A Friendly Nudge - Beyond Acquainted
...because we all could use a little encouragement!
There are people who I see every few years, maybe at a party or some other event, and I enjoy spending time with them. I’d consider them friends but since we don’t hang out or really know each other that well, we’re probably more acquaintances than friends. It’s not that I don’t enjoy their company, it’s just that life gets busy and other priorities prevail.
For years, that sort of described my relationship with exercise. I had more of an acquaintance type relationship with it and not anything resembling a deep bond. At any given moment there was probably some type of exercise equipment in the garage, but after a couple of weeks of intermittent use it would sit there unused until it got carted off to Goodwill or virtually given away in some garage sale.
There was about a year when the company I worked for was in a building with a gym and I’d get to work early and get a workout in before the day started and after our offices moved to a different location I joined LifeTime and since it was on my way to the office I’d manage a workout at least a couple of times a week. My commitment was directly proportional to how convenient it was.
When I started working from home, the 30-minute drive to the gym was just enough friction so that after a couple of weeks my gym visits got less and less frequent and finally, for a couple of years, they’d dwindled to where only maybe once a month I’d guilt trip myself into driving to the gym. When COVID shut the gyms down, that was pretty much the end of my LifeTime membership.
But fortunately about that time my youngest son asked his older brother and me to join him in a push up challenge. The goal was to do 1000 pushups in a week which almost killed the deal for me since my shoulder was just a few years away from being replaced and cranky as hell. So I set my goal at 500 and was not even sure if that was going to be doable.
I could do about 10 pushups before my shoulder got too bad, so I’d do 10 pushups and stop. I got to where I’d set a timer and every 45 minutes or an hour, I’d knock out another 10 pushups. I think that first day I did 70 or 80 pushups and by the second day I had shortened the interval between sets and I think I managed over 100.
That’s when the competitive part of me kicked in and before the week was over I’d managed to do 1100 pushups. It felt good to be exercising again and those brief bouts of exercise were exactly what I needed. These days I’m not a big fan of doing high volumes of the same exercise on back-to-back days but that challenge came along at the perfect time for me.
It convinced me, however, to buy some kettlebells and a pull up bar and multiple times a day, I’d knock out some chin ups, some body weight squats, maybe some wall sits or some kettlebell swings. I had a kettlebell sitting beside the fireplace and I walked by it every time I’d go to the kitchen or near it every time I’d walk to the bathroom. That visual reminder served as a cue to knock out 30-40 seconds of exercise and reinforced my budding exercise habit.
For whatever reason, those exercise snacks during COVID changed my relationship with exercise. Maybe it was because I was getting older and realized that I wasn’t ready to surrender to getting weaker or less able to do things that I enjoyed. Whatever the reason, exercise and I stopped being mere acquaintances and built a much more durable relationship.
When my shoulder finally reached the point that even a few chinups or pushups would have it fired up for days, I finally broke down and had it replaced. That effectively shut down exercising for a while but I never had any doubts about whether I’d return to exercise or not. I’d gotten addicted to feeling good and I wasn’t about to relinquish that any more than I’d end a close friendship just because it had been a while since I’d seen a good friend.
Rehabbing my shoulder with a physical therapist further solidified my return to exercise. It’s also got me going to our neighborhood YMCA for additional strength training. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how quickly I’m noticing the difference
I hope you already have a durable relationship with exercise and that you experience its benefits on a regular basis. If your relationship with exercise is non-existent or you’re just getting acquainted, be patient. But understand that if you’ll invest some time and energy into that relationship, exercise will be that friend that you can call on at any time and they’ll come bail you out of a jam.
Just like my relationship with exercise changed, I realized that I needed to reevaluate my paleo inspired bean and lentil avoidance. I still think there’s benefits to an evolutionary biology lens but I’m trying to be less dogmatic about its applicability. Beans and lentils have helped me up my fiber game.
So let’s make a Loaded Lentil Salad…
Ingredients
2 ½ cup cooked French lentils
⅓-½ pound chopped kale, large stems removed
¾ cups castelvetrano or other green olives, chopped
½ red onion, finely chopped
4 stalks celery, thinly sliced
1 english cucumber, quartered and sliced thin
1 block feta cheese, crumbled
4 large radishes, thinly sliced
1 bunch of parsley, chopped
1 bunch mint, chopped
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Vinaigrette
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 generous tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp za’atar seasoning
Prep ingredients and put into a large serving bowl, prep and then add the vinaigrette and then toss the salad with your hands to distribute the vinaigrette.
Enjoy!
Now let’s give you some exercise to lean into next week…
We’re looking for a balance. On the one hand, we need to challenge ourselves if we want to build strength and resiliency, while at the same time we need to resist the urge to bite off more than we can chew. A good rule of thumb is to leave a rep or two in reserve and if you feel your form start to deteriorate, the set is done. You can do these as a circuit or you can spread them out as exercise snacks throughout the week. Skip any that you don’t feel ready for.