When I turned fifty nearly three years ago, I vowed that I would change the way I looked and felt. I had recently gone through cancer surgery and treatments and was feeling better. Yet I struggled with my diabetes, my weight, my energy level, and then my blood pressure.
As a full-time writer and someone who was never really “into” athletics, I figured that my only hope was dieting, and t hat I wouldn’t try the exercise part. Where would I find the time? The energy? The interest?
Like most people, i tried a variety of known and self-supposed diets. Some worked for a while, but it was too easy to revert to old eating habits.
When a friend told me she was beginning to walk for exercise, I thought that I might try it in. So, every once in a while, whenever I felt like getting out and doing it (which wasn’t very often), I’d walk around a local shopping center or at the dog park. It was good, but sporadic.
Suddenly, my friend began telling me how she was walking one, then two, three miles a day. She was losing weight and feeling wonderful. Then she was going to the gym, and walking and working out on the machines. It all sounded difficult, but I was proud of her.
When she began reporting on her astounding weight loss and how her blood sugar levels were staying in a normal range. I decided it was time to make my own commitment. I gave myself a challenge to keep up with her.
The summer of 2011 was a tough one in Texas. Weeks and months of over 100-degree temperatures every day. So I became an ardent morning mall walker. I began with 20 minutes at a leisurely place. It wasn’t long before I was working faster, pushing myself. Then, the walks were 30 minutes and soon 45. At my pace, I knew I had to be walking two miles at a time.
My husband, a teacher, saw how the walks were giving me more energy, lowering my weight, and even more important my blood sugar. Although he gardened those summer mornings, he was encouraged to walk with me in the evening. I began walking twice a day, two miles at a time.
The weight didn’t just fall off, but I could see a difference on the scale and on my blood sugar readings everyday. When friends invited us to swim in their pool whenever they were swimming, we began spending two or three nights a week at the pool instead of walking. I continued my morning walks. But I discovered that swimming, not just floating around was relaxing, refreshing, and even more athletic than walking. I was hooked on the combination.
My best friend from college was impressed with my commitment. She had been always been a walker, but decided to try the pool at her housing association as well. Soon, she was swimming laps every morning and reporting them to me. I was reporting my exercise to an online friend who had encouraged me in the beginning. My husband followed in my footsteps.
When our teacher friends went back to work and no longer had much time for the pool, and my husband wasn’t walking with me at the mall, I discovered that our local community center had both an indoor pool and an exercise machine room.
Now , I am excited every day to begin my mornings with God, then working on my writing, then off to the community center to walk one or three miles on the treadmill or bike on the bicycle machine before jumping into the wonderfully refreshing pool to swim laps for thirty minutes.
I’m amazed at how I, an un-athletic person who waited until her fifties to begin an exercise routine, have stuck to it. I am thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.
I am blessed by the friend who began this routine in her own life. I pray that I will see the wonderful results she has in my own weight loss. But if not, I know that at least I’ve gotten my body active for the first time in many years, and I lowering my blood sugar and blood pressure.
Who knew exercise at fifty years old could be so much fun?
