fitness fun with princess sunshine and the midnight dog

Today Penny and I revisited our morning tradition: we walked around the lake, which is approximately 5 kilometres (so I've been told...I haven't actually checked that out for myself). In the fall, when we first moved to this apartment, Penny and I started at least three mornings a week with a brisk walk around the lake. It is, to me, the perfect walk: over a boardwalk on the lake, through residential streets, along forest paths, up hills, down hills, and finally back home again. I had given up on the walk around the time we got snow...I'm a definite chicken when it comes to cold and snow and general wintery-ness, and so for the last five to six months, I did not go out much, and I definitely did not get much exercise.

Neither did Penny, apparently...about half way through our walk this morning she started huffing and puffing and really slowing the pace. She's in worse shape than me!

And so that's how I decided that we (and by that I mean Penny and myself) need to whip ourselves back into shape, with the Princess Sunshine and Midnight Dog fitness routine!

I use the term "fitness routine" lightly...in the past, I would create these detailed plans for myself that would outline two or three different workout routines that I would intend to rotate through, so that I would work out for at least and hour, if not two hours, every day, and over the course of a week do pretty much everything that's ever been recommended for optimal personal fitness. It never worked. In fact, I don't think I ever even had one week that went exactly according to plan.

I'm also really not one for for joining a gym...I've done that before, too, and again, it would work for a little while, but then it just became too inconvenient/expensive/unmotivating to keep up with it. So this time I am trying to be realistic. I have had great success making other lifestyle changes. I'm a vegetarian, I make 99% of my own food (no pre-made, packaged stuff, etc), I've completely altered my buying/spending habits so that I never buy anything new (except socks and underwear, obviously), and I've kept up with my 2008 resolution to not eat candy anymore (I used to be a bag-or-two a day consumer of the oh-so-wonderful Cherry Blasters, chewy bits of artificially flavoured goodness that they are). So. I feel like I should be able to add some consistent physical activity into my life. The question is...how?

My thought, from looking at my other lifestyle changes, is that physical activity needs to just fit right in to what is already my daily routine and schedule, my interests, etc. It needs to grow from something in my lifestyle that is already there, and not just be some new thing tacked on to the side of it, like joining a gym was for me. If it is just tacked on to the side, it will eventually fall off. But take eating habits, for example. I already ate every day. So instead of adding eating into my life as this new activity that I now need to rearrange my whole daily routine for, I was just changing what I ate. A lifestyle change isn't as big a deal if you are simply modifying and expanding what you already do, whereas by adding something new in addition to everything else, you not only need to get used to the actual activity itself (i.e. exercise) you also need to get used to a completely different series of daily events (i.e. getting up earlier to workout before work, making it necessary to go to bed earlier, which may make it necessary to eat dinner earlier, which may give you less time between getting home from work and eating dinner, etc.) I'm not saying it's impossible to add new elements to a day, I'm merely hypothesizing that it may make lifestyle changes harder. Just a thought.

So, because Penny is a dog and needs to go outside several times a day, and because we live in an apartment and can't just let her outside on her own, I already end up going outside at least twice a day (Joel takes her out, too, remember...I don't want anyone out there thinking, "WHAT!! She only lets her dog out twice a day!!!!!") Even in crappy weather I try to take Penny for a short walk. I see this as my pre-existing daily element that can be modified and expanded in order to incorporate more activity. And that brings us to the Princess Sunshine Spring Fitness Program:

Monday and Tuesday:
an hour-long walk in the morning (around the above-mentioned lake)
a walk (minimum half-hour) in the evening, after dinner

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday:
an half-hour walk after work (between 12:30 and 3:00, depending on the day)
an hour-long walk after dinner

Saturday and Sunday:
This is hard to plan because there are always so many other things going on...but I think it's safe to say at least one hour-long walk each day, and maybe a "bonus" activity that Joel and I do together, like biking or, once the water is warmer, swimming or canoeing.

There we have it. I feel pretty satisfied that I will be able to stick with that for the next while, and perhaps start building on to it from there.

I will let you know how it goes! Any other tips and ideas are always appreciated, too!