Exercise | Fit and Fortysomething

Good morning and Happy Friday. For those of us who work traditional jobs (Monday thru Friday), we made it! And some of us have a 3 day weekend to look forward to. Thank you Martin Luther King!

I have talked a lot about walking in this blog. I have mentioned that I walk to work almost everyday and walk my dog, Pepsi at least once a day if not more. Dogs are great for exercise aren’t they?

Well what I wanted to mention is that before I started all this walking, I had always relied on other forms of exercise for fitness and weight management. Leaving walking to others because I was fit and worked out a lot and needed more than walking to keep me in shape.

Well as I was walking, a funny thing happened. I lost inches. In fact, I went down a whole clothes size without even trying.

What? Could walking be the key to fitness? Something so easy we could all benefit? I think so. In fact, I now know so!

I am gonna keep walking………

Have a great day!

Last night, I was craving comfort food. I decided the only thing to cure the cravings for comfort was pasta. I absolutely LOVE pasta. I can eat any kind, any shape, with any sauce or not. In fact, one of my favorites is pasta with organic ketchup. Yup ketchup!

So I looked in the fridge and pantry and found this stuff:

I started the pasta water and threw the pasta in:

Once the pasta was cooked, I added some greens (unpictured because I thought of them after I took the pic) in with the drained pasta. Threw in the sun-dried tomatoes, chopped garlic, beans, and steamed broccoli. I then finished it with some feta and flax seed.

It was so good! I might have eaten too much. Oh well!

This morning I woke up at 5:30 as I usually do. Grabbed my coffee and computer and woke up. Then at 6, Pepsi and I got ready and headed out the door for our morning run. Now I don’t run everyday as you can see if you have looked at my “Workouts” page. In fact, I just started running again after an unintentional hiatus from running. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things-meaning running before work.

So this morning, as I was running in the DARK, I started to think about things recently that have motivated me to run again. One recent article I read from February’s Runners World really got me thinking, it said:

“No one is an island, no one runs in a vacuum. There is always someone watching you leave the house, dig it out, come back, and do it all over again……….You may run by yourself, but no matter how early you start, no matter how remote your location, you never run alone.”

It made me realize that my running is connected to my community. I see and hear things as I run in the stillness of the early morning that may be missed by me if I was not out there.

So as I ran, I really noticed what motivates me to get up and out the door. I realized it is a series of “look forward tos” I look forward to cresting the hill on Poli and seeing the ocean in the distance. I look forward to seeing the two men and their dog walking in the dark-like me. I look forward to seeing the orange and brown sky behind the palm trees.

And most importantly I look forward to hearing Pepsi’s steady breath ane my foot steps in rhythm with each other.

She loves to run and I love to run with her.

This is how I motivate.

How do you push yourself when the bed is so warm and morning so dark?