With the weekend over there’s plenty to cover, so here goes.

Best way to start the week is with a nice weigh-in. And this week’s magic number is 465. Yes, still. Been maintaining that number for half a week. If I’m going to have another 2 month long plateau, I would like that happen after I’ve lost another 10-15 pounds. That way, I can put the bariatric surgery off for a while. It’s funny to think that this started as a means to lose weight before having the surgery, and instead, because of the success I’m experiencing, could end up being a way out of the procedure.

Now to get into this week’s topic. First, I’ll be honest, exercise has never really come easy for me. When I was 14, I thought I was on top of the world, because FINALLY, I could run an 8 minute mile. And then I let a doctor talk me into two, count ‘em, TWO elective surgeries (bunionectomy and a hammer toe fix) that took me off my feet for half a year. And of course, at the time, they didn’t talk to you about diet! They didn’t even bother to warn you that you’d need to change your eating habits.

So, by the next year, I couldn’t run a mile, period. Hell, I could barely walk one. I took karate, but even that didn’t help me get back on track. So, now, I’m trying to drop this weight, all of this weight, and I’m still focusing on the diet when I should be focusing on the exercise. And why? Because I always felt like I could control my diet, much more than I could control my exercise.

Working out was a matter of forcing myself to do it. Even recently. I made a discovery this week, because I forced myself to work out. It was a decent day out but things weren’t exactly looking up for me. I’d been going through a plateau for 2 months. Now, don’t get me wrong, A PLATEAU IS A GOOD THING. It is. No, really, it is. I know, we all want to get down to our target weight as quickly as possible, but I feel that enjoying a nice plateau will help you to avoid the yo-yo effect. I’d lost 70 pounds. Some people would do that, stop dieting, and watch the weight slowly creep back up. But if you can MAINTAIN THAT WEIGHT for a while, that’s good practice for what you’ll be doing once you’ve reached your goal! It’s practice FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!

But two months… frankly, I wouldn’t have been upset with three. But I have people around me, who, whether they know it or not, put pressure on me if I’m not losing weight. I can’t tell them that, because they’ll just sit there and deny it, instead of just keeping it in mind and trying to make sure they don’t do it in the future. But they’re here.

So, I had all of this on my mind, and had very little else on my hands. Except that beautiful day, of course. So, I decided that I’d force myself to get a little exercise done, and since it was so nice out, I’d do it outside. I wasn’t sure what to do, exactly. I don’t really have any weights outside, and yeah, I could walk, but not for very long. In the end, I decided to do the stretching a warmup that we used to do before karate and go from there.

It wasn’t long before I realized I was HAVING A GOOD TIME! The stretching made a difference, and after the warmup was over, I wasn’t ready to stop! I ended up going for a walk, and while walking, thought to myself – “If I feel this good, and can do this much, after that, I should try starting EVERY DAY with ten minutes of that, just stretching and warming up.

I think Eeks was a little concerned when I told her. After all, she was trying to encourage me to commit to doing 30-40 minutes of exercise a day, broken up into 10 or more minute blocks, but I’m saying, no, I just want to commit to ten minutes of extremely light exercise in the morning. It was a stretch, but I promised it would only be a week, we’d make a small increase for the next week, and build our way up from there.

Talk about a payout. The next day I felt amazing. I got up, a little groggy, and yes, I kind of had to push myself to get up and turn the music on for a workout, instead of going back to sleep, eating, or any other normal morning activity that I usually take. I told myself “Come on, you came up with this. Pretty sad state of affairs if you can’t make your own goals… “. I really had to goad myself into it.

But I got up, and the rest of the day went juuuuuust fine. I realized hours later how good I felt and went out for another walk. The next day I did forget for a little bit and watched a movie before I remembered. But as soon as I remembered, I was up and warming up. But I didn’t limit myself to ten minutes. Instead, I let myself go for 15 minutes, then went for the walk outside for another 15 minutes. (You can see the details in my exercise log, just click the tab in the menu above)

For three days I felt like a million bucks. And that’s saying something. I’ve only this year come to understand that I am, and probably have been, for a long time, suffering from depression. It wasn’t easy to accept. My Doc prescribed me an anti-depressant, but it hasn’t done anything. Then again, it’s only 60 mg, so maybe it’s not going to at that dose. I don’t know.

But since I started doing the warm up, every day (except for one) has felt great! I have energy, I’m upbeat. Before Saturday afternoon, I thought I’d found the definitive cure for depression and anxiety. Then Saturday I managed to trigger my depression (long story; not germane to the matter at hand) and it was a bad one, too. I walked around a parking lot for about an hour and couldn’t manage to bring myself down. I may as well come out and say it, emotionally, I can be a real mess. When it gets seriously triggered, it doesn’t go away for days, sometimes. I never understood that “being in a funk” and being depressed are basically the same thing. I saw depressed people as whiners. When someone started talking about depression, I thought about Denis Leary’s rant on dysfunctional families (include link here). And I thought this while I, myself, was suffering!

The only thing that put it away was a good night’s sleep, part of which was spent in the pickup truck, and the other part kneeling on the couch (these are my preferred ways to sleep). Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I felt a little better. And after my warmup, do you know how I felt? Like I was back on top. Maybe not the top of the world, but on top.

I really feel like this simple act of stretching and warming up can help anyone to improve their quality of life. It won’t solve all of your problems, and yeah, if you’ve been suffering depression and anxiety for years, even half your life, without realizing it… Well, it might be less effective than for those who haven’t, and my depression may never really go away on its own, as much as I want it to, but I feel like I’ve improved my quality of life. Before this, every day I was depressed. Every day, I ached. My back hurt, every day. Lower, especially. Some days, my back did nothing but hurt. In fact, this week, the only time my back bothered me was after I’d removed the bed from my bedroom (don’t use it anyway) carried it all downstairs, outside, and put all but the mattress in the back of the truck. I’d say that’s pretty good.

I feel so strongly about this, I’m encouraging EVERY ONE of you to do it too! Stretch and warm up, every morning. All I’m asking for is ten minutes and a week. If you don’t feel it’s worthwhile at the end of the week, never mind!

I’m also hanging up my shingle as a warmup coach. I’ll be starting a new Youtube channel for the blog, by the way; that will help me to get started. I already did the first video this morning. There will be more, and hopefully they’ll look a little better too. What’s more, I have a webcam, and I have skype, so if you want something on more catered basis, I can help you there too. If you need more help than that, let me know, I’ll see what I can do! You can also ask Dr. Eeks, if you feel that she would be better qualified to answer your question (she probably would).

Next, let me welcome a new member to the exercisedammit family, our mascot, Buddha! You can read more about her by clicking her About tab, on the menu, above. Of course, Buddha is our puppy, and she’s my exercise buddy. She sits nearby and watches as I stretch and do my warmup, then when I walk laps around the inside of the house, she’s right there by my side. Then, she comes outside with me for the walk that will end my morning warmup.

I’ll have to put some pics up some you can see her pretty eyelashes (I’ve never noticed eyelashes on a dog!). I’m thinking the number that I have to lose (350 lbs) will draw people in, her sweet lashes will keep them around!

I’d also like to talk about what we’re doing with this blog. It’s a young blog, but already it looks like we’re going to have to separate it from its parent, WordPress. If I do, no worries, we’ll be keeping the website and name. Also, it may not happen. If I go with another hosting service, I’ll have to pay them, and I’ll have to find someone that offers a good balance of services offered to amount charged. Or, I can pay WordPress.

Why would I need to pay them? Well, there’s so much I want to DO with this blog, but I can’t. For example, music. I would honestly love for you to hear an upbeat song as you read this blog. Something that could inspire you to exercise, dammit! But if I want to post a song here, I have to pay an annual fee (I’ll also get extra storage with that). I’d like to post videos, but if I do… I have to pay them. Anyone familiar with Goodfellas? F-you, pay me; F-you, pay me. Want to put a nice looking graph up on your weight tracker? F-you, pay me! Want to use the custom style sheet for features that we don’t commonly offer? F-you! Pay me! It’s getting old.

The good news is that putting pictures up is free, up to a certain amount, of course, so there will be plenty more of those. (BTW, I’m writing this last night, and there’s an infomercial on for the Brazil Butt Lift. Basically, you do this program, and it makes your butt firmer, rounder and of course, the lift. And of course, the guy has a thick accent {Brazilian, I assume} and listening to him say “de butta” is hilarious. Of course, it is 2 in the morning)

Also, there will be a graph on the weight tracker, I just have to sit down and plot the information in excel and I should be able to use that graph. Which will look like crap, but… it’s something, eh?

Lastly, updates on the main page. I’m sure it will be awkward, but I’m going to include recent updates on the splash page (the section you see when you first access the site). This way you don’t have to search around to find it. I may look into that post calendar. Hopefully, this change will be in place by the end of the week.

And, before I close, I want to give a shoutout to three of our readers who were kind enough to volunteer some GREAT feedback about this site! I am speaking of course of Shawn Crowley and my cousins, Kaitlyn and Shannon Whiton. Thanks a lot guys, and to those that weren’t mentioned I got a lot of good feedback from many that visited this site. Thanks to you to. And some have visited without giving me the feedback. That’s good too! (But you’re not going to get mentioned that way!)