Exercise Favorite: Pilates

I really love doing Pilates. It’s very relaxing and I don’t really sweat. It improves posture and helps to tone and shape your body.

It’s a great thing to try if you’re used to being a couch potato. It does require focus and the exercises are difficult, but it’s a great way to ease into exercising if you’re not used to it.

Personally, I own the Pilates Beginning Mat Workout by Ana Caban. Ana has a workout partner, Tara, that does easier versions of the exercise, which is nice. She also gives a good introduction to pilates. I think the workout is about 20 minutes - great for your body and your schedule!… ...Continue reading

Jogging through my past

Over the last 4 days I’ve eaten chips, crisps, vanilla slices, chocolate orange digestives, Mr. Kipling’s Exceedingly good Apple Bakewell tarts, a few pints of cider, and I’m sure many other items. My exercise schedule has also gone to pot. However, yesterday I did do a mile walk to the train station, followed by a few miles of walking around Manchester, with a mile walk back from the train station (note: I didn’t get off at the closest station, just so I could have that longer walk).

Today I did my first run since landing in the UK. I planned out my route, and promptly forgot the last bit, which is why the final version below is less than 3 miles, but hey, at least it’s something… ...Continue reading

Plan Your Walking

I’m not talking about yesterday.  Suffice it to say, I had to bake a birthday cake and brownies for my youngest’s 6th birthday today and the temptation was too much.  We’ll call it a bad day and move on…

My co-worker sent me a link yesterday to Gmap Pedometer  a cool little mashup where you can set a route in your neighborhood or park or wherever you walk and get not only the mileage but if you input your weight you can get a calories-used estimate as well as an elevation map.

I find it motivating to learn that when I walk my little neighborhood route, I’m burning around 140 calories! And, keeping in mind that if I go faster I can burn more calories in less time, I can use… ...Continue reading

Exercise it is!

I went to my chiropractor last week for a tune up. I’ve been having problems with my SI joint and it’s been a pretty nagging issue. After our session the doc told me that I would do myself a lot of good if I started doing some chore exercises to strengthen the muscles in that area. I guess more muscle will keep things more stable and make the problem less likely to flair up as it’s been doing on a fairly regular basis. While this wasn’t exactly something I was hoping to hear, I am glad that exercise will help it.

The doc said I’d be more sore than usual for a while when working that area but as I told him “I’d much rather be sore because I worked out… ...Continue reading

What Happens When I Get the Exercise Mat Out?

The Uphill Battle

I really, really do plan on going to the Gym. I will. The thing is, there is an indoor pool there and the kids love it so it’s not like hey-I’ll-dash-in-and-out, it’s more like a half hour of gathering swimsuits and gear and knowing once I’m done working out, there’s another hour of supervising swim time… plus, I have a school carnival meeting tonight. (Why oh why did I say I’d be in charge?)

In any case, my best bet for some exercise today was lunch. I probably should have gotten out and walked but it’s cooooold. (Really, it’s like 45′F or something! That’s cold for these parts.) So I decided to do some stairclimbing.

I had a good idea of where the stairs are and after poking around (and opening some ...Continue reading

A Walk in the Park

Um… a walk by the park, actually. I had to mail my rebate form for my Tivo (oh, you’ve got to hear this! I bought a Tivo in November for $42, bought the service for a year at $120 and I get a rebate of $170. Yes, they are paying me $8 to have Tivo service for a year. Cool, no?) so I decided to walk the block and a half to the library.

When lunchtime rolled around… I was jonesing for mexican. I’ve been really good lately and I started justifying it in my head… I’ll skip the chips and just get a chicken soft taco… how bad could that be? But I didn’t. Score one for me!

Instead I changed into my sneakers and hoofed it to the post office ...Continue reading