Starting the second full week of the 4-Week Walk for Weight Loss, my Day 9 walk will be another round of fat-blasting intervals — one minute of very fast walking, then two minutes of “active rest” walking. And I’ll do that fast/slow cycle a total of three times.
I’m speaking in the future tense here because I haven’t gone for my exercise walk yet today.
You know how it happens? — sometimes, Life gets in the way of your exercise plans.
See, I started out my day with a cup of strong black coffee (a good nutritious breakfast, isn’t it?) and took a dog out for a stroll, intending to check the progress of the harvest in the next-door oat fields, then bring the dog home and do my real walk.
5-10 minute warm-up
1 minute at level 7-8
2 minutes at level 5
(repeat fast/slow cycle x 3)
5-10 minute cool-down
That doesn’t count as exercise, by the way — strolling with a dog who’s totally determined to stop and sniff every clump of weeds or roadside bush as we go! Although it’s somewhat better than sitting around the breakfast table and not moving the body at all…
Anyway, I hadn’t gone more than 200 feet along the road, when I came across an elderly neighbour whose car had gotten a flat tire on the way to church. So I changed her tire and then we had a little chat, leaning on the hood of the car in the morning sunshine, watching little wists of morning mist drift down the river valley…
Back home, I had another cup of coffee and fed the dogs and threw in a load of laundry… and somehow it got to be noontime. Now I’ve got to go out and check the progress in my bee hives while the sun is high and the day as warm as it plans on getting. (September days can be tricky that way.)
But right after that, I’m putting on my headphones and going out for that walk.
Really.
Life can toss a spanner into the best-laid plans — and yes, it’s hard to pick up an exercise program again when you’ve had a day off — but the trick is to keep on going no matter what. I can’t let myself miss even one day’s walking in the four weeks, or it’ll be all the more easy to let the exercise plan slide by the wayside, the next time Life gets a little busy and unpredictable…