Just do it.

I wrote this on the Diabetes board the other day. Thought it would fit in here!

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This post falls into the category of, "What are we willing to do?"

"We," have developed a mentality, and by, "we," I mean people everywhere, of doing just about anything.....

We have a mentality of seeking the easy fix for any and all of our ills. We feel we don't have time to wait around for a solution to our problems, we want them solved right this instant.

Granted, we've succeeded at providing instant solutions for ourselves in many ways. We can go to a fast food restaurant just about 24/7 if we're hungry. A pill makes our headaches go away. Etc.

There are, however, some things for which we have yet to find our magic bullet. Yet, given our propensity to seek fast, easy solutions to so many ills in our lives, we tend to seek, or at least wait around for, the same types of fast, easy solutions to other problems instead of facing the reality.....

There ain't one.

Exercise is one extreme example. Years ago before my Dx as I struggled to lose extra weight, I read a lot of different diet plans and everyone one of them had one thing in common: At least one chapter on exercise. No joke. If you read any diet book, you'll see it has a chapter on exercise. Conversely, if you pick up any workout magazine or book, you'll see diet referenced in all of them.

The glaringly obvious is so simple to see: You cannot lose weight/get healthy/control BG/improve blood work etc. with either just exercise or just diet. You must have both going at the same time.

In times past, I've attempted to do either or but never, until my Dx, had I ever done both simultaneously. I was more than willing to deceive myself into believing that diet was enough or that exercise was enough. From personal (and admittedly anecdotal) experience, it has recently become clear that both are required.

I look at my father as an example of what not to do. When he died, he was 6' 2" and weighed over 300 pounds. I had to help carry the casket at his funeral and believe you me, that was no easy task. What was notable about my father toward the end of his life was that he had let himself get so overweight and out of shape that he could no longer exercise, even if he wanted to do so. He no longer had the option of working out, walking, bicycling or any other of the things which might have extended his life or at least improved the quality of his day to day life.

He was past the point of no return.

It's easy for me to preach. I know that there are many who are unable to exercise through no fault of their own. There are those who cannot eat certain beneficial things through no fault of their own. It's unfortunate and I understand that. If you can only exercise or only diet, do it. Do what you can do.

If you can do both, though, do both. What I'm talking about here with this mini-essay is, if you still have a choice, make that choice and take control. Do it now and reduce or eliminate the risk of not being able to do it at all. Once, I was asked the question: "If you CAN do better, SHOULD you?" It was a business-related question to be sure, but it applies here. Can you realistically do better than you're doing? Then why not? Are your excuses legitimate or are they just excuses? Are your priorites really aligned properly?

Last year, before my Dx, I reflected on the poor quality of my father's life for his last 10 years and I pondered on how he could barely move as he got older and on the fact that he suffered two major strokes in three years, the second of which killed him. He never did get control of his eating habits and never did exercise during his life. His body and his physiology deteriorated to the point of no return, to the point where he was no longer able to rescue himself.

Last year, I determined that I didn't want to live any more of my life in such a way that I was going to pass the point of no return. I started working out religiously. I didn't change my eating except to watch my portion sizes more closely and it helped. I lost some significant weight. But it wasn't until my Dx several months later that I combined exercise with a proper eating plan and lost MUCH more weight much faster.

The point of all this is very simple. It's tough to exercise but you know what? It's worth the momentary pain. Without exercise, we are unlikely to live the healthiest possible lifestyle we prefer. We may or may not extend our lives but what we WILL do is improve the quality of our lives. I believe longevity is pretty much built into our genes in any case and there isn't much we can do about that. But if you find yourself huffing and puffing after a short walk up a flight of stairs, think about it. If you find that you've eaten too much AGAIN, think about it. If you find yourself vegging in front of another mindless T.V. show, think about that, too.

Think about it. Seriously think and come to the conclusions you need to reach in order to motivate yourself to start working on it. I hear anecdotal stories all the time about how someone had a crappy life, often for many many years and turned things around completely just be getting on this bandwagon. That includes Diabetes control, too.

We resist exercise in many cases because of the pain of it. That's true for me, especially. It's boring. It's time-consuming. I'd rather be in front of my computer doing things which I consider more rewarding. Reading a book, etc. It's a trade-off. We can do the things we enjoy now or gradually give up the ability to do so.

If I don't exercise, I'm giving up several things in my future. All of a sudden, I'm more willing to get my butt off the couch or out of the chair and start doing. Moving more.

And the rewards? Numerous. To put it simply, everything is now easier to do. Even just getting up out of my chair is easier! No grunting any more! LOL

Mostly, I'm just rambling, but it seems that in our never-ending search for a "cure" we miss the closest thing we have to a cure and that is our diet and exercise regimen.

--Wag--