Now that I've been at this retirement thing for almost four months, let me give you an update on how this exercise thing is working out. The previous post on this was Taking Better Care of Myself. Overall, I'm pretty happy with being able get in significant exercise every day. I've lost 20 lbs., so it's doing something. (Haven't been to my doctor in this time, so I don't have any other numbers. I have lost 2 pants sizes too.)
I've settled down; I'm no longer so rabid about needing to get in my 10,000 steps a day (lots of what I do doesn't involve things my step counter counts, so I'm using other metrics), and I have also quit tracking food input for a while. I'll probably have to go back doing to the latter eventually, as the things I was concerned about -- fiber and protein -- have probably not increased enough. But it was beginning to feel a bit OCD when I was tracking things that carefully.
I have settled into an exercise routine. I spin two days a week, do yoga and pilates each one day a week, work out with a trainer once, hike once a week, do a 3-or-4-hour 40 mile-with-hills bike ride once a week (my attempt to push myself), and do a more social bike ride once a week. (Yes, that's eight days a week). That's kind of the baseline. This week I'm hiking three different times (the first ended up as an 11.5 mile hike covering 2000 ft of vertical, but some of that was an unplanned detour). I skipped my serious bike ride this week, in part because I decided that I wanted to bake bread (more on that in a later post), which conflicted with the meeting time for the biking group I was joining, and in part because my muscles were hurting everywhere (so I did an extra yoga session and pilates instead and called it a day). Other weeks have led to extra bike riding (I did a 100km ride about 3 weeks ago) and a few times my busy social schedule has interfered with all this exercising (it's supposed to be fun, so when it's less fun than something else, out it goes)
This feels really good. I highly recommend it to all new retirees, whether you retire at 70 or 35. I figure eventually I won't be able to do this, and the satisfaction of watching myself get stronger -- possibly stronger and more aerobically fit than I have been in my life -- and of making time to do things I enjoy on a regular basis has been immense. Since I've had to do 3 rounds of recovery in the last 4 years (two ankle surgeries and a round of chemo), feeling healthy and "younger than my age" is very rewarding (18 months ago I was using a walker and cursing it roundly. Not much makes you feel older than a walker. You see 20 year olds in wheelchairs, but not using walkers.) So whatever enjoyable exercise means to you, if you haven't done enough of it when you had work as an excuse (and you know whether that means you, I'm sure), DO IT NOW.
I also highly recommend both yoga and pilates for the ageing body. Yoga I have done on and off for 20 years, but I'm doing it more regularly now, and really reaping the benefits in overall flexibility and lack of aches and pains (other than those I can attribute to a particular exercise session). It's also done wonders for rehabbing my ankle. Even physical therapists don't have exercises to strengthen ankles, but the balancing exercises (everything from Eagle Pose to Vasisthasana Pose) have really made my ankle much more stable and stronger. It's important to find a yoga teacher who doesn't push you to do things that are unsafe, but I can't say enough good about (safely done) yoga.
Pilates I am newer to. I have been wanting to take it up for several years, but couldn't fit it into my schedule. The first few times I said to the teacher "this really looks and feels like a medieval torture device" (her answer: "everyone says that"), but I've done about a dozen sessions now, and I can feel that it's doing a lot to strengthen my core, which is important for many things that "go south" as we age. While I'm getting to a level that I find strenuous (Pilates instructors, or at least mine, start you out very gently, and it was only my progress from week to week that convinced me that this was really exercise), it never hurts (or at least isn't supposed to).
I'll keep posting on how this evolves. Maybe a year from now I'll be a couch potato, but I doubt it. It doesn't hurt that I live in California, where I can do outdoor exercise year round. And I'm doing my best to stay out of hospitals and other medical facilities -- starting this from near zero was damn hard, and I'd rather avoid doing that again.
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