I think we all spend a lot of time being down on ourselves.  Too much time, when we consider how short life really is—why would you want to waste any moment of your precious time telling yourself you aren’t good/smart/happy/rich/strong enough?? 

So let’s look for ways we can make POSITIVE changes and POSITIVE self talk a priority in our lives. 

Looking around at quick options to make these critical changes, gee, what could we do…? OH, LOOK! WE COULD EXERCISE!! 

Granted, I am biased on this subject.  However, my bias comes not only from my own experience seeing what happened to me when I changed my body by making food changes and exercising, but I see it every month at bootcamp. 

Every month a new bootcamp session starts and we get new people to the program.  The first week they don’t say anything.  The second week they smile more but are still quiet.  The third week, they smile and talk, and by the fourth week they act like they are part of the gang.

Exercise involves demands on your body.  These demands can be large or small, and every time you start an exercise program it is likely going to feel like a huge demand.  Your mental and physical responses to those demands are what counts. 

Mentally, you have to have some discipline to get yourself to do something another part of you doesn’t want to do.  It might just be “get out of bed a half hour earlier” or it might include “keep going” or even “speed up.” 

Physically, you also need to have discipline to reach or hold a position, or push a weight through your range of motion, and to endure the soreness of your muscles that reflect your body doing something to which it isn’t accustomed.

But what happens after you have made those demands on your body and know your mental and physical responses after a few weeks is one of the magical things about exercise: YOU KNOW YOU CAN DO IT.  That knowledge is worth a heck of a lot.  (I don’t need to tell you that—you’re the one who paid the price!)

The next time you come across a mental or physical demand, you realize that you have met such demands before and emerged victorious.  You have a quiet confidence that you can take with you wherever you want to go.  So turn down the volume on any negative self talk, and turn up the volume on your positive self talk.  You know you can do it; you already did.

Good for you.  Keep it up.

Exercise helps not only your physical body but your brain as well.  This means that not only can you look good strutting around the beach, you can sound smart too.  Beauty AND brains.  What a deal.

One main benefit of exercise (there truly are so many it’s hard to choose just one) is an increase in blood flow throughout your body.  When you’ve got more blood pumping around, some of it is bound to get all the way to your brain.  With an increase in blood flow through your brain, you will feel and be more alert and focused.  (Remember all those studies about kids being better students when they have recess?  Same thing.)

With increased blood flow to your brain, you are better able to preserve your brain tissue that starts to decline with age.  The use it or lose it mantra applies to your brain just like it applies to your body.  Similar to how a physical therapist moves paralyzed limbs to keep blood flowing through the limbs and preserve tissue, you need to use your brain and keep nutrient rich blood feeding your brain tissue in order to preserve that tissue.  Start it now, at any age, and keep it up for the sake of your mind!

You should want to treat your body better than you treat your car.  You can always buy a new car.  But a body?  A brain?  You only have one.  ONE.  For your ENTIRE LIFE. 

Living with diabetes, you know what happens when something in your body stops functioning the way it should.  Why risk the same thing with other organs like your brain and muscular and skeletal systems?  Please treat your body better than you treat your car.  Exercise can be so fun, and takes so little compared with its huge rewards.

Take a calcium supplement?  Worried about osteoporosis?  Want to improve the strength of your bones?  EXERCISE.

See this article: Exercise and Bone Strength by Mariana Shedden, M.S and Len Kravitz, Ph.D.

Your bones grow and strengthen in response to stress.  In order to impose stress on a bone and encourage increased bone mass and bone density, you need to intentionally overload your skeleton with specific exercises to impose a controlled stress on your bones so that your bones will grow stronger and denser in response to that stress.   You need to do weight-bearing activity.

Weight bearing activity is easy to accomplish in two main ways: through impact and through weight training. 

(Whenever you are aiming for overload it is critical you pay attention to your body.  Make sure you know proper form for weight training activities to prevent injury; please be smart about how you start your exercise program.  We all want you out there enjoying life for a long time.)

Assuming your joints are healthy, you need to add a little impact to your exercise routine in order to boost bone strength.  Swimming, bike riding, and low impact aerobics aren’t going to strengthen your bones.  Add impact in a smart way: start slow, learn about and listen to your body’s signals, back off when you need to, wear great shoes, find the right surface on which to pound.   Running, jumping, even brisk walking (and I mean out-of-breath and sweaty!) will help you overload your bones to encourage strength.

Another great way to impose controlled stress on your bones is weight training.  Best done when you aren’t sitting down (what bones does that strengthen), add enough weight to your skeleton that you have to exert effort to move—you are shooting for OVERLOAD in order to see marked improvement in bone strength.  If you know your grocery bags when loaded each weigh five pounds, be sure and do some squats with at least double that amount of weight.  Your body has big muscles (legs, back, butt, chest) and smaller muscles (triceps, shoulders, biceps) so make sure you load appropriately—bigger muscle groups can handle heavier weights.

When you are able to truly challenge your body you will be amazed at what it will do for you.

I signed up to run the Disneyland Half Marathon over Labor Day weekend today.  I can’t wait!  I also signed up for the Family 5k the day before because –get this—my parents and my husband are coming with me and we’re all going to do the 5k! 

My husband isn’t a runner.  He told me once “I ran when I was a kid.  I don’t need to run anymore.”  My dad can run, but doesn’t do it often—he’s busy at bootcamp and busy golfing his way through retirement.  My mom enjoys sprinting at bootcamp but doesn’t consider herself a distance runner—once around the track is generally enough for her.  So we’ll all work together to get through the five kilometers (about 3.2 miles) in September.  (It can be a bit dicey for me and for my family members if I tell those who don’t run what I think they should do to prepare themselves!  I will wait until they ask.)

But.  Really.  WE WILL BE RUNNING THROUGH DISNEYLAND.  How can one possibly pass up such a great opportunity?!  They even give you a medal when you’re done.

Who doesn’t want a medal?!  FROM DISNEYLAND. 

 (this one is my marathon medal from Disney World)

Because I ran the Walt Disney World marathon in January, when I complete the Disneyland half marathon in September I will have earned the coveted “Coast to Coast” medal, too. 

So, lest you think I run because I always enjoy running, let me again point out key points from above:  A family weekend.  In Disneyland.  A shirt for a half hour’s work.  And a medal.  Seeing my husband, my dad, and my mom each cross the finish line.  And then another shirt, the next day, for two hours’ work.  And two more medals.

Bring it on!