My journey with Exercise

Since I have come a long long way fitness wise, I thought I should do a post that would capture my exercise routine so far.

When I embarked on weight loss this time, I was freshly recovering from a caesarean and fractures of both feet. I weighed nearly 101 kilos in September 2010 and I desperately had to lose weight. I also attracted far too many unsolicited advices upon what I should do for weight  loss, lots of sympathy for having attained morbid obesity and basically felt like the worst person alive.

It was the Scientist who figured that the best way out for me would be to have a basic elliptical bike at home that I could work out on at my own convenience! It was also be easy on my joints. We bought one from the BSA store that costed us about 8000 Rs. I started with using it for 15 mins and gradually moved up to 45 minutes a day until I had lost about 15 kgs. I added a bit of yoga and pilates to it as I went by. Since I had just had the baby, the weight came off pretty fast and I reached 85 kg in about 12 months.

Slowly I grew so bored of using the elliptical bike and found that I was losing slower than I had been. That's when I went through a dilemma of whether or not to join a gym. I finally made the decision in January 2012, began with a month long membership and then extended for a year. I did not like weight training initially, but later grew rather fond of it, because it made me feel strong and sculpted my body well.

Soon I engaged a personal trainer who was giving me excellent strength training sessions. I loved the feeling of pushing myself till the last repetition, where my body was begging to give up. 

I also took aerobics classes because, I loved dancing to beats. The group was fun too!

In between all this I once did a 5k on the treadmill. I was surprised. With that started my desire to run longer distances out in the open. Bangalore has such fine weather and scenic parks and roads that make running a complete pleasure during almost every season. Initially I experienced some knee pain after running. Now most of the pain has disappeared, though I feel the pain on days like today when I did a 6k. I know the pain will be gone tomorrow.

In June, I was mostlly out of town and ran about 4 times a week to keep up with my work outs. This month I am trying to scale up the exercise a bit and have been taking classes at my gym in addition to running out doors. I went to a spinning class, which kicked my butt, but I did not like. I also went to a body combat class, which again I did not like much. I am going to try out cross fit today. The pamphlet says that its for intermediate to advanced levels of fitness, and I think I may be fit enough to join!

I have also restarted Bharatanatyam with a well established Guru and who knows I might be able to do satge shows once again! <<<fingers crossed!>>>

So for anyone who started reading me of late, that's how my journey on fitness has been. Can I share a secret? I find now a days that my body hurts and my joints and muscles feel really wierd when I don't exercise for two days in a row. That's how addicted I have become to exercise. But lemme tell you - it still is as difficult for me to get my butt out of the warm bed and out of the house to exercise as it was in the beginning of my journey! I feel tempted to curl up and stay put. I have many arguments in my mind. But once I'm out, I'm on a roll!

What do you guys do for exercise?