I Do This One Thing Daily, You Should Consider It Too

A meditation on daily exercise. There are many fitness myths that keep you from reaching your exercise potential. Here’s how I battle them.

I’ve been reflecting on my practice of exercising daily for the last 7 years and I really think it’s turned my health and resilience around, and I’m here to encourage you to take it up too! Maybe my story will inspire you, I hope it does.

Even through nausea during chemotherapy 7 years ago — I’m a breast cancer survivor — I made a pact to exercise and put my health first there on in and I’m proud to say I’ve stuck with it ever since.

Even when it was very hard, like it was during my recovery from a mastectomy and reconstruction surgery, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and prioritizing my fitness.

In fact, I never regained full flexibility in my left arm after surgery, it’s a little crooked when I stretch out and I can’t lift it straight into the air as I can with my right arm. However, I have never let that stop me.

If you’ve been around since August you’ll recall I wrote about getting fit in my 40s and finally seeing visible muscle tone in my arms and neck…and it took almost a decade, I might add. Subsequently to posting that, I was asked a question by one of you.

By the way, this is the original post so go ahead and read it if you missed it:

Question:

“Hi Helen! Do you do progressive overload or even track your progress? My (latest! 😂) excuse for not committing to working out is all the scoldy Twitter gym bros ... If I really have to track stuff to get noticeably fitter I don't think I am leaving my couch. 🙄”

My response:

“I started out tracking and with ‘goalz’ but quickly ditched it. I'm not really looking for hypertrophy (it just came as part of the years-long practice) and I'm working on a timescale of years rather than months, so I found, like you, it was just a de-motivating task at the end of the day. I just can't do hardcore fitness optimization, my brain resists 😂.

What has helped me is just making myself show up daily, making Zone 2 cardio the cornerstone of my workouts, and checking in with myself during each exercise for my perceived exertion.

I'm always asking myself, Should I be doing this a bit more intensely? Sometimes my hip bursitis is flared up and the answer is No, this is the time to just show up and walk on the treadmill and stick to arm weights. If I were tracking and fixating on overload, I'd be beating myself up...this way I listen to my body.”

I exercise (almost) every day, and you can too

There is nothing special or remarkable about me. I’m not athletic. I don’t grow muscle tone easily. I don’t really like the gym. I also don’t like brushing and flossing but so what? I still do it. Not everything in life is about what you like to do. 

My routine doesn’t vary much. I go to the gym every day of the week for 30 minutes, except Tuesdays which are my rest days and I very much look forward to those days off. But I keep moving, even on those days I take a few neighborhood walks to get some fresh air and to get my circulation going. 

In a few days I’ll be subbing in a couple Pilates classes instead of gym classes. My cousin found a new club that’s located between our respective homes, so it’ll be a fun way for us to catch up and work on our core strength.  Social exercising is great but you can still build a daily habit without it.

You can exercise daily too! Please, please try and integrate movement into your life, it makes such a big difference. And again as I’ve said before in that August post, IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE SO HARD.

You do realize that 20 minutes on the treadmill on an incline walk or mixing jogging and walking or even JUST WALKING is still a million times better than sitting on your rump all day? Bonus marks for your bone health if you throw some weight lifting in there too. 

We’ve all seen studies that say you should optimally get 150 minutes of Zone 2 cardio in each week: “Doing 150 weekly minutes of moderate activity—a.k.a. Zone 2—is associated with reduced risks of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers, according to the CDC,” says this Levels blog post. 

Yes, sure, but you know you can work up to that. This is why we fail. We think that if we don’t hit that many minutes ASAP, we’re not doing it right and so why bother? 

The “why bother” is that you could and perhaps should give yourself YEARS to work up to this. Increments! No one talks enough about increments. It’s always “here’s a really intense workout plan!” The problem is, that plan is going to burn you out. 

Dieting in our culture is much the same. Next Week, In Two Months, For The Vacation, For The Wedding–these are the scales in which we want to experience weight loss and fitness success. But these are too-short and bound to make you fail.

So how does one go daily without burning out and getting deadly bored? I’ve tried to anticipate some of your questions but I’d love for you to reply to this email or post a comment on this if I don’t cover it here:

How do you make time for the gym everyday?

The genius in my fitness routine strategy, in my humble opinion, is that I have to exercise every day (except Tuesday, my rest day), so there is no weighing of which days are optimal to go. This was the mistake I used to make going three times a week, Oh, I’ll go tomorrow…I don’t want to today. Ultimately having to pick three days out of the week was my undoing, I am susceptible to decision-making fatigue.

I go at 11am or 1pm, with very little variation. Sometimes I’m busy with work and I’ll go after I’ve done my end of paperwork for my clients, anytime between 3pm and 4pm.  If I had an office job I would go at lunch (it’s only 30 minutes) or right after work. I’m not an early bird. I do not trade sleep for exercise. This is not so hard to achieve when you’re only doing 30 minutes of exercise. 

If you think you can only work out for an hour to make it “worth it” I would like to challenge you on that. It’s simply not true and you should stop telling yourself that. It can be done in a shorter amount of time.

What do you even do at the gym daily?

Basically, cardio for 20 minutes and weight lifting for 10 minutes. Then I go home!

How do you not get bored?

I totally get bored. Brushing my teeth is also terribly boring. Work is boring sometimes. So what?

Doing boring things is good for you, you should try it. This is one of those myths that kicks around in the vein of “do something you love.” By all means, find something you love but in the meantime, keep exercising daily. The “what” is less important than the “how often.”

How do you deal with the gym bros?

My gym is pretty cheap and low-key and these two things keep out most of the lunkheads, but there is definitely a non-zero amount of twentysomething gym bros. The cool thing is that now that I’m in middle age, I give off frosty Mom vibes so they’re scared of my withering, judgemental gaze. Seriously though, the gym bros are all actually pretty nice, as don't forget, they’re in their happy space when they’re in the gym.

How do you cover your butt at the gym?

Some of us don’t want to be doing squats with our bum in the air in front of everyone in our tight leggings. What I do, and I see others do, is to tie a hoodie around our waist. I even see some gals wear a light flannel shirt tied around the waist. This covers you up and is inconspicuous and comfortable.

@dr.raybaehoodies are protection #gymrat #hoodies #hoodielife #upperbodyworkout #shein #chiropractor

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Lest you think only women cover up, I see lots of guys wear long running leggings under their gym shorts. I don’t know if they’re trying to cover their hairy legs or varicose veins or what, but I think it looks good! Very sporty.

How do you know what to do at the gym?

Ok, why make the assumption you HAVE to know exactly what to do when you start at the gym? Can you ride a stationary bike? Can you walk on a treadmill? Good! Do you know how to do a bicep curl with light dumbbells? If not, Google it. Can you figure out how to use one machine for your leg muscles? Can you learn how to do a squat? Just start there! 

Use your phone to look up how to use a specific weight machine if there’s no one to ask, I guarantee there’s a YouTube video on it. The great thing about weight machines is that they are constructed to limit your range of motion so you don’t hurt yourself. Keep in mind though that most machines require you to adjust them for your height, and the seats usually are a bit like adjusting a car seat. Again: Check YouTube.

As time passes and you become a habitué of the gym, you’ll learn more exercises either by osmosis, by observing, or by looking up routines. Don’t make it so difficult, just go!

How do you track your progress?

I don’t.

“Don’t Exercise, Train.” I hear this a lot in fitness communities and I can’t help but think that it benefits the person trying to gain influence rather than the person trying to get fit. You know what comes with “training”? Injuries. However, if you love the idea of training for goals, go for it! Personally I’m not built to care about goals, and you can get fit without them. I did!

I genuinely don’t care that much about progress and yet I can easily lift heavy bags now, my grip strength is great, I can run without breaking a sweat. In fact, I often run along young guys on the adjacent treadmill who ostensibly look fitter and definitely have less body fat…and I can outrun them easily, they’ll be panting and I’ll barely be breaking a sweat. It’s just conditioning. These all came as natural extensions of exercising daily after an accumulation of years. You can do it too! As I said, there’s nothing special about me except that I dedicated myself to working out daily.

Alright everyone, that’s everything I could think of on this topic but I would love to hear your thoughts on this! And your questions too…you can always hit Reply to this if it’s an email, or drop a question below in the comment box!

Warmly,

Helen