Sunday, March 15, 2009

Whinges of a Couch Potato

At my last doctor's visit, she ordered a fasting glucose, along with other blood work. Everything else was fine, but my glucose test was not. It was in the pre-diabetic range, although not far. She told me I could head off a lot of trouble by losing some weight, and she wanted me to meet with the clinic's dietitian to "adjust my diet."

I made an appointment and last Monday I met with Julie, a young women with a toothpick body. I will give her this, she was not the least bit judgmental and took as the truth my statement to her that I understood about carbs and fats and proteins, and pointed out that I had dropped my total cholesterol numbers 30 points in a year by watching what I ate.

I told her that I was pretty much eating the right things, but that portion control was my problem. I also explained how much I hate to exercise.

Her comment on that was that you needed to find something you enjoyed for exercise. She obviously did not get the point, there is no exercise under the sun (or water for that matter) that I enjoy. I can tolerate some things, I like walking in my neighborhood particularly in the spring when things are beginning to bloom, but that is no longer an option because if I walk more than two days in a row, my feet hurt.

I find exercise of any sort boring. That is the bottom line. If I can get into a good book on my MP3 player I can stay on the elliptical machine on my sun porch for 10 minutes, but only by taping over the timer on the console and setting the kitchen timer to keep from watching the numbers creep up.

This is genetic I am certain. My mother did not like exercise. She was and I am a sedentary, book reading, couch potato.

If anyone has a solution to this, I would love to have it, because I have to lose 5 pounds by April 24 and another 5 by May 22.

I have the food part of it in place, just need to boost the energy expenditure. Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Doubtful Muse said...

I wish I could help, but it's definitely genetic; I hate exercise too. The only thing I can deal with is reading on a recumbent cycle. The book has to be good enough to absorb my attention, however, or I give up too quickly.

It's interesting -- the google word verification for this comment is "defun" and I would say that's a perfect description of exercise. DE-fun!

Janna Barber said...

If you have Comcast, and OnDemand, they have ten minute exercise routines that you can pull up anytime you want -- for free. I have done 2 in a row a couple of times. There's about 10 to choose from and they are updated monthly. Maybe doing one in the morning and one in the evening would work for you. Good luck!