Why You Should Exercise Every Day

Hella long Quote du jour:

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts show
that, after just one day of not exercising, your body loses some
of its ability to respond to insulin (Metabolism: Clinical and
Experimental, July 2011). Inability to respond to insulin is the
cause of most cases of diabetes that has the potential to cause
premature death in one of every three North Americans.

HOW SUGAR DAMAGES CELLS: After you eat, blood sugar levels
rise. If they rise too high, sugar sticks to outer cell membranes
to destroy those cells. That's why diabetics suffer from damage
to every cell in their bodies, leading to blindness, deafness, dementia, heart attacks, strokes, impotence, and damage to nerves, kidneys or liver. To keep blood sugar levels from rising too high, your pancreas releases insulin which drives sugar from the bloodstream into cells. Exercising every day helps to keep sugar levels from rising too high.

HOW CONTRACTING MUSCLES CAN PREVENT DIABETES: Resting muscles cannot draw sugar from the bloodstream without receiving large amounts of insulin. However, contracting muscles can remove sugar from the bloodstream without using insulin. This effect is maximal during exercise and is gone completely after 17
hours.

ONE MISSED DAY OF EXERCISE: In the study from the University of Massachusetts, after just one day of sitting, people had higher blood sugar levels after a meal, decreased ability to respond to insulin, and higher insulin levels. The more food they ate on the day of not exercising, the higher their blood sugar levels, and the less their bodies responded to insulin. This study shows that just one day of not exercising increases a person's risk for the side effects of diabetes.

HOW TO EXERCISE EVERY DAY: Many people become injured when they try to exercise every day. The most likely cause is that they do not understand the hard-easy principle that every knowledgeable exerciser should learn. You take a more intense workout on one day. The next day, you can expect to feel sore. That is when you must put very little pressure on your muscles. That means to run, dance, skate, cycle very slowly or lift lightly until the soreness diminishes. Only then should you move faster and lift heavier. You can tell that you are headed for an injury if you feel soreness that is not symmetrical and it worsens with exercise. Stop because continuing discomfort with exercise is often a sign of impending injury.

- Dr. Mirkin

Okay, I have a plan. Yesterday started off pretty good, with me drinking like a fish. I drank about three liters of water in the morning, but I slacked off in the afternoon only to find Mr. Headache coming back for a visit.

So today, I'm hitting the bottle every hour from the moment I walk in the front door to the last-minute frantic dash for the exit at night. And I'm going to exercise.

4 miles. 15 minutes elliptically. It shall be done, damn it.
It has been done. 30 on the elliptical. And it was good. The drinking plan seems to be helping.

Oh, hell no.

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This company I'm now at has a morning culture. Not all businesses do.

My last company, like many start ups, had a late-night culture. People would straggle in at 9, or 10(ish) and stay until 7 or 8.

This place, after 4:15, is a desert. After 5, it gets creepy. So I started getting there at 7:30, and all was good. There were people there, people I needed to check in with, and I got to leave before 5:00.

Then, they sez, "Well, you clearly like to get here early. Why not come to the 7:30 meeting that deals with your project?"

[FYI: If you don't have this kind of culture, know that it is common for companies to stage meetings at times like this when they're trying to coordinate with teams on PST (Pacific Standard Time), EST (Eastern Standard Time), and Bangalore time, which is 12 hours off of (ahead? behind? whatever) PST time.]

The last company I worked at, I attended a similar meeting. After Daylight Savings kicked in, I ended up having to go to a meeting at 5 in the friggin' a.m. Me, of all people. Luckily, I could log in from home before. This time, I'm a lowly peon and must come into the office if I want to access my computer.

So far, I've been making it into work in time for the 7:30 meeting. (Which involves my heading out the door at 5:30 a.m., not that I'm complaining bemoaning my fate more than any non-morning person.) I've been making it.

Then today, they sez to me, they sez: "Hey, instead of the 7:30 a.m. meeting, why not come to the one on Thursday instead? Much more useful for this project."

"Okay," says I. "When does this one meet?"

And they tells me, "6:00 a.m."

Exercise du jour: Still going to try for 4 miles walking, 15 minutes ellipticalling.
Done. Well, good enough to warrant a star. Walked not a step, but did 30 minutes ellipticalling. Plus, I got an okay to phone in to the 6 a.m. meeting instead of getting up at 4 to try to get there, which methinks deserves a damned star just on its own.

I'm taking the day off. 'Cause we unemployed people can do that sort of thing.

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Quote du jour: God wisely designed the human body so that we can neither pat our own backs nor kick ourselves too easily.

Site du jour: In case your day is not going as well as it should, this link should make it okay.

I'm taking the day off. No job hunting. No required exercise. I ain't gonna do nuthin' unless I really, really want to. Maybe a little walking. But it's optional.

There's something unutterably freeing about this notion. Just this once. Just this Friday. No expectations.

Have a great weekend!

I AM smiling

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Cranky? Why the heck should I be cranky?

Just got off the phone with a recruiter who wanted me to take a position... pretty good fit. Except for the fact that he wanted me to take a 40% pay cut for a job where I'd have to pay for my own benefits. That makes me cranky.

Damn knee is making me cranky as well. All I did was try to kneel down for a minute on a hard surface, and it hurt for two days. My body wants me to take a 60% reduction in exercise, with no benefits.

Argh.

Exercise du jour: Working out on the elliptical.
Done! Did 40 minutes on the elliptical. Thank goodness for drugs (i.e. pills I took to keep the swelling down, not narcotics, dude).

Job options: pirate or zombie

Go and find Jesus when your patience and strength give out and you feel alone and helpless. He is waiting for you in the chapel. Say to him, "Jesus, you know exactly what is going on. You are all I have and you know all. Come to my help." And then go and don't worry about how you are going to manage. That you have told God about it is enough. He has a good memory.
- Blessed Jeanne Jugan

[stolen synergistically leveraged from the Happy Catholic blog.]


Okay, so I know there's good and bad in every situation.

Good: My right leg works fine. My right arm doesn't hurt. My right eye doesn't have a burst blood vessel.
Bad: I also have a left side, to which the above statements do not apply.

On the bright side, I don't have any job interviews lined up for today. Just as well. I mean, with the eye looking the way it does I could ace a job interview if they were looking for a zombie. Or I could put on an eye patch and borrow a parrot, if they were looking for a pirate.

I'm going to post my daily goals up here. It is too easy to lapse into a couch potato coma otherwise.

To Dos for Today

• More vegetables & fruit. Dr. Weil suggests more vitamin C will help strengthen the blood vessels in the eye. - FAIL. Didn't plan ahead and pack veggies. Found myself in a place with no vegetables in sight, only hot dogs. Does pickle relish count as a vegetable? Yeah, that's what I thought.
  
• Some exercise. I've got a Pilates DVD; maybe I can do the parts that involve core muscles rather than arms or legs. It's worth a try. - DONE. Well, close enough. Walked 1-1/2 miles. The knee is complaining, but it's still done.
  
• Finish the damned résumé. I am stuck on one paragraph. It doesn't have to be perfect. It does have to be spelled correctly and have the appropriate catch words with dynamic verbs that sparkle and glitter and dazzle and... okay, I'll revise that sentence: Not Perfect Is Okay. - DONE. It's certainly not perfect, but I got words down on the page. Tomorrow, the rewrite.
  

It was a very big wildebeest, if that helps

I didn't post anything this morning because I got tired of writing sniveling posts filled with piffling, petty reasons why the exercise didn't get done. That sort of thing is depressing and it's boring. I know I'd pledged to post my feeble excuses, as a way of holding myself accountable, but it makes for a damned feeble post.

So I've decided to take another approach:

• I didn't get the 3.5 mile jog yesterday because a nuclear bomb exploded right directly on the track.
• I didn't get the 3.5 mile jog in today because I had to rescue an innocent golden-haired child from a rampaging wildebeest before flying off to Stockholm Oslo Maui to accept the Nobel prize for Incredible Wonderfulness.

There. Nothing to do with indigestion, extremely late MAX trains, or general time mis-management.

I refuse to feel guilty about a rampaging wildebeest.

Exercise du jour: A measly 20 minutes ellipticalling