Commitment to Exercise

Back in May I wrote a post about my healthy way of eating and that I've been following that food plan for 5 years. During the last 5 years I have definitely gotten to a much healthier way of living and I've been at a healthy weight too.

Exercise has never really been a part of my "thing". I play ice hockey but even at my peak I never played more than once per week. Outside of hockey I have not done any other types of exercises. So, the other week I decided that exercise needs to be a part of my weekly schedule. I am getting tired of the flabby skin that has been hanging around as a tribute to the weight I lost and I am tired of my terrible endurance when playing sports. I shouldn't be completely gassed at the end of 1 period of hockey.

In came running. I actually got the itch to start running shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing. For some reason I felt a desire to stick it to the bombers and show them that they didn't scare people away from running. It's taken me a long while since then to actually get my act together but I've finally started to run regularly and I've mapped out some routes to run around my neighborhood. I signed up for a free online service called MapMyFitness and have started to track my workouts there. It even has a really cool iPhone app that tracks my runs via GPS and allows me to share them. Here's an example from my first run logged with MapMyFitness.

In order to help keep myself accountable and to share my workout success with my friends and family I've put a direct link to my MapMyFitness profile in the menu of this site. Notice that at the top of the page there is now a link called Yehuda's Fitness. Please feel free to check it out and see how I've been doing.

I hope to be able to keep up the work and run 2-3 times per week. I have already felt a difference in my endurance when playing hockey since I started running. Hopefully this commitment to not just eating healthy but exercising too will help me reach the fitness and health goals that I want to achieve.

As a parting thought from this post, I challenge all of you who have said "some day I'd like to exercise regularly" to make that day today. Just put on some sneakers and go for a walk, a run, play some basketball at a local park. Do something TODAY to promote better health for LIFE.