Thursday, August 6, 2009

Exercise, exercise!

C'mon everybody do your exercise! Remember that ditty? Wasn't it from "Wonderama?" Or was it "Romper Room?" I know it was from one of those 1960's shows for kids.

Anyway, I've been on this walking kick for three entire days now. Walking is cheap, easy exercise. All you need is a good pair of shoes. Over the years, I've spent plenty of shekels on exercise equipment that I swore I would use and, of course, didn't.

After Thing 1 was born, I quickly lost all but about 10lbs of my pregnancy weight. The neighborhood we lived in was not all that safe for walking so TheManTheMyth bought me one of these so I could lose weight in the safety of my own house:

The idea was to be able to get in both an upper body workout while pedaling away. Thing 1 was a high-maintenance baby so I used that as an excuse for not riding my exercise bike. I sold it at a yard sale because I found something even better for burning calories:

Oh yeah. I bought one. 20 minutes a day, the Nordic Track people claimed, is all it takes to lose pounds and inches. Doing it for 20 minutes a month just didn't seem to burn those calories. Dunno why. The Nordic Track was sold at yet another yard sale at a slight loss.

Then after Thing 2 was born and we inherited Casa de Gramma, I needed to tighten my post-pregnancy abs. So my next investment was that staple of every household that had a female living in it:


This I actually used somewhat regularly. And by "regularly" I mean more than once a month. And I also occasionally (VERY occasionally) did the "Abs and Buns of Steel" workouts. But I still needed to burn calories so I convinced TheManTheMyth to get one of these:

This, I'm afraid, saw very little action. It was big, it was bulky and it was so noisy that I couldn't hear the TV as I trudged along. And there really wasn't any place to store it and I couldn't keep dragging it into the living room every time I wanted to get in some cardio. And putting it out in the garage, where it actually fit, meant I wouldn't use it because why would I want to be stuck out in the garage, walking nowhere?

After the treadmill was sold, at a slight loss, my BF talked me into joining a gym for women that was started by one of the stars of "Dynasty." The idea was that we would work out together and help each other in our weight loss goals. This was all well and good until it was discovered that we had entirely different workout schedules. She liked to go around 9:00pm while I was a morning person. So without a workout buddy, I went from going every weekday morning to every other day to twice a week to letting my visits come to a crashing halt and my membership was not renewed when my year was up.

There was yet another membership at a women-only fitness center that sister Tracie had acquired at a charity silent auction and passed on to me. I did use it faithfully...until the owners skipped town after some shady financial shenanigans.

When TheManTheMyth hit a milestone birthday, we bought yet another piece of exercise equipment:

But this time, instead of buying new, I found it in the Pennysaver at a substantial discount. The owner was selling it so cheap because she "just wants it out of the damn house!" TheManTheMyth, I'm proud to say, actually uses his birthday present to work on his "toned and sexy core." I will use it once in awhile (translation, "once every 6 months") but mostly I just stick to walking. Did I mention that I've gone walking 3 days in a row?

I'm on a roll, baby!



1 comment:

  1. It was Wonderama! Exercise, exercise, c'mon everybody do your exercise... and FREEZE! And then the camera would zoom on some crazily contorted kids. BTW, thanks for the treadmill. King used it until the belt broke and we joined the Y instead. I'd like to walk El Dorado with you some weekend morning. Have your people call my people.

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