The Effect of Motivation on Exercise

Somewhere over the decades I got the screwy idea into my head that it's only exercise if you're wearing exercise clothes and the time slot on your calendar says "work out." And no fair getting anything else accomplished at the same time. Among other sources, I actually read this in some magazine years ago -- that you can't count activities like vacuuming your entire house or gardening as exercise. I found that so discouraging.

I'm an extremely thorough vacuumer, but after that, whenever I vacuumed, even though I was super tired afterwards, I had this underlying awareness that it didn't really count. Good grief, with that in your mind it probably doesn't count -- because I think your psychological state really matters. Now, when I get ready to vacuum, I jump into it as if it were a workout. In fact, next time I do it I'm going to wear the heart monitor and do it as fast as I can. Just watch, next thing you know vacuuming will show up in Sports Illustrated. (Everyone always copies me.)

I used to ride all the way across town several times a week to withdraw into my hidey hole and write. Took me half an hour each way. Nowadays, since I'm always going out to work in Gresham, I don't get over to my hidey hole as much.

The ride to the train to Gresham only takes ten minutes. I'd been feeling horrible about this, and thinking that ten minutes was so short as to be worthless. But according to the heart monitor, even though it's a third the time it's far from worthless. Especially given that I leave the house so late I have to ride like......like my clothes are on fire. Which brings me back to yesterday's theme: Did I say that you'd have to ignite my clothing to get me to move quickly? I meant that I have to have a real reason. The reason can't be something like "See this line? You have to make it over this line ahead of all these other people." That's a fake reason. When I hear that, every molecule in my body answers: "No I don't. If I don't make it over that line, nothing bad will happen."

Whereas, if I didn't get to work on time, undesirable eventualities would occur.

New Toy: Heart Monitor/ Lie Detector

Yes. I finally bought one. Been meaning to try this for a long time. Expensive. but interesting. I'm finding out two things: 1, I'm lazier than I even thought. 2, I actually get quite a lot of exercise in my ordinary daily life.

One thing I've never been is competitive, especially in the physical arena. If someone else wants to get there first, I'll gladly step aside -- it makes absolutely no difference to my self-esteem. The good side is that if you are someone for whom getting there first is a peak experience, you're guaranteed to have one if you exercise with me. The downside is that you'd have to ignite my clothing to get me to move quickly.

This isn't the best situation in terms of getting my heart beating. My resting heart-rate (= on waking up) is about 52. I would love to let you think that this means I'm a great athlete, but in my case it means that : my heart is slow. I try to make myself exercise reasonably hard because I know it's good for the bod. Here's where the heart monitor comes in -- lots of times I'll think I'm working my tail off but when I check the heart monitor it says, "Actually, no, you're not."

I've entered all my settings -- my age and weight and all that -- so it's not that it's comparing me to other people. I've established my "zones" of where I should be in order to burn fuel. The ugly truth is that I'm a slug trapped in the body of a human. Occasionally someone tells me that I look like I'm in shape, and though I thank them, inside I feel like an impostor

But back to the good news:

I've been measuring my rides to and from the MAX station and guess what? That really IS exercise! It really counts. It's short, but I do it four times each work day - home to train, train to work, work to train, and train to home.

Next: Whatever gets your heart beating. (Should I take up coffee?)

Life is so high maintenance

I haven't posted for several days because I’ve been busy. I’ve been writing the article that would not end, the article that kept coming back, the article that would not go away. Among other things.

Life is so high maintenance I can’t even believe it. There are about a hundred things that will fall right into the abyss of doom if you don’t keep on top of them constantly. The most high maintenance thing is the human body, the second most is the human household.

We'll start with the body. The minute you slack off on exercising, every molecule of your body starts to go to hell in a handbasket. And you don’t get to retire. Au contraire, the older you get, the more crucial it becomes. When you’re younger you can slouch for a week, a month, and get away with it. But even though the older you get, the less you feel like it, it is also true that the older you get, the less you can play hooky. You skip three days in a row and you feel like you’ve never exercised in your life.

That is so not right.

The only hope is to make exercising totally fun -- or at least as fun as possible. Hence my biking habit. Totally fun most of the time. A big pain some of the time. There are so many details of life that are tedious, that if you don’t find a way to make them fun they’re just not going to happen. Riding a bike around town is fun. Exerting yourself on a machine that requires an equal amount of work but goes absolutely nowhere is not fun, at least not for me. I am not a hamster and I will not be fooled.

And now the dwelling. If anybody knows how to make cleaning house fun, do tell. The minute you slack off on vacuuming, your house becomes so full of tumbleweeds that you need soccer shoes just to get across a room. Vacuuming is so not fun. It can be improved slightly by obtaining a vacuum cleaner that you love, but still.

If you won't do it for vanity, do it for your mind

OK, the Newsweek website is here. I can’t figure out how to get to that article "Exercise and the Brain" from their website -- it was published last week (March 26), so maybe they don't let you. In case you can’t either, or you don’t have time to read it all, I offer you a few excerpts and paraphrasings.

Keep in mind that these are brand new results they’re talking about, not just the same-old, same-old “exercise makes everything better” stuff that we've known forever. They've figured out (some of) exactly what it makes happen in the brain.

“….vigorous exercise can cause older nerve cells to form dense, interconnected webs that make the brain run faster and more efficiently."

Apparently we need a chemical called “brain-derived neuropathic factor,” sometimes called “Miracle-Gro for the brain."

“With regular exercise, the body builds up its levels of BDNF, and the brain’s nerve cells start to branch out, join together and communicate with each other in new ways. This is the process that underlies learning: every change in the junctions between brain cells signifies a new fact or skill that’s been picked up and stowed away for future use. BDNF makes that process possible. Brains with more of it have a greater capacity for knowledge. On the other hand, [……………..] a brain that’s low on BDNF shuts itself off to new information.

“Most people maintain fairly constant levels of BDNF in adulthood. But as they age, their individual neurons slowly start to die off. Until the mid 90s, scientists thought the loss was permanent – that the brain couldn’t make new nerve cells to replace the dead ones. But animal studies over the last decade have overturned that assumption, showing the “neurogenesis” in some parts of the brain can be induced easily with exercise.

“It’s not just a matter of slowing down the aging process…….It’s a matter of reversing it."

[The article is talking mainly about aerobic exercise. The jury’s still out on whether stretching, toning and weight lifting similarly affect the brain. But if you ask me, it does. How could it not? That’s my scientific opinion, so there. Anyway, all that other stuff makes you do the aerobic exercise better. Read the article. It’ll enhance your commitment to exercise.]

Your Lazy-A Attitude Cured Forever

I only have a couple of minutes to post today but I want to tell you briefly about the most motivating article on WHY YOU SHOULD EXCERCISE I've ever read in my life -- in last week's Newsweek, called Excercise and the Brain. Whew! I'm converted for life! Later when I have more time I'll try to provide you a link to it if it's possible, and if not I'll give you some excerpts. If I don't get to it today, I will tomorrow.

Cyclist bolts from path of mud for fling with slothdom

You might have noticed I haven’t posted in a while. Sometimes people need a break. Then maybe they realize that the slovenly life they thought they coveted isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At which point they’re happy to go back to their nice predictable routine, which was put in place for a reason. Or more likely, a hundred reasons. Now they remember what those reasons were.

The truth of it is, I broke down and drove my car for three days last week. There, I said it.

And it didn’t stop there. Once I’d gone that far, everything really went to hell in a handbasket: On Saturday morning I drove my car to the gym. Stupidest thing in the world, right? Wait. I know what you’re thinking: that after driving to the gym, I spent my gym time on the stationary bicycle, right? Nope. Worse. Are you ready? By the time I got to the gym, the inside of my car was so warm and toasty that I notched the seat back, curled up in a ball, and read a book for an hour. Then I drove home.

Ha!
(So far, you are the only one that knows this.)

Look. The weather has been inhuman. I can’t take this freezing cold, all-permeating wetness. Wednesday I used the excuse that I had to schlep a bunch of heavy and awkward items. Thursday my excuse was that I needed to go to a far-away appointment in the middle of the afternoon which on a bike would have taken forever. Friday evening when I left my hideout it was raining just as hard as it was when I left home that morning, only now it was dark on top of it. Remember the formula Lindi and I came up with? Dark + rain + traffic = no bike. So I felt 90% justified in having brought my car – the missing 10% comes from the fact that I could’ve taken the bus. Which I didn’t feel like. If you’re going to throw all your principles to the wind, you might as well do a complete job of it till you get it out of your system.

After a few days of car life, I remember that I didn’t start this bike thing only for virtuous reasons like saving the planet. Another reason was that I thought it would help with my sleeping problems, which it has. Some of my sleeping problems are that (1) I can’t sleep; (2) I get that notorious “jumpy-leg” syndrome, which means that I feel an overwhelming desire to ferociously drum my heels into the footboard of the bed. Getting rid of the feeling by simply giving into that desire proved to be super unpopular with Lindi, so I had to come up with another strategy. I found that riding my bike for a total of an hour a day almost completely took care of it, and I rarely get it anymore. But by last Friday night, after three days of not riding, jumpy-leg was back -- and my sleep endangered anew.

As a reward, apparently, for my “just say no to this weather” attitude, today is balmy, with sporadic sun through random clouds. It's the kind of day when even the most die-hard car drivers would rather be out on a bike.

As you pedal your way around the city trying not to get killed, here’s a question to ponder till I get back to you: Can an 84 year old man with Alzeimer’s waltz into the DMV and obtain a driver’s license?

We're not that far away

What’s going to happen to these hundreds of Portland cyclists during the next fifty years as our little legs get all used up? Are the city planners paying attention? Hellooo? Widen the bike lanes! We WILL NOT resort to cars!