Monday, May 24, 2004

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch...

For once in my life crunch, crunch, crunch doesn’t mean I’m eating Doritos! For the third day in a row, I got up this morning and did 50 ab crunches. That may not seem like much, but to a 260 pound girl whose idea of physical activity means walking to the mailbox without taking a break on the way, it’s a big deal. I can feel it, too. The muscles across my rib cage area, not to mention my adominal area, are feeling pretty sore and I could feel the burn when I did my crunches this morning. It’s all going to be worth it though.

One of my biggest barriors to exercise right now is chronic, severe low back pain that occurs whenever I try to stand or walk for more than 10 minutes at a time. Even sitting up in a chair for too long without a break can trigger back spasms as well. The reason this happens is because I carry a huge part of my excess weight in my stomach and the stress of trying to support that weight strains the muscles in my back. They just aren’t strong enough to carry the load. I read somewhere, and I can’t remember where, that building strength in the abdominal muscles can help support the lower back and also help relieve low back pain, so I’m doing my crunches.

I have one of those old ab roller things that helps me to do the crunches without straining my neck or hurthing my back and so far, I’m able to do the crunches without anything hurting, except the muscle stiffness of course, and I’m sure that will ease up as my abs get stronger.

So far, the ab crunches are the only concerted effort I’m making to exercise on a daily basis, other than occasionally walking around in the yard. My reasoning behind such a slow start is based on two things.

1. If I start slow and add just a little bit of exercise at a time, I’m more likely to stick with it than I would if I tried to do too much at once.
2. If I work on strengthening my abdominal muscles in order to gain better low back support, it will make it less painful for me to do other exercise later, like going for walks each evening.

In addition to the ab crunches, I am still making slow, gradual modifications to my eating habits every day. As I keep telling my family, I am NOT on a diet. These are permenant changes that will support a healthy weight for the rest of my life. I am making the changes slowly, one at a time, to give myself time to adjust to each change and develop it into a habit. If I’m going to do all the hard work of getting this weight off over the next 2 years, I want to make sure it’s going to STAY off when I get there. That means changing the inside just as much as it means changing the outside. I’m becoming a whole new person.

 

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