A Thinking Person's Weight Loss & Exercise Program

Mary Loses Weight by Exercising

Laura Benson R.N.

 Look at me

I am like you or anyone else, smart, sensible, busy, and trying to stay healthy.  But I was not able to keep to my exercising routines enough to maintain my weight or fitness where I wanted it to be.  This story is how I used my intelligence to solve a personal problem.  I am writing it down hoping that you can see how you can do the same.  The problem I worked on or the specific steps may not be the same for you.  But the general approach should be.  Through my story you can see how you can do it too.

My story will tell you where I started, how I was already exercising but it wasn’t enough.  I was so frustrated that I was putting in time and effort not accomplishing the results that I wanted.  It seemed to work for everyone else around me.  Well, at least it seemed to work for all of those walkers, joggers, bikers, roller-bladers, and “gym people” who look fabulous all of the time, and they seem to have never-ending time, motivation and energy for their workouts.

              You will see how I started to look at my exercise habits differently, by looking at all of my daily routines and patterns, not just the exercise pieces.  You can do this too, for whatever habit you are trying to change for the better.  It could be dieting or de-cluttering , quitting smoking, spending more time with your family, decreasing your overtime at work, or really any type of personal improvement project.  It is the process of thinking through the problem and the solution that count, not what the problem is.  I will show you how writing things down helped me to see things in a new way.  I used some tools to look at habits from different angles.  I got help from the people around me, at home, at work, and from my friends.  They had some good ideas, and they could tell me when I wasn’t seeing things totally clearly.

 I made a plan to change my exercise patterns and put it into motion.  I was skeptical about my ability to achieve great success, but I was also excited about some of the insights and revelations that I had gained by really studying my habits and routines.  Once I got started, there were some bumps in the road, some relapses, and some plans just didn’t work at all.  My feet hurt when I started walking a lot more, so I had to invest in some better walking shoes.   I’d get up early in the morning to exercise, and in my head the little voice would say, “I don’t THINK so!”  But in trying new routines and changes, some things DID work – I made some progress.  My weekly exercise time totals started going up, not all of the time, but some of the time.  My weight started slowly inching down, and my clothes got looser.  People were asking about my exercise and my progress.    I had something good to report.  Finally I was starting to feel some rewards for my efforts. 

              Seeing results gave me confidence in the process I was using, and to stick with it.  It HAS stuck for many months now, and I have even more to tell you about it.  I am still learning and improving my exercise habits.  As I write this, I see things I didn’t see even through all of these months.  I enjoy my exercise a lot more now.  It doesn’t feel like work – I am having fun with it.  I want to do it.  It is one of the easiest and most preferred parts of my daily routine now.  I am writing this to share this experience so that you can see that change is not so hard, and if you do it right, it can last.

I was defeating myself

I was exercising regularly, at least two or three times a week.  I swam laps.  I rowed with an indoor crew class.  Sometimes I went to the weight room.  I walked my dog several times a day.  Occasionally I went rafting or hiking or biking.  My job requires me to walk all over the building, up and down stairs, all day long.  Some people don’t exercise at all, and here I was, very active and trying hard to stay in good shape.  It didn’t seem right that making a real effort wasn’t enough.  It seemed like I was trying harder only to lose ground. 

On weekends I could exercise more, for longer periods, because I had more time.  This sometimes made me sore though.  Then when I was sore, I would skip exercise for a few days.  The other thing that happens with episodes of intense exercise is injury.  Last year I even had a month of physical therapy for a serious strain.    Physical therapy was helpful because I learned the value of stretching.  Before this episode I hurt my back on a stair stepper.  For two weeks I could barely move much less exercise.  The lesson here was not to do a lot of something brand new until your body adjusts to it.  I began to feel like I couldn’t even exercise when I had the time on weekends if I kept getting injured.  This was a clue that I needed to spread out my exercise more – to do it more frequently for shorter periods.  I needed more variation too, so that I had some cross-training.  I can look back now and see these things because I took a very detailed look at the “process” of my exercise routines, and then the outcomes.  I did not see these things at the time.  I was trying hard, but not being smart about it.

My weight would not come down, despite all of this activity.  I felt like I was fighting just to keep it stable.  I gained about twenty pounds during my thirties, despite regular exercise.  A doctor told me in my mid-thirties that my body was changing.  He said that the same type and amount of exercise would not maintain a stable weight as I got older.  This was news to me, even though I am a nurse, and unwelcome news at that. 

My colleagues and friends did not think I was overweight.  They said things like, “You exercise all the time – you have to be in great shape,” or “You have nothing to complain about.”   I knew differently.  I knew what I looked like in the mirror, and I knew what I used to look like.  I could see weight changes in photographs even over the past two years.  I was wearing looser clothes, and I am tall, both of which maybe hid the weight.  I had to buy larger clothes and could not fit into things I wanted to buy, which made shopping really unpleasant! 

When I started this project, I went for a body composition analysis to help me see where I was and where I should be.  The printout said I had 34% body fat, well above the recommended maximum of 28%.  I needed to lose 23 pounds.  A height and weight chart confirmed the same thing.  This was not news to me, but I also knew that dieting had never worked for me.  Will power and motivation were not enough to get me results.  Plus dieting always felt like punishment to me.  I told the woman at the body composition analysis that I wanted to lose the weight through exercise.  She smiled and said that would take a very long time.  I smiled back and told her I was going to do it anyway.  But I had to figure out how to get more effective results from my exercise routines. 

I had to study my exercise and lifestyle routines.  It was important to make some improvements without making it harder.  I will tell you how I went from exercising to get nowhere to exercising more, losing weight, and achieving better overall fitness.  I will tell you how I got smarter and more efficient in my efforts.

Picking a goal

It took some time to figure out what my goal really was.  I wanted to lose weight.  I also wanted to do it through exercise, because I like exercise. Exercise really helps me manage stress.  It gets me outdoors more and I sleep better.  I even eat better (that means healthier) when I am exercising a lot.  Some of you know this already, that when you are huffing and puffing and sweating, that junk food you had for lunch suddenly does not help at all.   I also wanted to avoid injury.  This meant I needed to improve my overall fitness level.  So as I looked at all of these intentions, I realized that losing weight alone would not achieve all of these benefits.  While I thought that losing weight was my primary goal, writing all of these things down showed me I was wrong.  It was EXERCISE, in the right formula of amount, frequency and type that needed to be the focus.   This was the one thing that would lead me toward all of the other things I have listed.  So I settled on a goal of increasing my total exercise time each week, and doing so included increasing frequency, not just total time.

                I did not set a specific goal, but for some of you, it might be helpful to do so.  I knew that overall improvement in my total time exercising would be reinforcing enough to me in all of the areas I have mentioned.  I also do not do well with self-improvement when I feel pressure, such as needing to meet a defined goal.  I do better with small, observable gains that I can see through writing things down.   It was later on for me, once I achieved some success, that I set more of a maintenance goal for my exercise routines.    When you make your plan for change, you need to consider what you know about yourself, and what works best for you.  You can learn something about this while you analyze your habits.

Writing things down helped me focus

In order to figure out how to change my exercise habits, I had to pinpoint what they were at the time.  I started to write things down. I did this before I tried to make any changes.  I made a chart that included the date, day of the week, type of exercise, time of day, how many minutes, any changes in weight, and whether I did it alone or with other people.  These were just the things I was interested in looking at for myself.   Writing it down made me start to really think about my exercise routines, and to break them into smaller parts.  A sample of this log is shown below.

This became my personal exercise log.  I have kept it up for the past nine months.  Early on it was really interesting to see my efforts written down.  It gave the whole process a new meaning to be able to see it on paper.  It made the work that I was doing more tangible, more real.  I hoped it would show me what was happening between my weight and my exercise time.  I hoped it would show me patterns in my exercise routines.  There were some surprises to come! 

In the beginning I did not exercise every day.  The first benefit of writing things down was the difficulty putting a ZERO for any given day.  Putting down a zero did not help me get to my goal.  I could see that right away.  Occasionally putting down a zero did feel okay when I could see a lot of exercise time logged around it.  I could also see the effort I was making.  I could see that even 15 minutes a day added up into the weekly total.  It looked like a lot more on paper than it seemed to be in my daily routine.  This was a good reinforcement.  I could also look at how much I was varying my exercise, and how much it looked the same day after day.  One of the things I needed to do was to vary it more to decrease injuries from doing the same activity repetitively.  Plus, if I was to exercise even more, I needed to make it more interesting.  There are only so many times you can do the same thing over and over, all of the time. 

I know that you, the reader, may not be familiar with the particular charts or tools or measurements that I am using.  SO stay with me anyway, because the secret of my success is not in these tools, but the process that you have read elsewhere in this book.  There are many on-line tools that can help you do flow charts or diagrams.  And when you have nothing else, pen and paper works just fine. 

I figured out what keeps me from exercising more - I saw myself in a new way

                Setting a goal of trying to increase my exercise time seemed like a good start.  But I also believed that I had no more time in the day or in the week to fit in more exercise.   I also used to think that lack of enough motivation and other priority obligations kept me from exercising more.  Now I see the whole exercise process differently.

                My life is full of routines.  Working, eating, sleeping, and other daily habits affected me and my time.  Socialization, household responsibilities, recreation, errands, and family obligations all seemed like priorities.  I wanted to know how all of these life routines affected my exercising.  Because I thought time was a big issue, I looked at how I used my time throughout the day.  I chose to look at weekdays because they are the most routine and the tightest on time.  I wrote down my daily schedule in a general way.  Even though I knew the things I did every day, accounting for my time was hard to do on paper.  It made me really have to think about my routines.   Again I found that writing things down helped me see things and think about them in a different way.  My daily schedule is shown below.        

   Right away I could see places where my use of time was fuzzy.  Staying in bed in the morning and listening to the radio was a habit that was hard to explain.  The breakfast period looked to be a potential time for more exercise.  However, I argued with myself that early mornings have never been good for me for exercise.  More than any other time, this is when my body and that little voice in my head would say, “I don’t THNIK so!”  In the past, I had tried running, swimming, and rowing on equipment early in the morning, and it was harder work than usual and I couldn’t do it as well.  So I stopped trying.  Still, it was a potential time slot.  My lunchtime at work was a time I saw potential for running errands, or taking care of small tasks that I usually do in the evening.   So while I was not finding exercise time here, I was looking at my time management of other routines that affected my exercise time.   In writing down my schedule, I had a hard time deciding what time I usually left work.  This was important because it pointed out that I did not routinely leave on time. 

                The early evening was a hectic time between exercising the dog and getting some dinner.  This was an area where I eventually realized that I might be able to get some help from a roommate.  If my roommate could take responsibility for one of these tasks, then I could do the other simultaneously.  This would save about an hour on even a couple of days a week.  The other thing I saw here was that once I had dinner, it limited my ability to do certain types of exercise.  Who wants to exercise on a full stomach?  This was actually a big realization for me, because I am the type of person who really needs to eat on schedule, at regular times.  I had an ulcer ten years ago and regulating meal times had helped me heal it.  I also cannot go long periods without eating, so I could not postpone dinner until late evening without snacking around 5:00-6:00pm, especially if I was going to exercise.  And if I ate dinner too late, I would get indigestion when I went to bed.  So, another revelation came to me about how my eating times and habits directly affected my exercise routines.

Then, the biggest chunk of time that was hard to describe was the 8:00-9:30pm period.  I really had no routines during this time, so I just sort of drifted between the TV and the phone and the computer.  In thinking about it, I realized that once I sit down in front of the TV, I rarely get up again.  And it didn’t even matter what was on TV.  I had one or two shows a week that I watched regularly, but otherwise I was just watching whatever was on, even if I didn’t enjoy it.  Now I will not fault anyone for having some “down time” that is unstructured and relaxing.  But when I looked at my written daily schedule, I had two chunks of  “down time”, one in the early morning plus the one in the evening.  I would never have seen this without the written schedule to help me think about my daily routines.

Looking at my daily routines and habits on paper showed me all of these things.  They may seem simple or obvious, but I was not aware of how they interacted until I had to think about it and write it down.  Once I could see the interactions, I could look for places to make changes in the whole “system” of my daily routines and habits.  Forcing myself to look at my routines on paper also helped me stop blaming myself for lack of progress.  I could begin to see how I could manipulate my time or my environment in ways I couldn’t see without writing it down.  

I figured out what was helping and what was getting in the way  

Looking at my daily schedule was only one way of looking at my problem.   It helped me to identify things that got in the way of exercise for me.   Another way to look at my exercise habits was to try to identify things that help me to exercise more.  There are many ways to do this part of problem solving. The simplest way for me  as to make a list of things that I think help me to exercise.  This was where I started, but it does not really define any patterns.  I tried to do a flowchart with boxes and arrows, but it just got too complicated.  So I went back to my list and started to look for themes or groupings.

                When I looked at my list of things that help me exercise, I could sort of see three areas or groupings or categories: things that affected my time, motivation factors or benefits, and environment or equipment factors.  So I made three columns.  Then I listed the things that fit in each category.  I even thought of more things to add while I was making the chart.  Again, having to think about it enough to write it down in words, and then seeing it on paper helped me to see a bigger picture than I had in my head.  You can see my chart below.

What I found was that I could list a lot more things that lead me to exercise than I those could think of as obstacles.  This really surprised me, because the barriers and obstacles had seemed so big.  Listing things that helped also led me to look beyond the scheduling issues.  I could see other factors in my life that relate to my exercise.   For example, mealtimes could either help or hinder my ability to exercise, regardless of whether I had the time to exercise.  My short commute to work really provided extra time for exercise that most other people did not have.  The availability and proximity of recreation centers, parks and trails could provide variety and atmosphere.

Attending a scheduled class with others was a help to me.  I did this with my rowing.  This is a good strategy to ensure that exercise happens.  You look forward to seeing other people in class and watching your skills and performance improve measurably over time.  You have an instructor who coaches you in your form and performance to help you improve.  Plus you paid your money so you have “invested” in the class – you have an additional incentive to attend regularly.

I got help from others

With all of these charts and lists and diagrams I had a lot more information about my exercise habits than when I started out.  I had looked at my exercise habits in several new ways, which had helped me see everything in a bigger picture.  Wow – I thought I was almost done figuring this all out.  But you know, I was the only person looking at this problem.

I started talking to others around me about my exercise habits and how I wanted to improve them.  I shared my exercise successes and failures.  I talked about never having enough time.  My housemate made an important observation.  It seemed that when I leave exercise time to fit in if there’s time at the end of the day, it often gets “skipped”.  It is so easy to stay busy and fill the time, until you are exhausted at the end of the day.  Exercise is the LAST thing you feel like doing then, even if you have the time.  This was happening on both weekdays and weekends.  My housemate’s observation led me to think about planning and scheduling my exercise times more in advance.  On nights when I had my rowing class, this was not an issue.  But especially for non-routine days when I had school or a social event, I started to look ahead. I began planning when I could exercise on those days instead of waiting to see if I could fit it in on the fly.

My housemate also suggested simplifying dinners.  One of my strengths is that I like to eat nutritiously, but this had me always doing the cooking myself and trying to cook dinner each night during the week.  This did not work well with exercising the dog and exercising myself during the evening – there just wasn’t enough time for everything!  Needing to make dinners easier was like a light bulb turning on.  I explored some ideas about getting take-out food or pre-prepared food for some weeknights.  This was an additional expense – take-out food, especially when it is not fast food, can be costly.  It was affordable for me though, so I increased the frequency to a couple nights a week.  Another change I made was to cook something on Sunday that would provide leftovers for a night or two during the week.  Both of these ideas turned out to be a big help time-wise without compromising nutrition.  These are not big things either, but they made a big difference in decreasing how pressured I was feeling time-wise.

I talked to a co-worker about my desire to improve my exercise habits.  She was amazed that I thought I needed to improve.  She thought that I exercised a lot already, and she was one of those people who insisted that I was not overweight.  But she also knew that exercise helps me manage stress and weight and fitness, and that those things are very important to me.  I explained to her about wanting to do more but not being able to find the time.  The first thing she said to me was, “Try leaving work on time.”  She knew that I often stay late, and she pointed out that she has to leave to pick up a child, and that helps her get out on time.  She began reminding me about leaving work on time shortly thereafter.

Another thing my coworker helped me with was really just a surprise observation I made after talking to her about her daily schedule and time management.  She often ran errands during her lunch hour because she didn’t have time to do them in the evening due to kid’s activities.  You will remember that I walk to work – it had never occurred to me to go anywhere from work because I did not have my car.  Yet it was easy to bring my car to work, or to walk home and get it.  Another light bulb – I could go to the bank, dry cleaner, drug store, Post Office etc. during the workday.  I have since gotten so good at this that I can do most of my Saturday morning errands during one weekday lunch hour, and if I go at 11:00 or 1:00, the traffic is far less than Saturday, saving substantial time.  I even sometimes can fit in an errand in the early morning before work now!  I used to do errands on my way to and from work when I drove, but I had totally forgotten this option due to changes in jobs and my daily routines over time.  This is important because the simplest things are sometimes the least obvious. 

Other people know and share our habits with us.  They will also be affected by changes we make in our habits in order to achieve improvement.  It is important to get their opinions to help analyze the problem and to implement changes.  My housemate shares more of the play times with my dog, and shares cooking responsibilities more frequently now.  He has also started using the rowing machine and he enrolled in a yoga class.  He attributes his exercise in part to watching me achieve successes and feel better with my own program.

I found that it is also important to talk to others who demonstrate success with the habit you are trying to improve.  They will share their knowledge and experiences, and they are the experts!  I used my rowing and mountain-biking instructors for this.  They are both fitness nuts!  It really helps to hear their successes and failures along the way to becoming good at what they do.  They told me about equipment, stretching, training schedules, cross-training, preventing injury, and last but not least, how to keep it fun.  They also both talked about how having children had cut into their exercise time, and how they had to make daily routine adjustments to maintain their exercise schedules.  One rows together with his son now, and the other became a bicycle commuter.  They both teach the activities they love, so they earn additional income while doing the activity they enjoy most.                

I made a plan to change my daily routines

Seeing my daily schedule on paper allowed me to see that this problem is not so overwhelming.  It does not look as rushed as it feels to live it every day.  It did not look so challenging to intervene.  When I think about my busy days, it seems overwhelming about where to begin to make a change.  In my head I cannot imagine where I even have any control to make a change.  It feels more like my time controls me.  When I see my daily schedule on paper, I feel like I have control over just about all of it.

                I looked at my schedule and the “down times”.  I also looked at the barriers to exercise I had identified, like time, injuries, responsibilities, and priorities.  My list of what leads to exercise had turned out to be longer than things that got in the way.  I tried to identify some areas that I thought I could realistically make some changes.  These are listed below.

                When I looked at this list, I really, really doubted that any of these individual things would make a big difference.  They looked too simple and too obvious.  Most of them were things I had tried on occasion before.  This is an important concept.  Trying things once in awhile does not lead to permanent change, and it usually depends upon motivation.   You need to build change permanently into your daily routines, so that your whole set of habits and routines changes.   My plan included ALL of these simple changes, in combination.  When one of them didn’t happen, such as leaving work on time, all of the others were still present to support the change.  And not all of them ended up contributing to success.  I still rarely exercise in the early morning.  But the option is there in my thinking, so when I have a very busy day coming up and I am trying to pre-schedule exercise, that option is available and I use it occasionally.  Sometimes I still cook, and I only run errands at lunch when I need to.  The point is, I do not let these things interfere with my exercise anymore.  I recognized the patterns between them and now I control how that plays out.

Scheduling exercise times turned out to help a lot, instead of trying to fit it in.  I just mentioned one example, when I know I have a really busy or long day coming up.  Another aspect of pre-scheduling was planning exercise times earlier in the day, especially on weekends.  Previously I felt I had to get all of my errands and chores and schoolwork done before I could afford time to exercise.  I was treating exercise as a luxury, which is sort of bizarre when you think of how critical it is to your overall health and longevity!  On a Saturday or Sunday, I began exercising in late morning or early afternoon.  I actually had fun during my exercise, and I have finally stopped feeling guilty about that.  I also found that everything else that has to get done gets done by the end of the day.  The other things can wait. 

One of the easiest parts of the plan, starting to WALK for exercise, made the quickest difference in my total exercise time.  I think one of the reasons is that it is so convenient.  I did not have to get in the car and go somewhere to exercise.  I did not always even have to change clothes to do it.  I could just step out my front door, at any time of day or night, and walk a half-hour loop through the neighborhood.  This also gave me time to think and time to enjoy the outdoors.  Even in the winter and the summer when weather is extreme, you can always go for a walk.  And if you think that just walking would not make much difference, walking accounted for the majority of my exercise time early on when I lost the most weight. 

Changing my own routines also affected others, and for example, I had to negotiate and compromise about cooking and dog exercising.  Sometimes I cannot go out and do the kind of exercise I would choose that day, because I only have enough time for a quick 30-minute walk or the rowing machine.  I have to coordinate dog coverage for my rowing class nights, but I also agree to be home for the dog on nights that my housemate has class.  The point I am making is that my plan took some time and modification to implement.  I did not do it all in one swoop.  It took some tweaking, to build on what was working and to discard the rest.  Most of my obvious changes happened during the evening, but I still believe that the combination of all of the changes utilized together is what worked.  Adding in the walking made an immediate and significant impact because it was convenient, quick, and easy to do any time of the day, even after meals.  You will read later about some other adjustments I made along the way.   I keep learning about the whole process, and I am still making changes nine months later, building on what I know now.

I measured my progress

                Before I was ready to implement my plan, I had been exercising an average of 13 minutes/day.  This represented my two or three days per week for 20-30 minutes per session, averaged out over the 7-day week.  I did not set a specific goal for improvement, but I very much wanted to observe for improvement over time.  So I continued to keep my log daily.  The chart below shows you how I did over the 42 weeks.

                You can see that in the first few weeks, it looks like I made some improvement in my exercise time by increasing from about 13 to about 20-some minutes per day.  Something about my plan was working.  However, then you will see in weeks 6-15, my average time dropped at times, even almost back to the 13 min./day where I started.  One reason was that I got the flu one of those weeks (week 12).  I can see this in my notes when I look back, so while it looks “bad” on the graph, I know it was not a process failure.  Another thing I see in my notes is that weeks 14 and 15 were at Christmas time, when a lot of additional activities and tasks disrupted my routine schedule.

Another really interesting observation relates to the increase in average exercise time between weeks 16-34.  Although I had lost 10 pounds during the first ten weeks with less exercise, I did not lose significant weight during this period of significant increase in exercise time.  You will see my weight loss chart later in the results section.  In fact,  my weight loss hit a downward trend after the first 6 weeks.  This baffled me, and I began to wonder again whether this process was really going to work in the

long-run.  It seemed that I had maximized my benefits and hit a plateau.  Even though I was putting in more time and continuing to increase my exercise time, which met my overall goal, the weight thing was bothering me.  I had already dropped a clothing size with the first ten pounds, but I wanted and needed to lose more weight.

Some of you may already know or be able to guess what happened during this time.  Even though I was not losing weight, my clothes continued to get looser, and I felt really good.  Later on you will see data to show that I was decreasing body fat and building muscle during this seemingly long period.   I even bordered on dropping another clothing size, even though I was not losing weight.  I want you to hear this and pay attention.  If I had given up then because I could not see all of the results I wanted, I would not be where I am now.  It is so important to not believe all of your perceptions.  This is why writing things down and studying all of the different pieces of information can help you see the process more clearly.  It was critical for me to see that my EXERCISE TIME was maintaining a good improvement.  While I was not seeing weight loss, I WAS seeing better stress management, good health through the winter, and  improvements in my athletic performance. .  Logically this told me that improvement was happening, and subjectively I felt it.

Relapses are opportunities for problem solving

                During the time when I seemed to stop losing weight, I wondered if I had somehow fallen into old habits.  My exercise times though, as I mentioned, were showing and sustaining noticeable improvement.  Earlier in my process, though, when I was first implementing my plan, I had some problems.  I was not so concerned about exercising every day, but sometimes I was not exercising for more than one day in a row.  I could still show overall improvement and some weight loss, so I could have said “So what”.  But these lapses told me that the system changes I had planned were not always working.   If I did not notice and pay attention to this, the problems would interfere with long-term success.   What I will call “sometimes solutions” were not much better than relying on motivation.

                One tool I used to look at the lapses is a chart that you can see below.  It shows time in-between exercise, in days. 

You can see the times where I skipped a day, and the times where I skipped two days.  The solid line shows a statistical calculation that determines what is the worst that can be expected based on my own historical patterns.  For me, based on my exercise log, more than 1.6 days was a relapse.  You can see that I had some relapses early on.  Mostly these had to do with not pre-scheduling my exercise during really busy times.  Or in some cases, I pre-scheduled, but it didn’t work.  As you know all too well, things do not always go as planned.  It was just as good to see, though, that skipping one day of exercise was not a relapse into old habits.  This was such a relief, to know that there was room in the process for variation.  This meant that it should work most of the time if I had made the right changes, but it did not have to be 100% perfect all of the time.  This goes with most everyone’s reality, where nothing goes as planned 100% of the time.

                As I have said before, it is not so important that you use the same tools or measurements.  It is nice to know that they exist.  What is more important is that you write down and look at your data to measure your progress.  Do not jump to conclusions or think that you know what everything means for sure. 

I kept learning and making adjustments-

In reviewing my log, I could see that I was continuing to exercise for more time on Saturdays and Sundays than weekdays, but I was usually doing a couple of different activities instead of just one for a long time.  In looking at this, I realized that there was no reason I needed to limit myself to one activity on a weekday, or even one episode of exercise.  Funny thing, I had just figured that if I did one activity every day, that was enough.  And it was enough, but there was no reason to limit to one if I happened to have time for more. 

  I could also see patterns of zeros on days I had school in the evening, or any other type of social commitment.  Although some zeros were ok, I did start to plan better for these days.  Now I actually will plan to walk in the morning on these days.  I found that walking in the morning is actually pleasant, and an exercise I can tolerate at that time of day.  So now I do it sometimes even if I still plan to exercise in the evening.  It especially helps me relax if I am anticipating a particularly stressful day at work.

                I got a bit bored with swimming and rowing and walking.  Although I really do enjoy these three things, when you are doing them all of the time, constantly, they lose something.  One of the things I did was to start swimming at different community centers, not the same one all of the time.  I now have a new favorite.  I also found some new places to walk.  I found a park close by that had a 4.5-mile trail around a  lake in the woods, and I started walking there once a week.  Pretty quickly I could walk the whole trail in 70 minutes without being sore afterward.  That 70 minutes is a satisfying recording in my log, and the walk itself is really beautiful, which has other benefits.

 It was also at the park that I saw a flyer for a biking class.  I had a bicycle that I only rode once a year at the beach.  It was in my basement all along and it never occurred to me to get it out and ride it.  I signed up for a class called “Biking for Fitness” to get back into it, and to learn maintenance for safety reasons.  It turned out to be a mountain biking class, and I loved riding trails and learning skills like jumping curbs and how to ride on off-trail paths and terrain.  Believe me, I would have NEVER predicted this for myself!  Now I am buying a mountain bike and I will probably join a local cycling group.

When my indoor rowing teacher offered a new course rowing on the water, I made a decision to try it.  I hated to give up the indoor rowing class, but with school and my dog, I could not be out every evening of the week.  I also had a rowing machine at home, which I could use more often.  This would actually save time driving to class and back.  So I started rowing in a two-person scull on a local river.  Rowing (on equipment or on the water) is a great exercise because you use all of your major muscle groups, but there is no weight bearing on your joints.  You can also see your progress by measuring your times as they improve.  Rowing and biking are both activities that you can do at any age.  I will tell you though, that I am 43-years-old as I take up mountain biking and sculling, and some people in my life are convinced that I have lost my mind!  I tell them I have found new challenges, new skills, and new fun!

I mention these things because I never would have believed I would be doing these things!  But looking at my routines, setting goals for more exercise, and learning as I went along opened my eyes to my community and all of the possibilities out there.  Especially the rowing and mountain biking came from searching local resources (through the county and park service to see what was available, and just picking some things that sounded interesting to me.  In the past I have taken yoga, deep-water aerobics, and weight room orientation classes this way as well.  There are many resources available that do not cost as much as joining a health club.  I also did each of these things for awhile, and then moved on to something else.

Activity also has to be broadened if you want to sustain it over time.  The more I varied my exercise, the more I looked forward to each individual activity because I couldn’t do them all as often as I wanted.  I also had more to choose from on any given day based on my schedule, the weather, and how I was feeling.  Besides more types of exercise, the recreational components of each exercise have become important.  There are days I hike the lake because I just need to get away from everybody and everything.  Other days I bike by the river so I can see all of the other bikers, roller-bladers, boaters, soccer players, and so on.  Adding other exercises has changed my overall environment for the better.

It worked - I got results

                Now we have come to the part that I cannot wait to tell you!  Some of this information I have only just learned myself in preparing it for you, the reader.  I have known all along, from the beginning nine months ago, that I was making improvements.  I could see in my log that my exercise times were increasing, that I had fewer days between exercise, that I was losing weight, and that I was varying my exercise more.  These were all things I wanted to accomplish.  It was really, really important to be able to see these things as I went along.  Also during this time I dropped two clothing sizes, one in the first ten weeks, and the other since then when my weight did not drop as dramatically.  My bathing suit even became too big, an experience I can’t remember ever having in my whole life!

                Below you can see a chart that shows you my weights over time, as I recorded them in my log three times per week.  You can see that I have lost up to 15 pounds over the past 42 weeks (or about 10 months).  The solid line shows you the trends in the dots, how I lost quickly at first and then leveled off.  Recently I have started to lose weight again.  When I see my weight recordings graphed like this, even I am amazed at how dramatic it looks!  In my log I could see the changes, but this is the bigger picture of what I have accomplished.  Even for now, it is great to see the plateau end and the weight decrease start again, because I want to lose a total of 23 pounds to put me into the average weight range for my height.

I had honestly expected to lose more weight by now doing all of this exercise, but I will keep going.  I cannot complain about dropping two clothing sizes and feeling great!  And you have to remember, I am not a dieter.  If I could have dieted with the exercise, you can only imagine where I might be with my weight, and it would have happened faster.  Now I would tell you, however, that I probably don’t need to diet since I have found another way that works for me.

You will remember that losing weight was only one part of my plan, albeit an important part!  Next I have charted for you some other measurements that I took along the way, so that you can see more of my results.

                You can see how I started at 2.5 days of exercise per week and ended at almost 6 days per week.  Along the same lines I went from an average of 13 min./day to 32 min./day.  You will recall that I did not set a specific goal for increasing my exercise time, but it has more than doubled.  I am pointing this out because you will also recall that my biggest problem, I thought, was not having enough time to exercise!  You should also see that the biggest increase came in the first 10 weeks of my exercise program.  This points to the systems and process changes I made.  Making some changes in my routines worked pretty quickly, which means they were some of the right changes.  The fact that these changes have sustained over time has made exercise easier for me, not hard.  Exercise is a regular part of my day now, not something I am trying to fit in.

While I lost about 12 pounds in weight between body composition analyses, I lost 15.1 pounds in body fat.  This was definitely a surprise result.  The nutritionist who performed my test said that I had a 3.5 pound increase in muscle mass, as measured by body water content.  This was not part of my plan, but it turned out to be a really cool outcome!  In fact, probably even more dramatic than my weight change was my change in body fat, from 34% to 28%!  That is HUGE.  It also put me into the upper end of the normal range for my age and height and weight. 

                Body Mass Index (BMI) is another way to look at weight.  1998 Federal guidelines describe a BMI of 20-24 as healthy, 25-29.9 as overweight, and over 30 as obese.  You can see that I started at 26.5 and progressed downward to 24.9, which is still a little high.  This measurement does not show as dramatic a change as the change in body fat, but it is a very easy measure to obtain.  You can even go on the internet, put in your height and weight, and it will be calculated for you.

                My rowing times may not mean a lot to you, but they are just as important to me as everything else you see on the chart.   A decrease in rowing time is good – it means that you went the same distance faster.  My 10-month rowing time above is a personal best, and I have been rowing for almost 3 years now!  That means I have almost 3 years of time test results for comparison.  My times have fluctuated up and down, especially due to injury.    Although you may say that there are only a few seconds of improvement, the better you get, the harder it is to improve your performance, even by seconds.  Reaching a personal best time now, without increasing my rowing activity, tells me that I am in better condition with my strength and endurance.  My overall fitness level has improved.  I would attribute this to losing weight, more cross-training, and more time spent exercising.  I have also not had an injury that has kept me from exercise since I started this program.  There are days when I might be sore from exercise the previous day, or my feet hurt from walking, but I just do a different type of exercise those days.  I believe this is another indication of my overall fitness.  In the beginning I said I wanted to avoid strain and injury, and to improve my athletic performance.  My results make me very happy in these areas.   I cannot tell you how amazed I am to see all of these results for myself!

I kept it going

                Even more than the results, I am most surprised that I could keep the exercise going all of this time.  I was skeptical that little things like when I ran errands or how often I cooked dinner could permanently impact my ability to exercise.  Remember, I was the person who barely had time to exercise for 20-30 minutes a couple times each week.  It was always a struggle to fit it in, often it got skipped, and I could not lose weight even when I did exercise.  You will also recall that despite these things, others thought I had my exercise under control, and that I was not overweight. 

Now that I am doing more than double the exercise, it’s not harder than before, but easier!  In fact, my other daily routines fit around my exercise and support it rather than getting in the way.  This is the key to keeping it going.  You have to really, really, LOOK at all of your systems and routines to discover the important relationships between them.  That is where you gain the control.  Motivation is a good thing and it helps, but it is never enough to get you everything you want.  In order to make and keep a permanent change, you have to find the right changes to make.  The right changes for you will be different than the next person. 

My changes have kept coming.  Even as I write this for you to read, I have had to think about this process again, looking at the data and the results.  Now I am working on establishing some regular schedules for varying my exercise.  I am still rowing on the water, but it has been really hard work and much more challenging than I had expected.  I have thought about quitting at times.  That would be ok, as it isn’t for everyone, but I think the challenge might also be what keeps me doing it.  I feel more able to take on challenges and master new skills now that I have been able to improve my exercise and fitness so much.

                In fact, I feel great.  People around me have watched my progress and asked a lot of questions about how I got such good results.  It is hard to explain this process verbally, especially about how writing things down and looking at them from all different angles helps you see things differently.  That is why I wanted to write my story and share it with you.  I am not so unlike you, and I believe that you can do it too!

This chapter is part of a book that is copyright protected (© 2003 ) by Farrokh Alemi, Ph.D.  It is presented on the web in order to enlist your help in improving it.  Please send your comments to the authors of the chapter or to Dr. Alemi.  If you wish to use portion of the book, please do so with appropriate citation.  This book is part of the course on quality improvement, the project on personal improvement.  This page was drafted first in January 2000.  It was last revised on 09/04/2008.