Move More?

The physical exercise gurus go on and on about strenuous exercise. If you are T2D, you may have some serious concerns, prior to lifting the heaviest things you can for HITS type training.

Crawl before you walk, walk before you run, and run if you want to.

A person that is a prime candidate for a heart attack is not supposed jump in, full steam ahead.

And I will tell you why.

Cortisol.

The inactive body with high blood sugar and multiple metabolic dysfunctions does not need to strain at the beginning.

It is perfectly fine for you to start by just moving more. I’m serious. 1 minute of walking, today, for a week- every day- leads to 2 minutes of walking a day, next week. Maybe, after 2 weeks you get 5 minutes a day. Soon, a month goes by, and you feel confident. You try 15 minutes. You get sore feet, you learn to massage them and put lotion on them.

By end month number 2, you start doing 15 minutes twice a day. Soon you are finding reasons to walk whenever you can. Sometimes looking for stairs.

Then you start to do an hour per day, broken up, as a way to get away from everything else.

Your body starts doing cellular respiration, it starts increasing circulation, waste gets excreted, needed nutrients from your new dietary lifestyle start to flow where they are needed.

You feel confident. You feel empowered.You feel strong.

Your blood sugar numbers miraculously start to approach normal. Your diabetic symptoms and complications start to go away.

You are getting healthier.

You can start to do things around the house, or community or ??? neighborhood which you never did before. Like cut your own grass, or pick up litter in the neighborhood.

Now your health is improving and so is your mental well being. It is time to start doing physical things. The fat loss makes it easier to move, for longer periods, you become more flexible and agile.

Today, for example, I tinkered with my lawn tractor, adjusting things and fixing loose connections.

Then, once it was running, my wife decided to use it. I have a spare belt and new blades. The old ones are shot.

INSTEAD OF PAYING $75 for the service man to pick it up, and $400+ for belts, blades, broken wire repair & diagnosis…I did the repairs for $150, including a new battery which likely would have put me near $500 which would have made me decide to buy a new lawn tractor- I repaired it myself.

Then decided, even though it is overcast, to wash and hand wax my wife’s car.

I use a 5 gallon empty pail as a stool, and sit on it while bending and stretch to clean and polish the rims, and lowest panels on the car.

It started to rain (go figure)- so I finished one side of the car, and detailed the rims.

To be honest, I’m a little stiff and my muscles in the lower back seem kind of warmish, now that I am resting and writing. It was a good thing that it rained. I’m out of shape from a long winter.

BUT- 2 YEARS AGO I would not have bothered doing any of this.

We would have bought a new riding mower, and I would have used the local self service car wash to pressure wash and wax the car in 6 minutes, leaving wheels in sad shape and a poor wax job.

The point? I always used to like spiffing up my cars. Now that I can afford a beautiful turbo all wheel drive swedish rocket ship, this is a car that deserves to be pampered.

And if it saves me money, lowers my blood sugar and keeps me from deteriorating, maybe, just maybe, I might have been pampering myself.