Push Yourself!

I’m in New York City, and tonight I’ll be participating in an especially rigorous martial arts class with a woman I’m profiling for a business magazine. I’ve stepped up my weight training and cardio in the last month and a half, doing weights four to five times per week and interval training on the treadmill three times per week. Hopefully I can make it through this class, but I’m not confident…my endurance is still low.

I’ve realized that I have a lot of trouble pushing myself when I work out. A couple of days last week, I just did a moderate walk on the treadmill instead of interval training, and I didn’t weight train as much as I had been due to scheduling conflicts between my trainer and me. Of course, I could have picked up my handy dumbbells at home, but with no one pushing me, I dissed that idea.

I think that in order to lose weight and get fit, we need to push ourselves more than we think. Many magazine articles tell you that being active just a half-hour per day is fine, and you can even split up your activity into three 10-minute sessions, such as walks after meals. But when you read the profiles of people who have lost weight and kept it off — and who look great — they don’t just meander around for half an hour every day. They work hard! For example, some of them do an hour of cardio every day, and weight training three to five times per week on top of that. They watch their calories. They’re dedicated to being healthy.

I have a friend who would like to lose a lot of weight. But when he tells me about his workout, I realize that he’s just walking slowly on a treadmill at 0% incline for half an hour, then lifting weights that even I, who am in no way a trainer, can tell are way too light. He can go on forever without reaching failure! Then he gets demotivated because he isn’t losing any weight.

In contrast, the person I’m profiling has a fit body. She does vigorous martial arts for one to two hours a day, weight trains with heavy weights, and runs. And when we went out to lunch, I noticed that she ate only a half slice of bread from her open-faced tuna sandwich. (I ate all my bread.)

Me, I’m somewhere in the middle — I usually push myself, especially with weights (I lift heavy enough that I can do only eight to 12 reps), and I take care not to eat a crazy amount of food. And my results are…well, middling. I’m not overweight, but I’d like to look and feel fitter, and to fit into the jeans I wore in graduate school. The woman I’m profiling has inspired me: I think when I get back to New Hampshire, I’ll feel a renewed commitment to push myself harder during exercise.

How about you? Do you push it, or are you a slacker? What kinds of results are you seeing? I’d love to know…please post your experiences in the Comments section below.

Stay healthy,

Linda