Exercising & Healthy Lifestyle Habits

Wipe the slate clean in 2019!

It’s the beginning of a New Year and that means we can leave our un-healthy habits and lifestyles behind. Lets embrace the upcoming year with a goal to improve our overall health.

My goal is to make a better effort to stick with, and keep, an exercise routine. I don’t know why I always look for an excuse to avoid working out, because when I do exercise, I feel so much better. I do know that I need to motivate myself. Throughout my life, my so-called routine and motivation efforts varied.

Let’s see… After the birth of my first child, Brittany, I worked out with the Jane Fonda work out tape.  That lasted a bit. Next, I joined Women’s Workout World and found that group exercise class was fun. Later, it was on to Jazzercise classes and then I did step classes. I also tried kickboxing classes, which weren’t really my thing.

Lastly, I discovered yoga, I loved my yoga classes and while I couldn’t always make the live classes, I had a great library of favorite videos that I could play at home. I did yoga for several years until I started having problems with my hips.

After having both hips replaced, it was recommended that I start walking and that is where I’m finding my rhythm right now. When it is too cold to walk outside, I’m lucky enough to have a treadmill at home. I will walk a few miles on the treadmill 2-3 times a week. In nice weather, I prefer to walk outside as I enjoy being around nature.

Exercising & Healthy Lifestyle Habits

Recently, I reached out to my niece, Tammy Sciortino, who is a soft tissue specialist at Recover Sooner. I was seeking advice on what women in my age group need to know to maintain a healthy active lifestyle.

Flexibility
Flexibility is a major concern at our age; tight muscles and tendons lead to extra strain strain on our joints.

Staying Active
Choose a method of cardio that works best for you and stick with it. If we don’t maintain an active lifestyle, we will eventually lose our agility.

Preserve our Bone Density
Preserving Bone Density is of the utmost importance. We need to find a form of moderate weight lifting to keep our bones from becoming brittle.  

It’s also very important to stretch before exercise to warm your body up and of course after to reduce muscle soreness and prevent muscle tension.

When I think about body image and goals for myself, I know this- Perfection is very unrealistic. It also doesn’t conform to my lifestyle.

I just want to keep moving without pain. I know that when I do not stay active, I have stiffness in my joints. Hard core workouts are not for me. I incorporate activities such as golf, walking, stretching, and using weights to stay fit. Of course, this includes good eating habits, which will be addressed in a future blog post.  

How do you prefer to stay active? Any tips that you find useful?