update - Stress, Exercise

Today's Facebook status:

Fitness Project Tuesday Update: Discovered I can do my pedal exerciser and: knit, read, play iTouch games, do some computer work,make phone calls. This bodes well for getting in at least that 30 daily minutes. This week's weight loss: .6 lb...grand total at the end of Week 16: 26.4 lbs

Notes from my Fitness Log 09.05.09:
Obviously I haven’t been keeping this log up in detail, logging every single thing I eat, adding up each calorie. But it’s okay. I think it’s good to not do this at this point. Kind of practice for maintaining my weight and healthier lifestyle. I am certain that I have been eating within my calorie budget, though I know I’m probably not eating as well. By that I that I’m still eating lots of whole, unprocessed foods, but I’m not cooking as much or making the many-ingredient salads as I did in the earlier days of my fitness project.

I have been extremely stressed by my other (mostly volunteer) project commitments of late. Extremely. This is something I must get a handle on - how to do these (ultimately) fulfilling and worthwhile things and enjoy the whole process - the planning and organizing, the preparation. I need to take a very mindful approach - and consciously center myself in the work. If this work is my life, it needs to be reveled in and enjoyed throughout. If it can’t be, then it is not work worth doing.

In regard to my Fitness Project, while I have maintained my healthy diet very well, and continue to lose little by little, I am not keeping up regular exercise goals. Even my Tai Chi practice has fallen off this week. I must do something about that for sure. Yesterday I did 30 minutes on the pedal exerciser for the first time in a long while. I felt so good afterwards. That’s what always happens. Why can’t I remember how good it feels after (and, at a certain point, once I’ve started, during) and be motivated to begin?

Seems to me that I should try very hard for 30 minutes of cardio every single day. AND my Tai Chi daily. With strength training 3X week. Or also daily, but doing upper body one day, lower the next. So that would be a total of an hour and a half a day. Which seems like a lot. But if I spread it out into periods of time as breaks from the sedentary work position....a thought.

But I don’t need to pressure myself, to stress about this on top of everything else. I’m just holding the thought and knowing it can manifest in my life.
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It's three days after that entry. As you can see from the Facebook update above, I've decided that one possible solution to my exercise dilemma is multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is something I've tried to stay away from in general in my life. But in this case, if it helps me to get in the exercise I need, I'm trying it!

And stress - ah, that is a worthy topic for several entries and I'm sure I will write more on it. What's interesting is how I know so much about stress, what it can do to one's body and mind...and still often find myself in A State. I guess that perhaps my knowledge helps me to recognize bad stress (there is indeed good stress) early on, before it results in physical illness or panic attacks. Then there's the stress/cortisol/belly fat trio...yup, a future entry here.

Meanwhile, I'm breathing and taking steps to shift my perspective about all that I'm doing, as well as taking a realistic look at that and letting go of some things. And of course, trying to remember the amazing power of exercise in handling stress!

Namaste,
Zann