Training has officially started. When trying to find the motivation to keep active, be fit, move and live a full and healthy life what I've found to be motivational is to have a target, a goal. I'm competitive by spirit though not governed by the urge to win so much as the urge to play.

When I made the decision to work on my physical body without the aid of the diet industry I also made the decision to spend very little money on it. I have purchased a few items, my mP3 download, some good shoes, yoga DVDs. But I have also found some wonderful programs for free on the Internet.

When I started running last year I followed the couch to 5K program. I downloaded some free podcasts to my iPod and off I went. I can't find a link to my original download but if you search with google there are multiple choices for free downloads to get you started. Or you can just run with a stop watch, as many people do.

Then more recently I discovered the one hundred push up program. I was pleasantly surprised that in the initial test I could do 11 push ups. I'm in better shape than I thought particularly since I haven't done a push up in years. I'm adding that as part of my training. I will log in my workouts and watch my strength increase until I'm up to 100 push ups! I'll be sure to share my success with you.

That all leads up to the reason I've suddenly decided to go into training! I've joined a Dragon Boat team. For those who aren't familiar this is a rowing team as in the picture above. The boats are called dragon boats Last night I went for my second practice and it is extremely hard work! Our first event is on July 18, in Waterloo Ontario and I have to be ready! I'm learning but I don't have the physical fitness to keep my proper form and I need to get in some pretty good physical condition for this. The sport itself is rather inexpensive, I may purchase a life jacket and a paddle down the road, meanwhile I'll use the equipment they supply.

So I've found my sport, I'm in training and on to the next phase of my goal of optimum fitness and health! I'm excited and cannot wait for my first race!

Oh, and for the chance to win a free hypnosis download go here. I have the weightloss download and I find it invaluable in my journey! Good luck!

Namaste



My Writing Blog

One thing that isn't a fallacy is the fact that we should be moving more. As time goes on it is amazing how little we move in our daily lives. The work we have is stationary, the entertainment consists of a little box where images are fed to us or that other little box where our fingers and wrists are the only parts of us that get a workout.

Today I walked. I have a double walking stroller and I filled it with nearly a hundred pounds of kid-weight and walked. We toured from one end of our small town to the other and it felt good. The sun is finally shining and it appears it will for a while finally. So I am on the move!

You have to turn of the television. I am not a television person and I do believe that the messages we receive through the ads combined with how it interferes with our desire to move and the time we have available to us to move is a great deterrent to physical activity in our lives.

We do not need to run maratho, though that is possible for most of us with training, we just need to move. Get a good pair of sneakers and walk. Take your camera and your dog. Blog about it. Listen to books on tape or music on your iPod. Push those strollers.

In all of the old English novels everybody walked daily for exercise. It was routine. Make it routine again. Fancy is not required, just get out and walk at a nice pace for an hour. Make it a priority. Make it fun. Make it happen!

A pair of sneakers and a road. That is all you need. Pretend you are an English lady strolling the countryside. Who knows, maybe there is a dashing Mr. Darcy in the stylings of a Jane Austen novel out there who just laced up his walking shoes after reading the brilliance that is the weighlessandweightless blog! One can always dream!

So get out there and move it! It is easy, requires no special skills and is free! Say hey to Mr. Darcy for me!

A while back I made a committment to never spend another penny in the diet industry(excluding a gym membership). This has made me very creative in finding free services and advice.

The best free service I have found is Sparkpeople. It is a very good way to monitor your habits, your results and to find motivation both from success stories and other actual people on the path with you. I really like it. There is another similar website called Fitday. I personally haven`t used it but I`ve heard good things about that site as well.


There are a couple of other things that have helped me for free. The Couch to 5k is a program of training beginners to run 5k. It`s a wonderful program. You run three times a weeks starting with intervals of walking and running and then building up over the course of 9 weeks until you are able to run 5k. I did it last year and it was wonderful. I loved running and it was amazing at how fast your body grows and strenthens. I am now starting over at week one after a long lazy winter. Next year I`m either joining a gym or picking up a treadmill so I don`t have to start over. So much for not spending money I guess!

When I started the couch to 5k program it was difficult for me to do the intervals properly. You need a stopwatch for the minutes and it was strange to run and look at a stop watch. I was using the one on my iPod and then someone in my couch to 5k support groups suggested I download the podcasts to use. Someone had made podcasts for each week with music and it was another great free tool to help me along the 9 weeks.

Then there is the One hundred pushup challenge. A similar idea. You start with as many as you can do and build every day from there. You follow the program and work up to 100!

There are a lot of free advice, free services and free support. You don`t need to pay a lot of money. You just need to get into a space of feeling ready to do this and you will!

If you know of any FREE fitness services please post them here. I plan on doing links to them here so they can always be accessed easily by anyone who needs them.

So winter has done it to me. I've hybernated like the bear but unlike the bear I've added weight instead of living off the weight and it is March and I feel like a slug. I've decided to blog about my journey back to the healthy me I was last November when I was still running and walking daily, watching my food intake and just generally happier.

Winter does it to me every year. I believe I suffer from a mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder(SAD) which causes a certain amount of depression and frustrations. It also causes a lot of boredom which leads to nothing else to do but bake and eat. I was so determined going into this winter that I would not fall into the trap again, I would buy the gear and get out there in the snow. But I didn't because the truth is I hate being cold and wet, I hate the work that goes into getting two kids and myself dressed to go outside. So, I'd dress them in their snowsuits, open the door to the back yard and they played happily by themselves while I made cookies.

But spring is here. And I've gained 15 lbs that must come off but even more important I can feel the impact the extra pounds have on my health, my hip hurts more, I get out of breath more quickly, I can only run short intervals and I was up to 5k last fall. Time to get out there, time to make the time and get my health back.

Only this time, I'm taking you along for the ride.