Where Is Your Head + Heart Around Exercise... Movement?

As a kid I was pretty-active, but as adult little-by-little I started to sit more and more.

As I really started packing on the pounds going thru 300, 350, 400 and eventually 435lbs I pretty much started to grow roots into my couch.

Thankfully 10+ years ago my time on Biggest Loser broke my couch-surfing, no, couch-laying cycle.

Surfing implies movement.

I like exercising now, and I probably exercise now more in my early 60’s than I did in my 40’s and 50’s, but truth be told I spend most of my time moving more than “exercising.”

When I think of exercising, I think of strength training, but movement, even slow movement is exercise, and it’s certainly better for you than just sitting, because you’ve probably heard that the medical community says that “sitting is the new smoking.”

I like walking, hiking, and exploring outside whenever I can and when I’m indoors my movement consists of incline walking on a treadmill or riding my Peloton bike.

I know… I know… I should do more strength training and little by little I’m starting to do more.

But for me my go to is… movement.

In this picture of my wife Kim, my son Matthew and me were “leaning” and “waiting” for the next trolley to pick us up. We were on a family (my daughter Jennifer took the picture) tour of the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, and even though having some fun posing for the camera with Kim’s bag I knew I was in trouble, and I knew the family was in trouble.

Now that I’ve let living an unhealthy lifestyle so far behind in my life I clearly see the ridiculousness of my thinking at the time, but at that time it made perfect sense.

“Why walk when we could take a trolley? We’re tired enough, and of course we are hungry, and we’re sooooo looking forward to our next meal, we have to save our energy for that. Besides we’re all just so out of shape, how ridiculous would it be for us to walk from mansion to mansion when we can just hop on a trolley?”

When I look at that picture in an instant I can go right back into my head and hear those thoughts. At the time it all made perfect sense to me.

That was how we thought. That was what our reality was. And even though we may have known we weren’t healthy, what was under all of that reality was that was what we thought, what we believed, and that was our “real” reality show before Biggest Loser.

What a difference a new mindset made, as today our family would be excited to walk from mansion to mansion, all the time feeling great and knowing that with each step we were getting healthier and healthier.

Yes, getting on Biggest Loser gave my daughter Jennifer a fast pass to weight loss as my son called it, but what we took away from that experience was so much more than just losing weight.

We learned that it really helps to have a way to track and measure what you’re doing more than just getting on a scale. Because if you’re someone who uses a bathroom scale (they’re a bad way to measure anything) to measure your success, at best you should only be getting on it once a week.

So if you’re serious about staying accountable and on plan having something to track your steps, your burn, your calories is a step in the right direction.

And as good as that is to know for yourself, it’s even more powerful if your tracking is connected to some like-minded people, people who not only want to see you succeed, but they want to succeed with you.

Becoming aware almost moment-to-moment, and at a minimum at the end of the day what you’ve done or not done is the only life changing way to get healthy, and most important, stay as healthy as you can for life.

I’ve come to learn for myself, my family, my friends, and the people I navigate that “that which gets measured, and shared… gets done.”

Outta site, outta mind, and when that happens usually the wheels fall off for most people. Well in my experience at least for the people that have the most consistent unhealthy habits and lifestyles.

In real estate it’ “Location, Location, Location.”

In health and wellness it’s “Awareness, Awareness, Awareness.”

Of course it’s also about accountability, but once you can get a person to be much more “aware” of what’s possible, and that getting healthy doesn’t have to be a torture test of depravation people can evolve into an accountability mindset not because they have to, but because they want to.

Enter the “Quantified” self.

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