How physical activity helps us in living our best lives

Diet and Health, Life Style

Wendi of simplyWendi has started a new series of questions;

How to live our best lives

kettle bell beside adidas pair of shoes

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 Wendi says;

Welcome friends and thank you very much for stopping by today.  This week my question has to do with physical activity.  This is a tough area for many people with chronic illness since there are some that respond poorly to exercise.  No matter what illness label you hold, fatigue is always a side effect making exercise something that takes a lot will power to overcome the desire to climb back into bed.

We read, watch, and are told that exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle which can lead to guilt and disappointment when we cannot participate in the physical activities that we were once able to enjoy.

So, this week’s question is;

What physical movement do you participate in? 

I have written about this before but since I feel very strongly about this topic, I will share my views again.

I have an autoimmune disease that affects my joints. It’s a type of rheumatoid disease known as “ Sero-Negative Rheumatoid Arthritis” It has affected my knees to the extent that I had to get knee replacement surgery on both of my knees in my early fifties. Lucky for me that I was diagnosed and the prescribed treatment has agreed with my system and there is a regression of the disease. So now I am taking my meds regularly and am following a regimen to keep my joints healthy.

After my surgery, my doctor had given me strict instructions to walk. No running, no treadmill, just walking. His advice was to walk at least half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening. Or a mile at both ends of the day. He also advised me to keep my weight in the average range for my height. That would, he told me, would make the artificial joints last longer.

As most of you know, my weight has not cooperated with me, yo-yoing back and forth. But I keep on trying. But one thing that I have held on to is my daily walk. I walk every day, winter or summer, rain or shine. I have made things simple for myself. No special time, place or grear for my walk required. I walk whenever I have had my breakfast, and I walk inside my house. Littraly inside. There is a longish passage where I walk making numerous round trips. My Fitbit tracks the time, distance and steps I have taken. It also helpfully tells me the calories I have burned. I repeat this walk three times a day. The total time is from 100 to 120 minutes. I walk around 4-5 miles with 12000- 13000 steps a day. Since I break it into three segments, I sit down if I am tiring too much and resume the walk after a short rest.

The advantages of this system are;

I can walk even if it is raining outside or too hot.

I can be as early ( a midnight walk like last night) or as late as I want ( noon time walk in Summers)

There is no fixed time, so I can accommodate my other chores or activities around my walk.

There is no hassle to putting on walking/ running shoes, special gear or driving out to a walking track etc.

This system works for me. I fell better after walking, much more energetic and happy. We all have our limitations and should find the activity that suits our physical health. Taking care of our physical health ensures that the coming years are kind to us.

My advice is to find what works for you. Push yourself to the extent where you can tolerate the activity without pain. Pain is a red light. Stop at pain.

#Keepitalive

Published by Sadje

I am writing to express my opinion, share my experiences and to maybe provide some insight. My blog is addressing women at 50 ( but men are welcome to read my posts) ,their issues and the questions that come up at this stage in life. I don’t aim to teach, but to learn together.

Published

14 thoughts on “How physical activity helps us in living our best lives”

  2. I walk several times a day, rain or shine, but would have a hard time walking inside like that. I try 🙂 I agree about pain – I do pretty heavy exercise these days, but will not do anything that is painful before or after.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  5. Thank you so very much Sadje for including me in this wonderful post of yours. I so enjoyed reading your take on keeping physically active and I LOVE, love, love that you walk inside your home. I have done this too when the treadmill was just too much or outside was too cold, wet, hot. This post made me realize that I although my phone tracks my steps, I don’t always carry it with me inside the house so maybe I should get a fitbit.

    Thanks again for participating Sadje, I really appreciate it.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.